Saturday, November 8, 2014

Vermont Fest 2014 and a Snake


The sign of a good conference is when you come away from it questioning everything about your work.

I like this snake drawing from the New York Public Library more than the three terrible photos I took of people in banquet rooms at the Killington Grand. I would never consider publishing a blog post without a picture.

At Vermont Fest this year, I found myself wanting to make a list of a bunch of things all students should get the chance to do in school.

Skype/hangout/video interact with people in other parts of the world
Type an equal sign into a spreadsheet
Make a personalized, LED-lit badge to explore how light works
Have maker/genius/whatever hour/day/week to explore something interesting to them
Publish their content (writing/photos/videos) on a blog and comment on the work of others
Learn about how computers work by writing some code
Be asked the questions How are you feeling? What do you think? and What do you need?
Use Google Research Tools to find and cite things.
Sit in chairs listening to a teacher talk a lot less.

Some great presenters I encountered include Chris Lehmann (@chrislehmann), Bonnie Birdsall (@bonniebird), Dan French (@danfrench), Adam Provost (@batman44), Lucie deLaBruere (@techsavvygirl), Charlie Macfadyen (@csmacf), Tricia Hinkle (@VTScienceFair), Matt Dunne (@@mattdunnevt). Check them out.

Here are a couple of links.
The Vermont Fest site with all kinds of other links to presenters