LLI Southwest

Virtual Reality is the process of physically interacting with three dimensional computer simulations. VR is also the new hot education tool/concept, but how do you channel this interest into meaningful lessons that lead to student generated products and outcomes? In this session, educators will participate in a round-table discussion that will cover the following:
 
Current VR educational tools
Defining student-centered use of these tools
Discussion around how these tools can be effectively used in student-centered projects

Padlet

Typically, literature teachers have students read a story, interpret its meaning, and then share and discuss their ideas. In a recent high school elective I took a different approach.  The students interpreted a short story or novella through creative writing.  They responded to sections of a work by creating a character who engaged with the characters and plot by entering the world of the story.  The creative writing tasks were arranged as a series of missions for which the students could earn points.  After each creative entry the teacher responded to the student, commenting on the "moves" the student made within the literary world.  What surprised me was the level of critical engagement with the meanings of the story.  By not writing expository prose or engaging in analytical discourse, some students felt freer to contemplate and respond to the work on an emotional level and to even make perceptive observations about the mode of narration or the complex relationship between the author and his or her work.  In the elective I interacted with the role play of the students by responding in writing to their short fictional forays into the story world by creating my own character called the Game Master.  In this session I would like to invite the participants to engage in this exercise through a creative response to Ursula K. LeGuin’s short story “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” and to discuss the benefits and potential drawbacks of such an approach to literary engagement.

Learner driven inquiry projects that do not fit into the confines of one specific discipline provide a deep and rich learning experience for students. These learning experiences can often feel like a nightmare to plan as teachers. During this workshop, we will take you through our process including: developing teacher, administrative, and parental support; the student planning process; assessment; and presentation. We encourage you to bring an idea that you may be working on. Or, we will have some for you to practice on. With our collective experience, we will work to address all of your concerns and needs so you can move forward confidently. Our goal is that you leave inspired to implement this at your school and leave with the tools to do so.

The 2012 Advanced Placement Calculus BC Examination Free Response Question 4 tied together four approaches to solving a particular calculus problem.  Approaches involving a tangent-line, a Riemann sum, an Euler’s method, and a second degree Taylor polynomial solve the particular problem giving similar answers and are presented.  Another problem will solve in the another type of problem in the same manner.  Finally, participants will be asked to relate approaches to solve various other types of problems, not necessarily calculus.  The hope is to bring together diverse topics and show their relationships to arriving at solutions to such a problem.  

We know more today about how students learn than we have at any other time in the history of formal education. While many traditional foundations remain effective, many new methods to learning are emerging. As “stewards of our students’ intellectual curiosity,” we commit ourselves to exploring engaging opportunities for our students to embrace their “passion for discovery.”  The IDEA program at St. Mark’s is a collection of student experiences throughout Middle School that provide students with an opportunity to engage in learning with a bias to action and begin to develop skills they will need to be successful and satisfied learners for years to come. We launched this program this fall and it is the result of 3 years of program evolution. It is based on the concepts of knowledge creation and design thinking.  In this session, we offer a glimpse into how we developed this program and provide guidance to help others get started in developing their own version at their school.   There are three perspectives from which we will guide the session: administration, teacher, and marketing/communications.

We were presented with the opportunity to completely redesign our geometry program at our independent school. Honors and regular students are combined in each classroom, strengthening the education for students of all ability levels and backgrounds. Students are able to approach honors level material on a ‘challenge by choice’ basis, enabling many who would not have been originally enrolled in an advanced course to earn credit for Honors Geometry throughout the course of the year. Our goal is to achieve a more equitable program by providing advanced material to all levels of students.
Technology integration is key to this program. Using intelligent software that allows for more personalization gives us as teachers more time to focus on the students requiring additional assistance or greater challenges. Our flexible classroom design encourages students to use a variety of different learning styles to master the material. As students fulfill objectives, they have the choice to change their learning environment based on the requirements of their next objective. 
In this session, we will discuss the redesign process we went through with our curriculum and the project we led our students through to renovate our classroom. We will also address the honors integration and the personalization of the course.