How do you evaluate special education students in this challenging new learning environment? Get tips from the experts at this session.

PRESENTATION DECK

eLearning widened gaps in learning—especially for students with disabilities. As districts look to assistive technology to help close those gaps, which tools will you draw on to build a more equitable school infrastructure? Join this session to see the latest tools in Co:Writer and Snap&Read--from PDF annotation, Dynamic Text Leveling, voice typing, to ELL language and translation support. Direct access to data shows you instantly who is using their tools—even when learning from remote.

PRESENTATION DECK

Having an accessible website is more important than ever in 2020, and not just because of the DOE mandate. Your website is an essential online hub for your school. Families count on them for the latest updates on schedules and campus closures, but with the right solution, your website can also help bring your whole community together. With more than 130 school websites in NYC powered by Edlio, we’ll show you how easy it can be to launch and maintain an accessible website that your community can depend on.

Come on down and enjoy a 45-minute thrill ride through all knowledge from the beginning of time to the present day with Christopher Lloyd, editor of the Britannica All New Kids Encyclopedia: What We Know and What We Don’t! 

This is the first Britannica kids encyclopedia to have been published in a generation! During the session, Christopher will show he and his team at Britannica have taken traditional idea of an encyclopaedia and reinvented for the 21st century. Gone is the old-fashioned A-Z and in its place comes an epic journey of curiosity through eight chapters: Universe, Earth, Matter and Life cover natural history while Humans, Ancient Times, Modern Times, and Today’s World & Tomorrow cover human history. 

At the end of each chapter, participants will be challenged to a quiz, played in real-time, with questions taken from inside the book. The winners of each round will face a final grand finale where we will discover who will be crowned the ultimate Britannica Books champion of the conference with an accompanying grand prize!

Christopher will be available to answer questions. He is also booking up virtual Britannica Family Quiz Show events in schools and libraries all over the US to celebrate the launch of this ground-breaking new Britannica Encyclopedia. For more details visit https://books.britannica.com/virtual-quiz-show/

Communities are important now more than ever. How can you ensure your campus is also a welcome community for teaching and learning opportunities? Speakers from the NYC School Library System share tips and ideas that can help you build strong, supportive communities.

Laura Ogando will share this practical introduction to digital accessibility. What does it mean and how can you ensure your content is accessible to all students?

PRESENTATION DECK

How do we incorporate digital citizenship when we may be more limited in time and access, especially in a distance learning environment? How can we help our students understand the news and current events once the election is over? Join Common Sense Education to explore our new quick activities, designed specifically for a hybrid or distance learning environment. We’ll focus on an elementary and upper school lesson focused on news and media literacy, with time to explore other topic areas.

Learn how to easily integrate the ESIFC into any curricular area to teach students information literacy, digital citizenship, research, and inquiry.

PRESENTATION DECK

Open Up Resources + Kiddom is making full-course, high-quality OER curricula available to schools. In this session, we'll address how teachers can EASILY customize lessons, distribute individualized student assignments and provide access to performance data for students, administrators and parents through our all-in-one platform. Whether instruction is being delivered in person or remotely, Open Up Resources + Kiddom allows us to connect teachers with efficacious curricula and continue our mission of ensuring every child in every zip code receives a quality, joyful education.

Whether you are providing therapy or teaching in-person or virtually, learn how to utilize Boardmaker and the integrated Boardmaker Player in Snap Core First to support your learner!

What therapeutic services are available to special education students in NYCDOE? Find out in this session presented by the district's special education department.

Follett is going to demonstrate a suite of integrated tools in Titlewave to help you discover, manage and report on diversity related topics and topics covering SEL.  It will allow you to align the needs of your students and maximize the impact of what you purchase against funding and content goals.

All school-based websites must be accessible by December 30, 2020. How can you be sure that your school website meets these requirements? Attend this workshop and find out!

PRESENTATION DECK

In this session, we’ll explore how to create engaging and accessible classroom, club, and school websites with Wix tools. Participants will leave with ideas for how to build websites across educational needs, as well as ideas for how you might equip your students to design and create their own websites.

PRESENTATION DECK

"One of the greatest challenges that any classroom teacher faces is how to equip struggling readers so they can actively participate in classroom activities and learn at grade level.  This struggle can lead to countless hours spent on the part of the teacher to find resources, modify plans, or adjust classroom management practices.   This session will provide insight into:

1. Understanding struggling readers and the neurodiversity of the brain

2. Building knowledge about the types of texts and when each text is appropriate for a robust approach to reading instruction

3. Identifying resources and strategies that can make an immediate impact on teaching practices"

Make sure that everything you share with families and students is both:

• Accessible
• Easily translated

Find out how easy it is to do!

PRESENTATION DECK

Students are online more than ever and need to know how to navigate the digital world safely and confidently with information literacy skills. Come learn how a new alignment between New York State’s Information Literacy framework and Common Sense media can extend digital citizenship lessons to become an inquiry process for students in addition to learning valuable skills.

PRESENTATION DECK

Now is the time for librarians to lead, and leadership takes strategy and courage! As you look for innovative ways to to share the story and voice of your library -- including the voice of your students -- with the rest of your school and district you’ll uncover allies and skills you didn’t realize you possess. With creative advocacy and branding, you can bring your library story to life, while leading within your school community and throughout the world like never before. In this session, Shannon McClintock Miller will share advocacy and branding ideas and strategies designed to empower you and share your own library story, goals and vision in memorable, effective and valuable ways. She will show how to use tools like Buncee and Collections by Destiny to help make your marketing and library program shine. Shannon will share the why and the how of library advocacy and branding, while taking a look at specific resources and examples to communicate your story.

Hear NYC webmasters share their experiences! We'll show you the easiest path to website accessibility, including:

• How to minimize time and effort
• Why expert transition and accessibility support make all the difference
• How to keep your site accessible for the long run

Assistive technology continues to evolve to enhance access for all learners. In this session, you’ll learn about the latest assistive technology tools available, as well as tips on how you can implement these tools into your classroom.

2020 shifted the very foundations of our profession. That shift was not without some pain. We mourned the losses of classroom spaces, the ability to see students daily, and the ways that we have traditionally served them. In the face of all these losses, all of us (at some point in this journey) have longed for a return to “normal”.

In this presentation, Cornelius Minor will explore how our nostalgic reverence for life Pre-March 2020 is misplaced… that even though we felt certain about some things, that there were still too many kids, families, and whole communities left at the margins of our work. Though we know that inequities have always persisted in American schooling, "equity" became a visible issue during the pandemic. When we consider how gender, race, class, and ability impact our work, we cannot afford to think merely about "kindness" or "diversity". Such thinking is not enough. We can reconsider our methodologies, pedagogies, and tools to use them in ways that benefit ALL students powerfully. Our path forward can be defined by individual teachers that work from this understanding. During this time together, we will explore the question, “What if we did not return to normal? What if we returned to BETTER?”  

Participants will learn how to identify things that are not working for students and communities.

Participants will sharpen their imaginative capacity to generate possible approaches to community challenges.

Participants will think about the kind of information gathering required to articulate change and progress.

In today’s incredibly diverse world, students deserve the most inclusive possible learning environment that educators can provide. But what does this mean in practice? For one, it’s critical that schools provide students with access to books that enable them to see both themselves and others in their reading: titles featuring marginalized characters and #ownvoices authors. But it’s also imperative to offer tools that can help meet kids’ unique reading and learning needs - and this is where ebooks and audiobooks can prove invaluable.

In this session, led by OverDrive Account Manager Regis Coustillac, attendees will learn how digital books accessed through platforms like the Sora student reading app can engage enthusiastic and struggling readers alike. You’ll learn how unique-to-digital formats and tools like Read-Alongs, audiobooks, adjustable reading settings, accessibility features and more can help reach your reluctant readers. Plus, you’ll walk away with real world success stories for how OverDrive partners have implemented digital books in their own classrooms.