News
GPS Faculty, Staff Among Those to Present at TAIS Conference
Eleven from Girls Preparatory School to share expertise with peers
On April 9, the Tennessee Association of Independent Schools (TAIS) brings its annual Innovation & Tech Institute to downtown Chattanooga. This year’s focus, The Future of School and Work, finds a place among Chattanooga’s Innovation District and features panel discussions led by Ken Hayes of The Enterprise Center, Marcus Shaw from The Company Lab, and Lori Quillen with The Benwood Foundation. The event website can be viewed here.
Jointly held at the Chattanooga Public Library and The Edney Innovation Center, the conference offers workshops to participants throughout the day. Girls Preparatory School’s faculty and staff will lead six sessions with 11 presenting. Those sessions include:
Mad, Bad, and Dangerous: The New Public Purpose of Private Education/Learning to Use a Start-Up Canvas (Parts 1 & 2)
Presented by Dr. Autumn A. Graves, GPS Head of School; Bilda Small, GPS Director of Strategic Communications & Marketing; and Allison Reedy, Chief Operating Officer of CoLab
In an effort to shift from deficit-filling to civic engagement in Chattanooga, Girls Preparatory School launched a two-day entrepreneurship symposium that sparked a cultural revolution. The program has evolved like the startups that GPS wants girls and women to create. Through MBD, parents, the startup community, and traditional businesses come together to support girls from public and private schools to push the boundaries of the innovation economy and build partnerships across communities. Participants will brainstorm ways to monetize this program that is accessible to schools and community organizations while building brand identity and growing their understanding of how a startup canvas can be used in their our own teaching with students and leadership practice with adults. Lastly, they can learn how a community partnership with the startup community was formed and continues to grow.
Technology Integration in the Foreign Language Classroom
Presented by Marinda Cauley and Dr. Cindy Lepore, GPS world language teachers
Participants will learn how to use Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, texting, Padlet, Google Docs, Duolingo, and other technological advances to keep students engaged. This session offers practical, hands-on techniques to achieve 21st-century goals in language and technology classrooms.
Digital Organization with Google
Participants will learn how to use Snapchat, Instagram, Pinterest, texting, Padlet, Google Docs, Duolingo, and other technological advances to keep students engaged. This session offers practical, hands-on techniques to achieve 21st-century goals in language and technology classrooms.
Digital Organization with Google
Presented by Elizabeth Resnick, GPS Technology Innovationist
GSuite and Google Drive have expanded the ways classrooms and teams can innovate and collaborate, but all those files in My Drive and Shared with Me can get out of hand. Participants will leave this session with a plan for a beautifully organized Google Drive. Files and folders, shared files, student files, and even their Chrome browser will be in order. The session will end with strategies for when organization fails.
Implementing New Technology Should Be a Positive Experience for Your School
Presented by GPS staff: Daniel Millbank, Director of Educational Technology and Information Services, and Melanie Northcutt, Data Operations Manager
Presented by GPS staff: Daniel Millbank, Director of Educational Technology and Information Services, and Melanie Northcutt, Data Operations Manager
Technology systems implementation has come to be associated with painful change to any school. Learn effective and successful strategies for constituent buy-in, training, roll-out, and success measurement that can be applied to large and small technology projects that historically have made faculty and staff nervous. Presenters will share an example of how GPS successfully transitioned from using multiple, disjointed technology solutions to one integrated solution, transforming the way the school communicates internally and externally.
Student-Driven Placemaking Through Design Thinking and Social Entrepreneurship: Chattanooga as Text
Presented by GPS faculty: Andrea Becksvoort, history teacher; Claudia Goldbach, Associate Director of College Guidance; and Sonya Steele, science teacher
This panel will discuss the Chattanooga As Text class, offered free of charge in summer 2017. The interdisciplinary, social entrepreneurship course for 10th- and 11th-grade girls from across the region allowed students to utilize design-thinking skills to develop an innovative solution to a community problem. After spending a week in various nontraditional spaces throughout the city, they refined and prototyped their concept and then pitched it to a panel of local stakeholders. With guidance, the students came to see the city itself as their text, giving them the opportunity to recognize and develop the myriad skills to empower them to be agents of successful placemaking.
Connecting Middle School Life Science to Refugees Through Human-Centered Design Thinking
Presented by Kipton Tugman, GPS science teacher
How might one design/build something to help a specific body system of a refugee work better while traveling to and/or from life in a refugee camp? In this session, participants will explore the connections found between middle school life science, social studies, and human-centered design thinking. They will discuss a project that is done by students to connect the study of the human body systems to the refugee crisis. Tugman will illustrate the steps of the design-thinking process, how she engaged the community, and how the prototypes were shared with family and friends.
