NCED Connect Symposium 2025

Imagine a world where students experience a story through not only reading it, but also connecting to it authentically through the use of STEM activities and Makerspaces. By mixing these areas, students experience transformative learning resulting in deeper understanding by sparking curiosity and innovative thinking to solve problems.

Join this roundtable discussion featuring leaders from three diverse school systems who have embarked on the journey of creating and implementing AI guidelines. This session will provide insight into their approaches, successes, and lessons learned in navigating AI's complex landscape within education. Panelists will share their perspectives on the ethical considerations, equity, and educational goals shaping their AI policies. Attendees will gain practical strategies for crafting AI guidelines that empower students, support teachers, and reflect community values. This session is ideal for educators and administrators aiming to responsibly integrate AI in their schools.

We will hear from Allyson Medlin in Davidson County Schools, Randy Seldomridge in Caldwell County Schools, and Brooke Johnson in Stokes County about their journey in creating AI policies and procedures for their PSUs.

This session is an interactive session where participants will learn how STEM can help teachers integrate the science and engineering practices into their classroom. Analyze existing STEM challenges and lessons for SEP integration and take ideas and resources with you for your district.

Come hear how Moore County School teachers use data to improve student outcomes.  We will share our data dive protocol for Learners, AKA The L Protocol.  The goal is to use various data points to identify students with the most potential of movement.  Teachers can easily idenify the students who are struggling the most, but it's easy for the kids in the middle to fall through the cracks.  Our L Protocol identifies areas of focus for individual students using EOG, mClas, iReady, Check-In, and more in a quick protocol.

Many students often struggle with connecting with literacy in an authentic way.  Design Thinking, a human centered problem solving process, can be a powerful integration tool to help students connect with literacy in authentic ways.  The experience of integrating Design Thinking with literacy can be transformative for learners when students use empathy maps and create solutions for characters from the stories that they are reading.  Additionally, students will cultivate and grow their own creativity, critical thinking, and collaboration.