{"success":true,"data":[{"ID":1432,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1757988736,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Critical Creativity for Leadership & Change Making","Handle":"critical_creativity_for_leadership-change_making","ShortDescription":"How might we use creative forms of expression to help us identify solutions, communicate expectations, guide processes, and innovate education?  Experiment with strategies and discuss methods that bring purposeful creativity into our committee meetings and conference rooms.","Description":"Progressive educators struggle to break paradigms and make lasting meaningful change in the face of myopic traditions, false comfort, and alleged efficiency.  We want something new for our learners and families, we want something more equitable and accessible for our communities and edu-ecosystem.   And though we seek to engage our learners with multiple modalities and transformative thinking experience,  we largely continue to use the same ol\u2019 sit in a circle, brainstorm and discuss, reach consensus and run a pilot approach to problem solving.   Our conversation intends to explore ways in which critical creativity \u2013 the synergy of critical thinking, meaningful content, and creative expression \u2013  may help educational leaders get out of their self-imposed ruts and guide learning communities toward effective solutions to complex challenges.   Through a series of stations and voice-and-choice explorations, participants in this session will discuss myriad ways to use their beloved chart paper, sharpie markers, and post-it notes that go beyond brainstorming lists, casting votes, and organizing ideas.  From crafting lyrics to composing comics, from painting possibilities to choreographing concepts, participants in this conversation will challenge themselves and others to create in the service of change.","Link":["https:\/\/www.jacquiegardy.com\/"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"Participants in this session can expect to find a space arranged into a series of six to eight stations with each station featuring a  critical creativity strategy coupled with a challenge facing progressive education.  These challenges intend to reflect the topics that frequently surface in staff meetings and district committees:  assessing and reporting achievement, improving attendance, managing technology, engaging families, developing educators, and supporting social emotional learning.  The critical creativity strategies will come from the Critical Creativity in Action deck, a free set of 50 instructional strategies using creative expression, proven to improve learning outcomes in classroom learners and just as well suited to problem solving in professional capacities.  Strategies included will range from those incorporating sculpture and comics creation, to those involving lyricism and choreography.   After ten minutes of station exploration, we will reconvene for fifteen minutes of circle-style conversation, and alternate this pattern through the duration of the session.","Presenter":["Jacqueline Gardy","Dan Ryder"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Community Regional Charter School","Skowhegan","ME","Gardy Learning Design Studio"],"PresenterEmail":["hello@jacquiegardy.com","danryder207@gmail.com"],"ScheduleSlotID":187,"ScheduleLocationID":37,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"We love EduCon!","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":13},{"ID":1423,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1757954018,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"How Does This Work, and Why Does It Work This Way?","Handle":"how_does_this_work-and_why_does_it_work_this_way","ShortDescription":"Descriptions of how things work are often made more complex than they need to be. Let's cut through  the noise.","Description":"Testing and evaluating software and services remains an underappreciated and misunderstood skill. This session will address this reality on multiple fronts, including:\r\n\r\n1. How can we identify the questions we should ask about a service?\r\n2. How can we assess the claims and promises made in both marketing materials and legally binding policy documents?\r\n3. What are easy and affordable ways to do meaningful privacy and security testing?\r\n\r\nFrom the audience -- and before the session occurs -- we will collect questions and informations from people in schools about what they want to know about the technology they use, and what existing barriers exist to getting good answers.\r\n\r\nIn many ways, this is an old conversation. And, given the continuous increase in data incidents -- to say nothing of reckless uses of what passes for \"AI\" in education -- it's a conversation that still needs to occur.","Link":["https:\/\/machinegobeep.com"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"Prior to the session, I will create a list of openly licensed and freely available resources that can be  used to evaluate software and services, including AI tools.\r\n\r\nDuring the session, this resource will be augmented and improved. The updated version will be re-shared, and if there is interest I will recruit and support multiple co-authors to maintain the resource over time.","Presenter":["Bill Fitzgerald"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Machine Go Beep"],"PresenterEmail":["bill@machinegobeep.com"],"ScheduleSlotID":187,"ScheduleLocationID":32,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":13},{"ID":1406,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1756989298,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Level Up Literacy: Empowering Advanced Readers with Self-Paced, Engaging, and Cross-Content Novel Studies in Early Grades","Handle":"level_up_literacy--empowering_advanced_readers_with_self-paced-engaging-and_cross-content_novel_studies_in_early_grades","ShortDescription":"How to continually challenge advanced readers in early grades? By designing personalized reading studies that combine reading and writing, assess for skills mastery through engaging virtual games, foster independence, and interdisciplinary connections.","Description":"How do we facilitate the continued development of masterful students as readers while allowing them to embrace the joys of being in early grades (k-2)? How can we, teachers, navigate between challenging these students and using developmentally appropriate practices? In the past year, our school noticed students' reading levels have a large variance from learning to read to reading to learn. We questioned how we can meet the needs of our students while also staying within the curriculum and standards of the grade level. To solve this problem, I created digital self-paced novel studies that encourage students to expand their vocabulary, think deeply, and make connections across content areas through multisensory modalities. Students can take control of their learning by moving through a game-like platform to complete activities at each \u201clevel\u201d (chapter) of their book. Students collaborate by sharing videos of their predictions and thoughts to an online classroom platform.","Link":[],"Audience":["Elementary School"],"Practice":"Together we will discuss the challenges teachers face with differentiating instruction, brainstorm ideas to improve and expand differentiation in reading, and walk away with strategies and tools to use in your classroom.","Presenter":["Emily Ferestien","Corey Roberts"],"PresenterAffiliation":["The Rashi School"],"PresenterEmail":["eferestien@rashi.org","croberts@rashi.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":187,"ScheduleLocationID":33,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":13},{"ID":1400,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1756230317,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Purpose Driven Middle School","Handle":"purpose_driven_middle_school","ShortDescription":"At Tempe Elementary Schools, we are designing a new, purpose-driven learning model, centered on student agency and self-discovery. The goal is to help students identify their unique values, interests, and skills, as they explore and experience all that is possible for them.","Description":"We want to cultivate a generation of young individuals who possess a clear sense of self, understand their values, interests, and skills, and have a vision for their future. The goal is to equip them with the confidence and abilities to realize their passions as they move into the next level of their learning journey.","Link":["http:\/\/www.jcasap.com"],"Audience":["Middle School"],"Practice":"The format will be a 15 minute presentation followed up by a list of questions for a group discussion.","Presenter":["Jaime Casap"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Tempe Elementary Schools"],"PresenterEmail":["jcasap@gmail.com"],"ScheduleSlotID":187,"ScheduleLocationID":30,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":13},{"ID":1413,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1757446971,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Swords to Ploughshares: De-personalizing computing","Handle":"swords_to_ploughshares--de-personalizing_computing_and","ShortDescription":"Personal computing is not neutral and its effects feel different in 2025 than ten years ago. This is conversation on what we are seeing, and what we might do to create the technology environment we want","Description":"We aim to describe a technology environment we thought we wanted to create before SLA-MS opened in 2016, what the technology environment we found ourselves in at the end of 2024-2025 school year, the changes we made and the value propositions we used to get a different outcome. We will discuss the perceived and observed impacts of personal computing on our teaching, learning, culture, and equity initiatives. We aim to contextualize our experience through the voices of leadership, faculty, and students. We hope to gather outside perspectives on what an ideal technology environment would be and hear from others what they did the kinds of technology environments they want. We are not talking about AI because we like fresh water.","Link":["http:\/\/slams.philasd.org"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"Opening with an ideal technology environment visioning exercise. Hearing from SLA-MS community members as a case study. Sharing what moves folks have done (or didn\u2019t do) to get the kinds of environments they value.","Presenter":["Timothy M. Boyle and company"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Science Leadership Academy Middle School"],"PresenterEmail":["tmboyle@philasd.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":187,"ScheduleLocationID":36,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":13},{"ID":1419,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1757902974,"CreatorID":79,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Teaching Towards What Lasts in the Age of AI","Handle":"teaching_towards_what_lasts_in_the_age_of_ai","ShortDescription":"AI platforms will come and go. What disposition should we be nurturing in students to prepare them for the murky future of living and working with AI? This conversation will surface new modes of skills that learners need to leverage an unprecedented and evolving AI toolkit: judgment, agency, and creativity.","Description":"Our students are dabbling or completely immersing themselves in ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude, and whatever platform comes next, or our schools provide them with. But these platforms will change, disappear, become outmoded - if we anchor our teaching to platforms, we\u2019ll always be playing catch-up, and our students will be learning how to drive an App, not how to live with AI. The real work is preparing students to navigate a world where large language models are not too far from ubiquity, without losing their judgment, creativity, or agency along the way, but with a new set of skills and thinking habits that no previous generation has had the opportunity or need to cultivate. \r\n\r\nThis conversation invites us to ask: what is worth teaching about AI that won\u2019t be obsolete when the next version drops? How do we help students build durable habits of mind: questioning what a model generates, spotting its blind spots, and using AI not as an answer machine but as a thought partner, editor, or agent. Just as importantly, we\u2019ll consider how AI can offload the repetitive and tedious tasks that often create the friction that serves as a barrier to learning, without robbing students of the productive struggle that defines real learning.\r\n\r\nAgain, our goal isn\u2019t fluency with today\u2019s platforms. It\u2019s something bigger: equipping learners with the literacies and dispositions to learn intentionally with AI for the long haul, no matter what the interface or platform landscape looks like.","Link":[],"Audience":["High School","Middle School","Elementary School","All School Levels"],"Practice":"We'll start with a brief framing to set context, but most of the time will be spent in conversation in small working groups, organized by ages taught. Participants will first reflect on their own experiences with students and AI platforms to date, and surface what positive practices and habits have emerged (one norm we'll establish is we're looking for what positive student\/personal habits we've seen developing with AI tools, to see if we can develop into something that might be enduring rather than focus on the pitfalls and annoyances). \r\n\r\nNext, we'll remix into small groups of folx that teach or work with many ages, to compare perspectives and surface the habits and dispositions they think will matter most in the long run, and how we might nurture those in a vertical progression of touchpoints. We\u2019ll use case studies to spark discussion: moments where AI shows up in student work, play, or learning process in positive ways, and from these ask what lasting skills those moments could teach if approached with intention. \r\n\r\nFinally, the group will build a shared artifact of \u201cAI literacies that last\u201d as a shareable online asset, capturing ideas and tensions in plain language that educators can take back to their schools. We\u2019ll end by gathering a round of takeaways, ensuring everyone leaves with both concrete ideas and open questions worth pursuing, and an opportunity for everyone to find an accountability partner if they wish to experiment with anything from this conversation in their current school year.","Presenter":["JP Connolly"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Avenues New York"],"PresenterEmail":["jp.connolly@avenues-ny.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":187,"ScheduleLocationID":34,"SubmitterID":79,"AdditionalComments":"Looking forward to coming back to EduCon this year - it's been too long!","LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":13}],"conditions":{"Status":"Accepted","ConferenceID":13,"ScheduleSlotID":187},"total":6,"limit":false,"offset":false}