Allison Goedde
Empowering Learners with AI Pedagogies
All areas, All levels
Participants of this session will engage with positive AI Pedagogical practices. The presenter will model AI facilitated learning activities that positively impact critical thinking skills. A collaborative activity will engage participants in hands-on AI practice and use AI as a partner in feedback, differentiation, and formative assessment. The session will also focus on how AI can increase learners’ thinking time, voice, and agency, while easing classroom management through clearer structure and quicker feedback.

Dr. Jodi Haney
Ai Driven PBL-Turn AI into your PBL instructional design partner!
All areas, All levels
Project-Based Learning (PBL) engages students in authentic problem solving—but designing strong projects can take hours of planning. In this hands-on session, you’ll learn how to use AI tools to design powerful, standards-aligned PBL units in a fraction of the time. Buck Institute’s PBLWorks framework and Xcite Learning’s PBL Model will be used to build your PBL units that include assessments and student support resources! LET’S DESIGN TOGETHER!

Kristie Hughes
The AI Classroom Toolkit
All areas, All levels
The integration of Artificial Intelligence is one of the most important shifts in modern education. It’s time to move beyond the fear and embrace the power. This session will equip educators with a versatile “AI Classroom Toolkit” designed for immediate implementation. We will explore AI tools and demonstrate concrete strategies for using them to enhance both teaching and learning. Topics include Brisk, Brisk Next, Knowt, and more.

Stephanie A. Lenkey
What the Sigma? Classroom Engagements Strategies for Generations Alpha and Z
All areas, All levels
The key to accelerated academic achievement lies in student engagement – but engaging the digital generation is a bigger challenge than ever! Participants will learn simple things they can do to engage all learners in their classroom. Practical application tools that include active technology use are shared and discussed as well. All participants will leave with ideas on how they can increase learning and engagement in their class. Links to materials and the presentation will be provided, so a laptop or tablet may be beneficial but is not required.

Dr. Michael Martin
Teaching in the Age of DisruptAIn: Turning AI Hype into a Leadership Advantage
All areas, All levels
Teaching has always been about the magic of connection, but today’s educators are drowning in a “paperwork pandemic”. We are often told that AI is here to replace us, but the real danger isn’t cognitive loss—it’s humanity loss. When teachers are too exhausted by administrative drudgery to truly “see” their students, everyone loses.

In this high-energy presentation, we move past the hype and fear to explore how AI can become a teacher’s greatest labor-saving device. Using the A.R.T. Leadership Model (Assimilate, Redesign, Transfigure), participants will learn how to move from simple task automation to total classroom transformation. We will explore “Transfiguring” the classroom through “Infinite Primary Source” projects, where students engage in real-time Socratic dialogues with AI-simulated historical figures—a level of personalized learning previously impossible to facilitate at scale.

Attendees will witness a Live Build demonstration using plug-and-play prompts to transform dry policies into empathetic communication and practice difficult parent-teacher interactions via an “Interactive Coach” simulation. You will leave not just with new tools, but with a “Time Dividend”—a clear plan to use AI for the “heavy lifting” so you can get back to the heart of teaching: the students.

Dr. Michael Martin
Teaching in the Age of DisruptAIn
All areas, All levels
“Teaching in the Age of Disruption: Turning AI from Hype into an Educational Advantage
AI is no longer a “future technology.” It is here. Yet, most educators are paralyzed by the “Blockbuster Mistake”—either ignoring the shift or recklessly chasing “shiny objects”. The cost of this inaction is rising: teacher burnout is spiking, “shadow IT” is creating unchecked data risks, and incredible educators are drowning in administrative drudgery that AI could handle today. The question isn’t if you should use AI, but how to use it without losing your classroom culture and connection with students.

I’ve lived this challenge firsthand in public education. Without a Silicon Valley budget, we can’t afford to play with toys. I had to build a strategy, developing the A.R.T. Model to streamline daily operations and quantify the exact return on investment of moving from manual labor to machine-assisted workflows. I know how to make AI accessible, ethical, and effective for teachers who need practical results in their classrooms, not just buzzwords.

In this high-energy presentation, I move beyond theory to show you exactly how it works. You will witness a live, real-time demonstration where we transform complex lesson planning and policy into empathetic student communication in seconds. But speed means nothing without safety. We will cover the Innovation Guardrails necessary to innovate without recklessness. You will leave with a clear plan to integrate AI into your teaching practice—no coding, jargon, or consultants required.
Learning Objectives

Amy Merrill-Wyatt
Using Your CRS Data with AI to Personalize Instruction
All areas, All levels
Intended for educators in OST subject areas, this session looks at how to use the results from TIDE’s Benchmark, Checkpoint, and Authored Assessments with AI chatbots in order to get a precise understanding of each student’s placement within the performance level indicators. Educators can use these chatbots to move beyond the idea that students either “know” or “don’t know” the content to more-closely analyze what various groups of students have grasped and what supports they need to continue to grow their understanding.

Sara Nelson
From Draft to Dialogue: Using AI Without Losing Student Voice
All areas, All levels
How do we keep writing human while using AI? This session models integrity-first routines for ELA: AI to brainstorm, locate credible sources, and suggest revisions—then students produce a short video explaining what they changed and why. Build disclosure/citation habits, verify originality, and center authentic voice in your classroom.

Heidi Orovsh
The Viral Educator: Creating AI-Powered Lessons with Vids and Canva
All areas, All levels
Want to capture your students’ (or colleagues’) attention like a pro creator? Join me for a deep dive into the future of educational content! We will explore how to use Google Vids to turn your lesson ideas into cinematic experiences in minutes and pair them with Canva’s latest AI design tools to create stunning, interactive resources. From automatically generating video scripts to designing custom graphics that pop, you’ll learn the “secret sauce” for building high-energy tech resources that make learning—and leading—impossible to ignore.

Michael Vanderpool
Our Kids Aren’t Ready for College- Teaching What We Assume: Rebuilding the Foundations for Student Success
All areas, All levels
Over the past decade in community college and higher education, a consistent challenge has emerged: many students are arriving without the foundational habits and skills needed to succeed—not just academically, but professionally. Skills like organizing work, managing time, showing up prepared, communicating effectively, collaborating with others, and navigating ambiguity are often assumed, but increasingly absent. This session explores what happens when those assumptions break down—and what educators can do about it.

Drawing from real classroom experiences, this talk reframes these “soft skills” as essential, teachable competencies that must be intentionally embedded into curriculum and instruction. Attendees will examine practical strategies for building these habits into daily coursework, shifting from content delivery to skill development, and creating environments where students learn how to learn, not just what to learn. This session is for educators who are ready to stop assuming students have the skills they need—and start teaching them directly.

Eric West
Dig the Vids: An Introduction to Using Google Vids
All areas, All levels
Unleash the power of video storytelling and production with Google Vids, the AI-powered video creation app integrated seamlessly with Google Workspace for Education. This introductory session offers a hands-on demonstration of Vids, exploring its intuitive, real-time collaborative interface and its key features like customizable templates, media library integration with Drive, and the built-in recording studio.

Learn how Vids’ AI features (e.g., Gemini-powered outline generation, smart scene suggestions, and preset voiceovers, where available) simplify video production, making it accessible even for users with no prior editing experience. Walk away ready to integrate this dynamic tool into your teaching and learning environment.