2024VSTE Annual Conference

Insert your quarter, grab a Tab, and press start for this session on how coding text-based adventure games like Zork can get your students creating, writing, and reading. In this session we will crowd source our own VSTE Adventure game so that you'll see the step-by-step process on how to EASILY write a playable text based adventure game. You'll get the writing template, coding template, and lesson plan/procedure/timeline to make this a ready to go lesson that you can do today! You and your students will love writing their own games and playing each other's games in their own classroom arcade. Although this session will be concentrating on writing and reading, we will talk about ideas on how to get this into history, science, math and beyond.

Anchoring a vision of innovation in the fundamental understanding of how technology supports content and pedagogy can lead to powerful change in the classroom. In this interactive session, we will consider what innovation looks like, learn about and practice using the Technological Pedagogical Content model for lesson planning and explore opportunities to use TPACK as an anchor for more student-centered, engaging instruction. Come prepared to play as we explore and create new ways of approaching instructional design.

Join us at the Minecraft Education Innovation Station! Anchored in the spirit of exploration, this session invites educators to dive into the world of Minecraft Education, a dynamic platform for students to create, demonstrate understanding, and develop critical skills. Participants will immerse themselves in an interactive learning adventure, building their own structure while learning practical strategies, and resources for integrating Minecraft into teaching. *Participants attending this session should bring their own device with Minecraft Education installed and have access to a Minecraft Education account.

Learn about how a Title I elementary school encourages women in STEM. We build a community of girls in third and fourth grade. The program encourages sisterhood and beginner computer science and coding skills. Girls Who Code has a free curriculum that you can use in your school, too. Work on leadership, building relationships, and computer skills all year long! Learn how you can bring this program to your school.

Our division embarked on a voyage with the Advancing Computer Science Education grant, setting our course to build teacher capacity, develop instructional resources, and craft science-integrated lesson plans that align with the VDOE computer science standards. We anchored our curriculum with robotics and coding, navigating these elements into the elementary science classroom. Join our session to discover the charted course we followed to explore the vast sea of computer science integration. We'll share how we mapped out and created these lessons and resources, how we docked robotics and coding into our curriculum, and where you can dive in to access these valuable resources. Come aboard and sail with us on this educational journey!