STELLAR Board Meeting, December 10

The STELLAR board held its monthly meeting at the Center for Advanced Technology in Education on Thursday, December 10. STELLAR Principal Investigator Dr. Lynne Anderson-Inman and Project Facilitator Peggy Marconi welcomed new team members and updated the board on recent progress and accomplishments.

Since the successful 2015 Kickoff on October 23, STELLAR participants have met biweekly in Second Life for further training. Additionally, teachers have begun meeting for reading groups to discuss Visual Thinking Strategies, by Philip Yenawine, an integral text for the project. Plans for training the project mentors include Second Life sessions with a VTS representative.

Peggy and Lynne also reported about the project’s dissemination and community outreach efforts, including a presentation at the National Writing Project Annual Meeting in Minneapolis. The meeting concluded with a discussion of exciting new opportunities for STELLAR participants and the broader community.

The Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art will be housing one of Shakespeare’s original Folios from January 6-February 6, 2016. The exhibition will offer a teacher professional development workshop on Wednesday, January 13. While the workshop is open to any Oregon middle or high school teacher, space is limited and registration is required. For more information, visit https://jsma.uoregon.edu/ShakespeareEvents.

STELLAR/VTS Kickoff 2015

STELLAR officially kicked off its second year October 23-24, with prior participants returning to serve as mentors to a whole new group of participating teachers. Over two days, teachers from four districts immersed themselves in preparation for the upcoming year, learning about Visual Thinking Strategies (VTS), STELLAR, Second Life, and more.  

Friday night, participants learned the ins and outs of the STELLAR Project’s immersive virtual training environment. Friday, the group met at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art (JSMA) for an intensive VTS training presented by Yoon Kang-O’Higgins of the Visual Thinking Strategies organization.

After the training, participants had an opportunity to practice VTS in the JSMA galleries, asking the three central questions of VTS:

1. What’s going on in this picture?
2. What do you see that makes you say that?
3. What more can we find?

What a great start to our new year!

Photo credit: Eric Tuck. Used with permission.