This is a guest post written by Amanda Holstrom, Instructional Technology Specialist and Apple Teacher at Sartell Middle School. Need a mini-grant to help purchase new materials or help fund a program? Apply now!

At the Student Powered Conference, Sauk Rapids, Sartell, Little Falls, St. Cloud, and Albany students got together to share their ideas and learn from each other. Logan, a senior from Little Falls, presented the opening session, discussing his path into coding and how it has changed his career options and his high school coursework. He set the tone for the day to be open to learning new things and sharing knowledge.

The students ran the show, creating and presenting their knowledge and
passions. Some of the student led sessions covered topics on Astronomy, How to Become an Author, Breakout Boxes, Coding, Virtual Reality in the classroom and more. These sessions offered the Tech Team students the opportunity to learn and experience education in a way that is not available in every district in central Minnesota.

Students that attended these sessions took the ideas presented to them
back to their schools to discuss as a tech team how we can implement this type of learning into our curriculum. Our Tech team decided to focus on bringing more VR/AR (Virtual Reality/Augmented Reality) options into our school. The students looked into finding VR experiences that covered topics they were currently learning and shared them with their teachers. Another group of students is learning about Merge Cubes and what they can create using CoSpacesEDU to show our staff how education can reach beyond the classroom.

Our next step to share what we learned is at Education Done Differently at Sartell Middle School in April. The Sabre Tech Team will be presenting alongside other staff and students on the ways we have changed the way we educate our students.