Lausanne Learning Institute

Once we define our strategy we must model the tools and methods that we value in the classroom and demonstrate best practices for teachers. Our affinity groups and case studies will show how these practices affect and innovate faculty meetings.

Google Sites is an excellent tool for teacher websites, student projects, and more. Participants will explore how Google Sites provides an avenue for creativity, collaboration, the development of basic graphic design principles, and content publishing. Participants will create a Google site and learn basic graphic design principles throughout the process. Educational implications and uses of Sites will be discussed.

NOTE: A new Google Sites was just announced at ISTE two weeks ago! While we don't yet have access to it, we will view a video that shares the features of it, revisit the original sites app, and discuss integration options for Google Sites.

This session will introduce to simple robotics. You will learn about a variety of tools to introduce robotics into your school, from bristle bots and other tools to Hummingbirds and other Arduino based robotics tools. Additionally, you will have the chance to build and play with these same tools to get some hands-on experience to take back to your school.

Overview of developing a continually evolving 1:1 program and identifying essential components. Using the 5 stakeholder lenses and “essential  components”, participants will begin outlining goals – goals that can evolve as technology and academic goals shifts. These goals will be school specific and there will be a process for sharing and iterating

Students may be comfortable using devices, but one job facing us as educators is to help them learn to use that technology well.  This session will present a comprehensive overview and practical resources for teaching effective and ethical online research, maintaining a positive digital footprint and working with families to create safe technology use habits at school and home. Participants will work in groups to create effective flowcharts reflecting the research process across grades and curricula. Several elements of the personal EdTech coach playbook will be created by each attendee, including an original research journal template, website evaluation tool, student technology contract and self-assessment tool for students regarding their digital citizenship.  Each element of the playbook may be a document, interactive, site, or hands-on activity for student use.

This session on Project Approach will provide strategies to help create a learning environment full of inquiry, discovery, and hands-on exploration, while including co-curricular content, problem solving, and authentic research. Our team will demonstrate how project work allows students to develop questions that drive their learning path, later allowing them to become experts and showcase their knowledge in various ways. We use technology including the interactive Promethean Board for research and Aurasma for digital documentation. During our session we will help you brainstorm and strategize ways to implement it in your school setting.

Students use Google Docs to compose scouting reports on major historical figures. Scouting reports allow students to evaluate Point of View as well as each figure’s historical impact. Students then use these scouting reports to aid them in a ‘draft’ where they choose figures to help them solve a historical problem. This activity puts students at the center of learning as they discover what is important to include in their scouting reports, as well as how they craft their response to the problem only from the POV of the figures they were able to draft. Note: This could also work well in a literature based class where students would create scouting reports on major characters in novels and have these various characters analyze various components of stories, etc. 

Journey through an English teacher’s implementation of gamified units after attending sessions at Lausanne 2015. This presentation will cover the principles, levels, rewards, and tracking/grading for the unit as well as adaptation suggestions.  Attendees will have time to work on adapting their own units with the use of Google Apps for Education.

Students take ownership of knowledge as they create their own content with iBooks Author, using multimodal  approaches to learning (video, screen casting, creative writing, infographics, interactive widgets, and public domain images and music).  Presenters will moderate a group discussion of latest trends from a 2015 iBooks Conference and share examples of an iBook collaboration between their schools: Latin and Earth Science high school students created an iBook about the eruption of  Pompeii that was published and shared with middle school Latin and Science students.

With all of the change in instructional practice and  classroom technology over the past several decades, why is it that classroom spaces remain largely unchanged?  Forward-facing, tablet arm chairs in columns and rows, much like the classroom environment of our grandparents, continue to be the norm.   Steelcase, a 104 year old U.S. based global company, has spent a decade researching learning environments across the globe.  In this session,  we’ll share our research process and the insights for learning spaces we’ve developed.  Participants will also see:  international classroom layouts, the two frameworks we have developed regarding learning spaces, examine video exposing classroom activity of actual students working/learning, discuss trends/issues faced by educational institutions, view animations of what we have developed based on the research we have conducted and much more.   Please join us for this engaging session!

Tennessee Tech University’s iCube is where students and faculty Imagine, Inspire, and Innovate. Virtual reality technologies such as the Oculus Rift, Google Cardboard, and the Viscube are creating unique opportunities for learning. In this session, we will discuss virtual reality as a whole, from hardware to applications and beyond. 

In the United States, there has been a recent resurgence of recognizing the value of a college education. While students are being encouraged to take challenging and advanced courses in preparation for college, a central question concerns whether secondary school instruction is developing the skills and knowledge necessary for learners to be successful in the college classroom.  While there may some variations of instructional practice across institutions, one common assumption is that students entering college are “ready” to learn regardless of past educational experience.  In this session we will discuss common instructional methods used in college classrooms and what types of pedagogical techniques and strategies can ease the transition to college learning.  This discussion will be grounded in principles of educational psychology and cognitive psychology.