EdTechTeacher iPad Summit- Boston 2013

Tag it, you’re it! - create, capture, curate, and celebrate learning using iPads to demonstrate mastery. When iPads and Evernote entered the picture for one Vermont school committed to overhauling graduation requirements to measure whole-school proficiencies, something magical happened. Proficiency-based graduation requirements and portfolios transformed assessment from something done to students to the reality of engaged student ownership of learning.

Participants will see how all middle level teachers and students in our school are using Evernote and a suite of apps to encourage self reflection toward mastery, ongoing formative reflection, and transformed student-led conferences. Our motto: “always capturing, always collaborating, always reflecting.”

During the presentation, participants will create an Evernote notebook, capture their real-time learning, tag it, and share. Following this hands-on experience, they will see examples of student app use (Aurasma, iMovie, Explain Everything, etc.) to demonstrate learning and how this evidence gets captured and curated in their Graduate Expectations Evernote Notebook and shared with their parents and teachers in student-led conferences. Participants will come to understand that tagging is the key to a portfolio structured upon school-wide proficiencies (the answer to the question who is the fairest of them all?). We will then share how this process, adopted district-wide, leads to a transformed proficiency-based assessment scheme.

The presentation culminates with a frank assessment of our work and our next steps from the lens of a student’s perspective. After watching the short video 10 Expectations from LeavingtoLearn.org we will take a good hard look in the mirror and share our rating of our work with evidence for each of the 10 Expectations in our own Evernote notebook. Participants will leave with a shared Evernote notebook of resources to include how-to videos created by both teachers and students, our school’s Graduation Expectations & rubrics, and portfolio reflection organizers.