InnovatED was a huge success!
The MOOSE and Interdisciplinary Instruction team held a free workshop day on Igniting Innovation in Education with John Spencer, Katie Novak, and Lynn Cuccaro. We enjoyed morning keynotes from all three speakers and attendees had a three-hour afternoon workshop with the speaker of their choice. You can find the agenda from the day here - it has all the linked resources and session descriptions.
Keynote & Workshop recordings are available for
Contact Hours through June 30th, 2024
We have the recordings of these keynotes and workshops available for a limited time for contact hours. The recordings are housed on EnGiNE and are available for Maine educators to watch and apply for contact hours for any section they engage with.
What is EnGiNE? Developed by the Maine Department of Education as part of the RREV initiative, EnGiNE is a collaborative platform designed to engage educators across Maine in innovation. With a growing library of curriculum resources, professional learning modules, and tools for collaboration, EnGiNE empowers Maine educators to share and develop creative solutions to learning challenges.
How do I get access? EnGiNE is free to use and your account will connect you to other resources from the Maine Department of Education as well as an expanding community of Maine educators. You can find onboarding instructions here, which will get you up and running on the platform. You must use your school email address as EnGiNE is only open to Maine educators.
Once you have an account (and are logged in), you
can find the InnovatED material here.
Contact hours are awarded within one week of submitting your answers to the assignment for each segment. Contact hours must be completed by June 30th, 2024, which is when the sessions will be removed from EnGiNE. Reach out to MOOSE Project Manager, Jennifer Page (jennifer.page@maine.gov) with any questions.
KEYNOTE: Cultivating Curiosity, Wonder, and Play Through Pedagogical Documentation: What does your classroom say about children's ideas, inquiries, play, and learning? How do we nurture children's curiosity while also keeping it alive for ourselves as educators? Insert pedagogical documentation, an invitation to walk alongside students as researchers and learners. Slowing down to look more closely at the everyday and extraordinary interactions and explorations of young children engaging with materials cultivates wonder and curiosity. Allowing ourselves to wonder and wander as we observe and document children at play can lead to transformational possibilities for both children and educators. Through the lens of teacher-researcher, Lynn will explore how curiosity, wonder, play, and learning are interwoven throughout the process of pedagogical documentation.
WORKSHOP: Three Principles for Unleashing Wonder, Curiosity, and Creativity in the Inquiry Classroom: How do we foster wonder, curiosity, and creativity in the inquiry classroom? If we want children to genuinely inquire, it's important to create the context for that to occur, a situation where wonderment and excitement become a natural part of the learning process. In this session, we'll explore three principles that can bring inquiry to life for learners of all ages.
KEYNOTE: LAUNCH into Design Thinking: Despite the myth of “digital natives,” most of my students have very little experience using technology as anything more than a consumer device. It doesn’t have to be this way. By using a design thinking framework, teachers can foster creative thinking in every content area and help students develop a maker mindset.
WORKSHOP: Better By Design: So, you’ve dipped your toes in the water with design thinking but you’re not quite sure what to think. In this workshop, we focus on how to improve student collaboration and interdependency through specific structures. We also explore ways to build additional student ownership into the inquiry, research, ideation, and iteration. Finally, we examine specific assessment processes to improve self-reflection, peer assessment, and metacognition. In the end, participants co-design a specific design thinking unit.
KEYNOTE: Introduction to UDL: One size fits all fits no one: Many teachers struggle with how to support students with varying needs, strengths, and identities in inclusive learning environments. Planning different lessons for different learners is exhausting and not sustainable. Yet, through the practices of Universal Design for Learning, teachers can proactively identify barriers in lesson design and instruction and design flexible learning experiences that meet the needs of all learners, including those who require significant support and those who need additional challenge. In this session, we will explore the basics of Universal Design for Learning (UDL), a framework for inclusive education that empowers all students to become expert learners. We will dive into how we can build flexibility into our lesson design to ensure all learners have the opportunity to succeed in an inclusive learning environment.
WORKSHOP: Equity By Design: The Power and Promise of UDL: Every student deserves the opportunity to be successful regardless of their zip code, the color of their skin, the language they speak, their sexual and/or gender identity, their religion, and whether or not they have a disability. If we truly want to be inclusive in our learning environments, we must proactively plan for student variability and begin to see culture and diversity as an asset. This starts with examining our implicit biases, power and privilege and universally designing classrooms and schools so all students have equal opportunities to learn, share their voice, and work toward meaningful, authentic, and relevant goals. Join us for this session on how we can implement UDL to help us build more equitable learning environments.
This opportunity is a collaboration between the Maine Online Open-Source Education (MOOSE) project and the Interdisciplinary Instruction Team. The MOOSE project is funded entirely (100%) through Federal money under the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act (CRRSA) and American Rescue Plan (ARP) totaling $4,598,000 for the current 2023-2024 funding cycle.