2024VSTE Annual Conference

This session designed specifically for new instructional technology resource teachers and coaches who are new to instructional coaching. This session provides an overview to the skills and strategies needed to excel in this position. Participants will explore effective ways to build relationships with teachers, administrators, and other stakeholders in order to promote meaningful integration of technology in instruction. The session will also delve into best practices for conducting technology-focused professional development workshops and facilitating one-on-one coaching sessions. Throughout the session, new ITRTs will gain practical tips and tricks for managing their time, resources, and projects to ensure their success as instructional coaches in their respective educational settings.

We will dive into ten actionable strategies for implementing the science of reading in your secondary classroom. These strategies are designed to align with the Virginia Literacy Act, ensuring that your students develop strong reading skills. In addition to these strategies, we will look at how tools like Book Creator can be used to create universally designed literacy instruction.

Anchoring your classroom in innovation is crucial to enhance teaching and learning. Join us for an interactive session, "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Chatbot," where we pit three leading AI chatbots?ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Gemini?against each other to determine the best chatbot for various educational tasks. As Instructional Facilitators of Technology, we will navigate a series of practical prompts, such as creating leveled reading texts, composing professional emails, generating engaging newsletter articles, crafting lesson plans, designing interactive activities, creating assessments, and providing student feedback, to these chatbots to evaluate their performance. Attendees will witness firsthand how each chatbot anchors itself to these prompts, gaining insights into which AI tool is most suitable for different types of educational tasks, ultimately empowering educators with the knowledge to integrate AI effectively into their teaching practices and innovate their classrooms.; Anchoring your classroom in innovation is crucial to enhance teaching and learning. Join us for an interactive session, "Rock, Paper, Scissors, Chatbot," where we pit three leading AI chatbots?ChatGPT, Microsoft Copilot, and Google Gemini?against each other to determine the best chatbot for various educational tasks. As Instructional Facilitators of Technology, we will navigate a series of practical prompts, such as creating leveled reading texts, composing professional emails, generating engaging newsletter articles, crafting lesson plans, designing interactive activities, creating assessments, and providing student feedback, to these chatbots to evaluate their performance. Attendees will witness firsthand how each chatbot anchors itself to these prompts, gaining insights into which AI tool is most suitable for different types of educational tasks, ultimately empowering educators with the knowledge to integrate AI effectively into their teaching practices and innovate their classrooms.

Want to attend an exciting session with audience participation throughout? Then you’ve found it! Come and learn through five exciting rounds of head-to-head fun that pit two tools against one another. Accessibility, engagement, student voice/choice, and more will be focal points. You won’t want to miss this fun and fast learning experience!

Taught by a former journalism teacher, this session will empower you to questioning techniques that will help you to connect to teachers and administrators, and connect the dots between problems and solutions. We?ll look at questions that start discussions and open the door to new coaching opportunities, questions that A.C.E. problems, and questions that help the whole child grow, and so much more. You?ll leave confident in your ability to talk to anyone at any time and put yourself in a position to be able to help them.