STLinSTL 2025: Full Schedule

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8:00am CDT

Anticipating Change, Preparing for Uncertainty: The Future of AI in Schools

Friday June 6, 2025 8:00am - 9:00am CDT

If nothing else has become clear in the three years since ChatGPT emerged, it’s that generative AI is a long-term, strategic opportunity and challenge for schools, not a short-term technological one. The pace of AI’s evolution, the number of issues it raises, and the power of its emotional and pedagogical impact have made it incredibly difficult not just to make decisions about AI in the present, but to know which possibilities to embrace and which pitfalls to avoid. How do we become more open to, more proactive about, and more prepared for the possibilities that come with deep change? This session is designed to help educators anticipate an AI future, even if we can’t predict it. We’ll consider the current state of the technology, look at some case studies, and practice strategic foresight exercises.

Keynote Speakers

Eric Hudson

Facilitator & Strategic Advisor, Eric Hudson Consulting

Eric Hudson is a facilitator and strategic advisor who supports schools in making sense of what’s changing in education. He specializes in learner-centered assessment, human-centered leadership, and strategic program design. Most recently, Eric spent ten years at Global Online Academy... Read More →

Friday June 6, 2025 8:00am - 9:00am CDT
Brauer Auditorium

Keynote

Category Schools of the Future

9:15am CDT

Engaging Students on Generative AI: What, Why, How

Friday June 6, 2025 9:15am - 11:45am CDT

Making healthy, ethical decisions about AI is a skill our students need, now and in the future. In this session, we’ll explore decision-making as a teachable, relevant skill that can engage students in productive, open conversation about generative AI. We’ll begin by looking at what we know (and don’t know) about generative AI’s impact on student learning and wellness at school and in life. Then, we’ll explore the relationship between decision-making and autonomy, look at the research on student agency, and consider a variety of pathways for engaging students on AI in the classroom and beyond. We’ll practice using games, case studies, and generative thinking exercises as tools, and we’ll draft plans for how we can be proactive with student engagement and education in the 2025-26 school year.

Keynote Speakers

Eric Hudson

Facilitator & Strategic Advisor, Eric Hudson Consulting

Friday June 6, 2025 9:15am - 11:45am CDT

Workshop

Category Schools of the Future

9:15am CDT

Generative AI (GenAI) is Here. What Does Learning to Program Look Like Now?

Friday June 6, 2025 9:15am - 11:45am CDT

Everyone knows that programming skills can help people be more effective across many different types of jobs. It can also be a source of intense creativity for hobbyists who wish to create digital artifacts in the 21st century. Learning to program, however, has historically been a daunting task. Programming languages are hard to learn and unforgiving when people make mistakes.
Generative AI (GenAI) tools have the potential to turn all of this on its head. Rather than speaking to a computer in a syntactically rigid programming language, programmers can now interact with a GenAI in a natural language, like English.
Specifically GenAI tools like ChatGPT and GitHub Copilot, can solve introductory programming assignments. They can solve introductory programming exam questions. They can trace code step by step, explain what code does, help debug (fix) code, convert code from one programming language to another, and generate test cases for code.
So then: that’s it? We’re done? We don’t need to learn programming anymore?
Not so fast :D
While it’s true that GenAI can contribute to carrying out many programming tasks, in this talk we will demonstrate that rather than causing programming to go away, GenAI has the potential to lead us to ever-higher levels of problem solving, needed if we are to keep pace with the world’s demand for software.
We’ll begin with a brief summary of what the research says about GenAI and learning to program. Do students learn when using GenAI, and how can learning be enhanced? What are the effects of GenAI on learner creativity? Can GenAI serve as an effective tutor?
Next, we’ll describe the design goals and findings emerging from the Computing Education Research Laboratory at UC San Diego as we create and study an introductory programming course for majors and non-majors that fully incorporates GenAI and can provide materials for anyone interested in our approach.

Featured Speakers

Dr. Daniel Zingaro

Associate Professor, University of Toronto Mississauga

Dr. Daniel Zingaro is an Associate Teaching Professor at the University of Toronto. His passion is taking everything he knows about teaching and learning to create books that put the learner first. Most recently, Dr. Zingaro and Leo Porter wrote Learn AI-Assisted Python Programming... Read More →

Leo Porter

Professor, Author, University of California San Diego Computer Science and Engineering Department

Leo Porter is a Teaching Professor in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at UC San Diego. He is best known for his research on the impact of Peer Instruction in computing courses, the use of clicker data to predict student outcomes, and the development of the Basic Data... Read More →

Friday June 6, 2025 9:15am - 11:45am CDT

Workshop

Category Schools of the Future

9:15am CDT

How AI Helps and Hurts the Creative Process

Friday June 6, 2025 9:15am - 11:45am CDT

Creativity is one of the brain’s most complex processes. Research in neuroscience shows how creative insight is facilitated by time in the Default Mode Network (mind wandering). Other studies show how time in the Default Mode has been reduced due to smartphone use, and that smartphone use is on the rise. Combined, this would suggest humans are getting less creative. Is this so? This workshop will talk about the goal of improving innovative skills and the ways technology has enhanced and detracted from creative thinking.

Featured Speakers

Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, PhD

Educational Researcher & Harvard University Educator, Conexiones: The Learning Science Platform

Tracey Tokuhama-Espinosa, Ph.D., is a teacher at Harvard College and the Harvard University Extension School where her course, “The Neuroscience of Learning: An Introduction to Mind, Brain, Health, and Education” offers a transformative self-learning adventure. She is the co-founder... Read More →

Friday June 6, 2025 9:15am - 11:45am CDT

Workshop

Category Schools of the Future

1:45pm CDT

Designing Future-Ready Schools Through Authentic, Relevant, Transferable, and Impactful Learning

Friday June 6, 2025 1:45pm - 2:45pm CDT

The traditional classroom model is outdated. Instead, we need schools that prioritize ARTI-ful learning – where students engage in real-world problem solving, meaningful projects, and community-based learning.

Key Takeaways:

What ARTI-ful Learning is and why it matters in the AI age
How experiential learning, project-based approaches, and emerging technologies support deep learning.
Success stories from work in ARTI-ful units.
How educators can start shifting their classrooms today.

Speakers

Peter Dry

Director, The PDL Group

Dr. Peter Dry is an educational leader focused on innovation in schools and organizations. He specializes in strengths-based leadership and future-ready education. He works with schools and teams to improve engagement and effectiveness.His experience includes leading strategic innovation... Read More →

Friday June 6, 2025 1:45pm - 2:45pm CDT

1-Hour Session

Category Schools of the Future

3:00pm CDT

Leading Change: Transforming Schools for an Unpredictable Future

Friday June 6, 2025 3:00pm - 4:00pm CDT

Schools must evolve to prepare students for a rapidly changing world, but meaningful change is often met with resistance. This session equips school leaders with practical strategies to drive innovation, overcome barriers, and create buy-in for new educational models. Drawing from expertise in leadership development, strengths-based coaching, and Appreciative Inquiry, this session will provide actionable insights to help administrators and educators navigate change effectively.

Key Takeaways:

Understand the psychology of change: Why educators resist and how to engage them.
Learn how to use Appreciative Inquiry to foster a culture of innovation.
Explore Strengths-Based Leadership and how it can develop a growth mindset in staff and students.
Discover practical strategies to create buy-in for new pedagogies, including ARTI-ful learning, AI integration, and interdisciplinary approaches.

Why This Session Matters: This session blends leadership best practices with real-world applications for transforming schools. Designed for administrators, education leaders, and instructional coaches, it offers the tools needed to lead change with confidence, ensuring that innovative practices take root and thrive.

Speakers

Peter Dry

Director, The PDL Group

Friday June 6, 2025 3:00pm - 4:00pm CDT

1-Hour Session

Category Schools of the Future

STLinSTL 2025

From $250.00