2024 Utah Rural Schools Conference

Closing the Digital Divides: How the NETP, Technology Inventory and AI Guidance can support teaching and learning.
Discover how the new 2024 National Educational Technology Plan, the 2023 Utah School Technology Inventory Report, and Utah’s AI Framework for P-12 Education are working together to close the digital divides. Learn how these initiatives are addressing disparities in access, use, and design of technology in education, and leave with actionable strategies for integrating technology into your classroom. Gain insights into how these efforts are driving innovation and empowering students and educators alike.

Navigating the educator licensing system can be complicated! Participants will be able to ask their specific questions related to educator licensing and get the answers they need.

The teacher shortage in Utah is something that all districts must deal with. Statistically, rural districts have a greater challenge recruiting and keeping their teachers. One of the reasons that it can be difficult to recruit teachers is that the great talent that we have in rural areas often have to go to the cities to complete their Bachelor’s and are recruited over there to be teachers. We believe it is important that rural regions have access to 4-year degrees that can be completed in person. This would empower rural Utah to be able to retain more of the great teaching talent that it develops. This last year, the Education program of Snow College has been busy building relationships with Universities in Utah in order to provide options for Bachelor’s programs that would allow students to remain in our region. This presentation will discuss the partnerships Snow College has established with SUU and UVU that will provide traditional students and paraprofessionals in the regions served by Snow College online and onsite options to complete a Bachelor’s degree in Elementary Education. In addition to presenting the programs that have been established we also will seek feedback from educators to help shape how we continue to develop this going forward.

Are you involved in designing or leading professional learning for your school or district? In this interactive session, participants will learn how a university-based partner collaborates with schools and districts in shifting from a professional development (PD) to a professional learning (PL) mindset to achieve greater effectiveness and impact. As university-based partners, we have observed the results when school and district leaders make the shift in mindset from PD to PL, including what happens when educators co-design professional learning with school leaders. Making the shift form PD to PL can result in the content becoming more relevant, job-embedded, and directly coupled with educator’ or leaders’ immediate needs. In our partnerships with schools and districts across the state, we have observed and documented how schools redesign their professional learning structures and systems to provide educators and leaders with regular opportunities to improve their practice through a combination of professional learning designs (e.g., workshops, learning walks, lab classrooms), coaching, and the alignment and coherence of professional learning structures. Participants will hear examples of how school and district leaders have shifted their approach from delivering PD to teachers to intentionally co-designing powerful learning opportunities with teachers to ensure equitable school and student outcomes. Using a structured note-taking workbook, participants will also explore several reflection tools and planning guides that can be used to design intentionally aligned and coherent professional learning systems.

The Utah Education Policy Center (UEPC) was contracted by the Department of Workforce Services – Office of Child Care (DWS-OCC) to conduct a comprehensive statewide needs assessment of Out-of-School (OST) programs in Utah. In collaboration and coordination with DWS-OCC, the Utah State Board of Education, and the Utah Afterschool Network, the needs assessment was designed to identify strengths and critical gaps in service by identifying what programs exist across the state (including rural school districts), what youth and families want and need from afterschool and summer programs, what assets and resources are being used to support programs, what challenges programs face in offering programs, and what barriers stand in the way of youth and family participation. The needs assessment data collection was extensive, including a review of census and school data, a statewide OST staff and family survey, and interviews and focus groups with staff and leaders from OST programs, schools, districts, city/county agencies, and community-based organizations. Focus groups and listening sessions were also held with families across the state.
In this interactive session, participants will learn about key findings with tailored results by the regional service areas, which include rural counties and school districts. Throughout the presentation, participants will have opportunities to reflect on their current OST programs and identify potential action steps to pursue in order to harness the power of afterschool and summer programs to support student success in their own settings. A participant workbook will be provided for guided reflection and planning.

Come see how 5th and 6th grade can work together to create an immersive experience while learning and showing mastery of their social studies and English language arts standards. We will take a look at where 5th and 6th grade standards align and share a lesson and activity that can be used and built upon across all grades. This is a look at how vertical collaboration and technology can work together to support and challenge our students to rise to a higher level of understanding. In this session participants will examine how to use robotics to help students create a historical road trip that will take students through actual historical events from a piece of literature. We will also discuss how vertical collaboration has helped our students master Utah standards and ways to reinforce those concepts across the curriculum. Teachers will walk away with ideas that they can use in their classrooms immediately without having to make major changes to what they are already doing.

Get your students excited about learning through designing their own digital media! At Clark Planetarium we are helping to enhance student content mastery, engagement, and creativity through a Science Communication competition. Students create their own digital media projects such as graphic novels, games, videos, infographics, stop motion animations, and podcasts using free online media design software. They are given three dimensions of choice: choice of topic, choice of medium, and choice of approach. Our pilot program showed improved test scores, deeper learning, and high levels of student creativity. This session will walk you through how three-dimensional choice puts students in control of their own learning. We will practice designing sample projects, learn about available browser-based design software, and demonstrate how to integrate student-created media projects into your instruction.
Note: Although I am signing up for a one-hour BYOD session, this workshop can also be two hours if necessary.

Getting students to connect with literature or history can be challenging, but if you have immersive hands-on activities designed to content standards, students will beg to dig deeper. This session will offer participants the ability to see how librarians and/or teachers can create library lockers that will foster deep critical thinking while offering fun standards based learning opportunity designed with unit outcomes in mind. Participants will leave with a plan for implementation, examples of Library Lockers, ideas for funding and the literature and artifacts resources to get you started. Students love these and teachers do too, the ability to make learning with artifacts, literature, collaboration and writing all happen at once gives teachers a way to leverage this type of learning to its fullest extent.