Vision 2020 Blog

2018 has been an exciting first year in our Innovation Project - Vision 2020 ! Have a look at how much we have accomplished so far: We began the year with our 1st Maker Summit during our In-Service. All our teachers engaged in it either as facilitators or as participants of a series of hands-on and maker learning experiences with the purpose of giving you guys a taste of what maker-centered learning could look like in our classrooms. The 1st Maker Summit was also the kick-off of Vision 2020. Over 2018, an important step was taken in the realization of our innovative Vision for 2020: Our team of Course Coordinators partnered up with our Innovation Mentors to design Maker Activities to be incorporated in our courses. Since then, many teachers have been exploring the creative possibilities of maker-centered language learning with our students. Our Facebook group is sizzling with new activities and projects being shared by teachers every day. Right after our In-Service and Mak...

As you may already know, we are currently offering an online professional development opportunity for our teachers: the Digital Learning Labs . Similarly to Module 1 on Google Drive, we have a group of 35 teachers now finishing module 2 | Google Docs. Again with high levels of engagement, Lab teachers even wrote a wonderful collective story on a shared Google Doc. We exercised our creativity and collaborated to create something unique that belongs to this group. Imagine doing something like that with your students? Registrations are now open for module 3 | Google Slides. Many of the folks taking Lab modules so far are moving on to take module 3, as well, for they feel the need to keep developing their knowledge and skills on these tools. If you're interested in joining our learning party, click HERE and fill out our registration form. We ask you to please join by no later than September 20th. Lab modules go on for about 2 weeks and are 100% online and self-paced. They are a gr...

We are thrilled to share some news about a great innovation initiative which has just begun in our school. It's the JDO Global Partnership Program, a partnership between the JDO Foundation and Casa Thomas Jefferson whose main goal is to develop teachers' and students' global and digital citizenship skills. The partnership was born of a recent connection made between Beth Rabello, Denise De Felice, Mariana Sucena and JDO's CEO Heather Rooney during the 2018 ISTE conference in Chicago in March. JDO's misson is to provide an enriched educational experience for U.S. and international classrooms (students aged 8-14 years) by providing state of the art technologies (if needed), and professional training to the educators managing these technologies. JDO facilitates global collaboration among partner schools to enable students to be accomplished, well-informed digital citizens. The Program matches international partner teachers and provides a framework to build co-curric...