VSTE

Virginia Society for Technology in Education

Events

Registration Open for VSTE SuperHero Summit aka Googlepalooza

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Join us for this professional development event! Check out the schedule here: https://superherosummit2017.sched.com/

Registration is open and seats are going fast.

The Super Hero Summit will include sessions related to Google, Virtual Reality,  Makerspaces, and Coding. There will be standard one-hour breakout sessions along with two-hour hands on sessions that will give participants the opportunity to take a deeper dive into a tool or concept.

Lord Fairfax Community is located just 90 minutes from almost everywhere in central and northern Virginia!

Register here.

Joe Freddoso to Head Panel Discussion at Leading Ed Forum 2017

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The VSTE CoSN Council and the Virginia Department of Education are pleased to welcome Joe Fredosso, USAC consultant and co-founder and COO of Mighty River, as a speaker for the second annual Leading Ed Forum. Joe will lead a panel discussion on Friday, October 20. This event, designed for school division technology and instructional leaders and presented through a partnership of VSTE and the Virginia Department of Education, will be held October 19 & 20, 2017, at Daniel Technology Center in Culpeper, Virginia. Learn more about this event here.

Mighty River was founded by April and Joe Freddoso in July 2014 as an advise and do company in the broadband infrastructure space.  

In its first three years of operation, Mighty River clients have included:

  • EducationSuperHighway
  • Extreme Networks
  • Universal Service Administrative Company
  • Person County, NC
  • The Walton Family Foundation
  • NC Rural Economic Development Center
  • Several client relationships under non-disclosure

One of Mighty River’s roles has been to assist E-rate applicants in navigating the second E-rate modernization order.  E-rate reimbursement for applicant construction of fiber broadband networks either owned by the applicant or by a broadband provider, greatly expanded under the terms of the second modernization.  In its role Mighty River provided advisory assistance to over 1500 E-rate applicants over a 3-year period from 2014-2017.  

In July 2014, Joe completed a 7-year stint as President and CEO of MCNC.  MCNC operates the North Carolina Research and Education Network (NCREN), which provides broadband connectivity to most Community Anchor Institutions in North Carolina.  Under Joe’s leadership, MCNC quadrupled its revenue, grew NCREN's connector community by 700% and now possesses a book value of over one quarter billion dollars.
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Also, during Joe’s time at MCNC, the organization completed a $144 million expansion of NCREN, called the Golden LEAF Rural Broadband Initiative (GLRBI). This expansion included building over 1800 miles of new fiber optic infrastructure, acquiring 800 miles of fiber optic infrastructure through Indefeasible Right to Use (IRU) agreements and adding these fiber assets to the NCREN network.  The result is an NCREN that covers over 80% of North Carolina’s counties. 

Joe led the effort to negotiate the fiber leases as the lessee and the lessor and all types of lit service, colocation, above the net services arrangements.  MCNC successfully IRU'd to broadband service providers worth over $25 million of fiber on the GLRBI. Joe and MCNC were recognized as White House Champions of Change in 2012 and Computer World Laureates in 2013 for their efforts.

Freddoso has also served in senior executive roles at Cisco, Turner Broadcasting, LLC, Walt Disney World and for several entities in the Olympic movement including as President and CEO of the 1999 Special Olympics World Summer Games.

Ryan Imbriale to Keynote Leading Ed Forum 2017

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The VSTE CoSN Council is pleased to welcome Mr. Ryan Imbriale as the keynote speaker for the second annual Leading Ed Forum. This event, designed for school division technology and instructional leaders and presented through a partnership of VSTE and the Virginia Department of Education, will be held October 19 & 20, 2017, at Daniel Technology Center in Culpeper, Virginia. Learn more about this event here.

Mr. Ryan Imbriale has spent his leaderPhoto of smiling man with glassesship career in education focused on how technology can empower student learning.  He is the Executive Director of Innovative Learning for the Baltimore County Public Schools and is responsible for leading the system’s digital conversion initiative, S.T.A.T. (Students and Teachers Accessing Tomorrow).  Ryan was previously the Principal of Patapsco High School & Center for the Arts in Baltimore, MD.  Under his leadership, Patapsco was named one of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts’ National Schools of Distinction in 2009 and recognized by the College Board as the Middle States winner for Excellence and Innovation in the Arts in 2012.  The school developed an active Facebook page, a successful YouTube channel, Twitter account, and a native app for the iPhone developed by students.

Prior to coming to Baltimore County he was facilitator of the Maryland Students Online Consortium, working with 17 Maryland school systems to review, pilot, evaluate, modify, and recommend online courses for students, as well as coordinator for professional development at The Johns Hopkins University Center for Technology in Education. Ryan has extensive experience presenting to audiences on online and blended learning, learner-centered environments, curriculum design, and effective leadership.

Ryan is a Past-President of MSET, Maryland's ISTE Affiliate, and he is a former member of the Board of Directors for ISTE, the International Society for Technology in Education.  In 2008, Ryan was named one of its "20 to Watch" educators by the National School Boards Association (NSBA) and in 2009 was awarded the Making IT Happen award, honoring educational technology leaders around the world for their commitment and innovation.  Tech & Learning magazine named Ryan one of the future leaders in its 100@30 in 2010 as part of the magazine’s 30th anniversary celebration.  In 2012 he was named a Phi Delta Kappa (PDK) Emerging Leader and in 2013 the National Association of Secondary School Principals (NASSP) named him a National Digital Principal of the Year. Ryan was honored by Intel® in 2015 as an Education Visionary, an elite group of approximately 40 education leaders from all over the world who will be exemplars for global education transformation. Most recently, he was named to the National Council on Digital Convergence.

 

VSTE Minecraft Survival Summer 2017

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New to Minecraft? Interested in learning more about this game that seems to have captured your students' attention? This summer, the Virtual Environments PLN will be exploring Minecraft survival mode.

The first live meeting will take place, Friday, May 26, at 6:45 EDT. The team will build a safe house.

Three students from eastcoastminers.org will come build recipe frames to show novices how to build the basics.

We will be playing in survival all summer: Memorial Day to Labor Day and helping those with little or no Minecraft experience. The idea is that teachers will learn why their students love this game, while talking with other teachers about how it can be leveraged as an instructional tool in the classroom.
If you have been wanting to learn about Minecraft but didn't know how to begin, this is your chance! You need to get a Minecraft account from https://mojang.com/. Then send your Minecraft login name to K4sons@gmail.com and ask to be whitelisted.

Visit our website at https://sites.google.com/view/vstesofs17 to learn more.

GETTING STARTED WITH MINECRAFT:

You must have a computer Minecraft account from https://minecraft.net/en/ to join. There is a one time fee of $26.95. Download and install the software. Choose multiplayer and add a server: Name VSTE Place IP 69.175.17.26:25565 We will open it up for this event. If you want to be whitelisted to enter anytime you want to continue building this, or anything else, email Kim Harrison at kvharris@vbschools.com from an educational email address with your real name and minecraft name.

VE PLN: Summer of Survival

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This summer, Memorial Day through Labor Day, VSTE Place in Minecraft will hold its first Summer of Survival! Participants will be able to warp to survival mode for a completely different Minecraft experience. We will discover why our students beg for survival mode at school. It's challenging, but fun, and we will need each other to survive!

You may be able to earn points from your district with your VSTE certificate of participation. There will be a list of achievements to accomplish over the course of the summer. You can complete them in a few weeks or take the entire summer. The idea is to have fun while networking with other educators inside Minecraft.

Participants will need a Mojang account, a copy of Minecraft installed on their computer, and access to VSTE Place, the VSTE Minecraft server. Contact K4sons@gmail.com to get your Mojang Minecraft account whitelisted on our server.

Keep up with all the events at the summer website and the Google Plus community.