VSTE

Virginia Society for Technology in Education

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Featured Resources from #GoOpenVA, August 24, 2020

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SSwirl with word Go Open VAince its debut in January 2020, #GoOpenVA has been building its collections with the help of Virginia educators. This collaborative initiative enables educators and others throughout Virginia to create, share, and access openly-licensed educational resources (OER, also known as open education resources). OER are free digital materials that can be used or modified to adjust to student needs; they are openly-licensed unhampered by many traditional copyright limitations.

Jean Weller, VSTE Board Member and VDOE Technology Integration Specialist, leads this effort. We asked her to periodically curate a few of the resources to give a sense of what is available. Start with these but stay for so much more! And be sure to follow Jean on Twitter.

 

Featured Resources:

C3 Teachers: Immigration Inquiry Remix: Amy Gaulton from Hanover County created this remixed lesson, providing an inquiry lesson in a student-facing format, about immigration to New York City in the late 1800s and early 1900s.

https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/1520

Science Inquiry from Home: Series: Anne Petersen of the VDOE has added a series of ideas for exploring science while students are at home.  The series currently features grades K-5.

https://goopenva.org/search?f.search=science+inquiry+from+home&f.general_subject=&f.sublevel=&f.alignment_standard=

Cell Phone Electrons: Sarah McGlothlin of Giles County has created a lesson to use all those old unwanted cell phones by having students take them apart to find out how they work, integrating engineering into science.

https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/1738

Featured Resources from #GoOpenVA

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SSwirl with word Go Open VAince its debut in January 2020, #GoOpenVA has been building its collections with the help of Virginia educators. This collaborative initiative enables educators and others throughout Virginia to create, share, and access openly-licensed educational resources (OER, also known as open education resources). OER are free digital materials that can be used or modified to adjust to student needs; they are openly-licensed unhampered by many traditional copyright limitations.

Jean Weller, VSTE Board Member and VDOE Technology Integration Specialist, leads this effort. We asked her to periodically curate a few of the resources to give a sense of what is available. Start with these but stay for so much more! And be sure to follow Jean on Twitter.

Featured Resources:

Decimal Rounding Podcast Episode (Mic Drop Maths Podcast): Two teachers (Lindsey Paulson and Whitney Wells-Corfield) in Hanover County collaborate to bring you their cool ideas on Mathematics SOL for 5th graders.  Broken into segments for easy “digestion,” it’s a way to get your own creative juices flowing. https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/496/overview

 

Blended Content Studio: This resource, created by Mike Caulfield of WSU Vancouver is full of great tips and videos to help teachers new to online learning.  Just one of the resources outside of Virginia that can be useful to Virginia educators trying to stay current during this crazy time.

https://goopenva.org/courses/blended-content-studio-emergency-online-teaching-at-wsu-vancouver/view

 

I Can Forecast the Weather Remix: Adrienne Sawyer of Chesapeake created a remix of a pretty simple lesson about recognizing clouds and made it much more robust for students, adding a great downloadable “Weather Journal” for students to use.

https://goopenva.org/courseware/lesson/1283/overview

Apply for VSTE Diversity and Inclusion Mentoring Program

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VSTE values human differences and welcomes diverse voices that help us serve our membership, students, and teachers across the Commonwealth better. For over a year, the Ad Hoc Task Force on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, co-chaired by Nicci Dowd and Amy Stewart, has been meeting and working on projects to further the participation of underrepresented groups in educational technology leadership across Virginia. Through the establishment of a mentoring program and planning targeted professional development activities, the members of the task force are giving their time and making a concerted effort to level the playing field and welcome new voices.

The task force is soliciting applicant for the Mentorship Program. This program, begun in 2019, is targeted towards minority educators so that the educational technology field in Virginia becomes diversified and inclusive for all people. This mentorship opportunity will pair non-minority/minority mentors with minority mentees. Learn more about the program here.

Mentors will help build the mentee's professional learning networks and connections, while also helping to increase the mentee's knowledge of educational technology. This mentorship program is for classroom teachers, instructional technology teachers, technology teachers, administrators, and paraprofessionals who are committed to gain educational technology experience through a year-long mentorship program.

The interest survey is open now. Please consider applying to be a mentor or mentee.

The definition of minority educator for the purposes of this program are as follows:

Individuals that identify their race as African American/Black, Hispanic, Latinx, Asian, Native American, Pacific Islander/Native Hawaiians, Multi-racial, Arab, etc.
Individuals that identify gender as Lesbian, Gay, Bi-sexual, Transgender, Queer, Intersex, or Asexual+
Individuals that identify as non-able bodied

Leading Ed Forum 2020: Collaboration in the Cloud

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logo Leading Ed Forum 2020: Collaboration in the Cloud: Innovations with Remote Learning
#explore-learn-innovate

Register Now

Schedule

Join the Virginia Department of Education and VSTE for the 4th annual Leading Ed Forum being held online on Tuesday, October 6, 2020,  from 8:15 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. Registration Cost is $50.00.  This annual conference is designed for Virginia school division technology leaders and provides opportunities for technology leaders to learn more about issues related to both information technology and instructional technology. The 2020 Forum focuses on remote learning, digital learning, and network infrastructure. 

Entrepreneur Andrew Ko will provide the opening keynote for the Leading Ed Forum 2020. Andrew has spent the last 25 years of his professional career driving sales, business development, consulting, strategic partnerships and new product offerings for the most prominent  management consulting and technology companies in the world.

His industry experiences include education, auto, banking, defense, counterterrorism, and health and human services where he has received various awards in every company.  Focusing on his passion to improve education with technology. He founded Kovexa in the midst of the COVID19 pandemic to shape and lead the restructuring of education.

During COVID19, he was asked to advise Fairfax County Public Schools, Los Angeles County Unified School District and several universities and realized that the gap between technology, policy, and actual use by frontline educators was too great.  As a father, he realized the importance of equity, special needs, and English language learners have an insurmountable gap with online learning.

As an appointee to the Virginia State Board of Education, he assisted in setting statewide curriculum standards, establishing high school graduation requirements, determining qualifications for classroom teachers, and establishing state testing and assessment programs.

Because of the nature of this event, registration is limited to Virginia public and private school leaders who fall into the audience below. We encourage schools to send a leadership team.

Audience:  Technology Directors, Division Level leaders involved in Instructional Technology or Information Technology, Technology Coordinators, Supervisors of Technology, Directors of Information Technology, Chief Information Officers, Chief Technology Officers, Coordinators of Instructional Technology, and  Directors of Innovation

Register Now

Managing Multi-OS Devices in an Era of Schools Without Walls

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Filewave LogoJoin VSTE and Filewave for a free webinar being held Wednesday, August 5, 2020, 3 PM ET, related to managing devices outside the school.

The need to manage devices outside the schools walls and network has become a necessity. FileWave Officer Stephen Mirante will share how district staff can manage all OS types from the outside to ensure student, admins and all other staff continue to receive the support they need while ensuring they remain secure. 

You will also learn how FileWave has been empowering district IT staff for over 20 years.  FileWave continues to lead the industry providing education institutions around the world with enterprise level, multi-platform device management software to assist IT teams throughout the lifecycle process of imaging, deployment, management, tracking and maintenance. FileWave’s all-inclusive, highly scalable software solves the many challenges of managing a diverse and growing population of users, devices, and content by ensuring IT teams have a comprehensive solution that supports both client (desktop/laptop) and mobile devices across Windows, macOS, iOS/iPadOS, tvOS, Android, and Chrome.

Certificate of Participation