Spotlight on Upcoming Professional Learning Opportunities

 

Vermont Higher Ed. Collaborative:  Design Engineering: Unleashing All Learners' Critical Thinking and Problem Solving Skills 

Where: Live virtual workshop

Target Audience: Teachers of 2nd-8th grade students, librarians, technology integration specialists, instructional coaches.

Overview:  How can you immerse your students in authentically solving challenges in science? Using a design engineering process provides ways for all learners to solve challenges, integrate critical thinking, develop & apply problem strategies, and grow their collaboration skills. This workshop includes no-tech ways to use a design engineering process, as well as ways to incorporate the low-cost Edison robot. Edison uses a range of coding applications, allowing learners to complete the same task while easily allowing teachers to differentiate for learning differences. Edison is also Lego brick compatible, further supporting the integration of design engineering.

During this workshop, the presenters will model design engineering tasks that transfer across the curriculum, embed the practice of transferable skills, and provide possible modifications to include all learners.

Participants will:

· Understand ways to incorporate engineering and design in the classroom and/or school library to enhance student learning.

· Experience the design engineering process first hand.

· Access resources to support the development of design engineering projects that foster student interests, independence, and growth.

· Develop and adapt lessons or activities that utilize the engineering design process.

· Learn programming basics of Edison (no robotics or programming experience required, but if you have some that is fine too!).

· Understand the benefits and

DLD+ Workshop: Organizational Change - The Cynefin Framework

After decades of attempts to standardize schools, education leaders are recognizing that Newtonian command and control approaches to school reform have failed. We are becoming increasingly aware of the need to embrace a more complex, humane, and diverse future. While the need is apparent, what is less obvious is what policy, practice, pedagogy, and especially the leadership of school and district transformation efforts to create this new paradigm, would look like in this emerging world. There must be a better way–but what does it look like, how does it work, and in what principles is it grounded?

Systemic change for equitable, powerful, and deep learning requires a different way of thinking and leading. Leading change in the 21st century is more about working agilely and flexibly in complex and unpredictable, even disruptive, circumstances, while taking real human needs, dispositions, contexts, and social learning cultures into account. The challenges we face to address the deep inequities in our educational system require this, not to mention the challenge to create much more complex and meaningful learning experiences for young people. We’ve come to understand that this is an effort to “decolonize leadership.”

All of this suggests the need for leaders to develop different habits of mind and toolkits in order to support higher levels of adult engagement, learning, and change. In this workshop, we will discuss some of those habits of mind and tools by exploring how leaders might use the Cynefin framework as an heuristic for leading in the various domains of change, from the most simple to the almost chaotic.

We will explore the following questions:
What is the Cynefin framework?
What are the domains of change it defines?
What kinds of change challenges can be addressed by leading in these domains?
How can you use the Cynefin framework in your day-to-day change leadership?

Apr 8, 2022 12:00 PM in Eastern Time

FREE

REGISTER HERE