Summer Summit Sneak Peek

Hello friend and welcome to another episode of Artworks for Teachers. I’m your host, Susan Riley. And today I’m very, very excited to share with you a behind the scenes sneak peek of what’s coming up for our summer 2024 online conference event. Now, here’s the thing, my friends. If you are not familiar with our online conference, let me just give you a little bit of background. If you are familiar with our conference, this is gonna sound a little familiar, but it might contain some nuggets that you don’t know.

So our very first online conference actually occurred in 2011. It was taped together literally with like internet glue. So like I did this on, it was the very first thing I had ever tried, I think as a large experiment on what was then The Institute has now become the Institute. It was, I kind of pulled together my friends in the industry and said, hey,

could you do a 15 minute presentation on some element of arts integration? And I’ll pay you like a little bit of money. At that point, I think it was maybe 75 bucks. We pay them way more now. But at that time it was, you know, I didn’t know if I was gonna make any money on this. I was just kind of like a, let’s see if we can share something with people who don’t have access to being able to go to an arts integration conference. And so.

At the time I had, I think WebEx was the platform and we did it live. So we didn’t have anything recorded ahead of time. Everybody just showed up to their session live and ready to present something at their given time. My internet went down halfway through and so all of the things that could go wrong with technology did go wrong with technology then. But we had 75 people register from all over the world.

And even though it was really stressful, all of those people had said it was a wonderful experience and they really wanted to continue and do it again. So we did. And so ever since then, we’ve been running online conferences and every year, every time we run them, we get better. Every time and we do it usually in the winter for Winter Fest and in the summer as an online conference. And the difference between our winter online events and our summer online events.

Susan Riley (02:26.072)

Pretty significant, our winter events are usually our certification, either alumni or current students who are ready to present and share with the world something that they’ve been working on. And with Winterfest, we really focus on creating, on getting you working in the arts as the arts themselves. We want people to experience that joy, that creative refreshment of being able to work just with the arts themselves.

and not necessarily look at it as a pedagogy that always has to be added somewhere else. There is something to be said for arts for arts sake. It refills our cup, right? We’ve talked about this with many interviewees in the past. I think just last week we talked with Doug Goodgan who talked about the idea that we’re working for the sake of beauty and that is a good goal in and of itself with just using the arts for the arts sake.

So our winter events are typically meant to refill your creative well, to allow you to experiment and play. And honestly, the last one that we did, our one in this past winter of 2024, the most popular session hands down was our calligraphy session. Everybody loved being able to just sit and practice some calligraphy. And maybe that doesn’t have a academic goal set aside for it. We certainly could. We could look at…

how that could impact student writing and handwriting, which is a lost art, right, in the digital age. But honestly, it’s just fun. And then every once in a while as teachers, as educators, we need something fun, right? So that’s our winter experience. Our summer experience is much bigger, much more broad. And so we have three days worth of sessions.

the first day is all live streamed. And so what does that mean? That means that all of our presenters have gone through a process with our team of going through their presentations from draft form all the way to recording. And so we learned from that very first conference that having people come on live without any kind of safety net is oftentimes a recipe for disaster.

Susan Riley (04:44.664)

right, whether it’s for them or for our participants. And it’s scary, it’s stressful, and inevitably something goes wrong and nobody’s happy. So instead what we’ve learned, we still want to have that live experience with people, being able to connect in real time. But we don’t want to have the stress of having to do a live presentation that requires internet access and high streaming capability.

and slides and all this other stuff, right? So instead, our presenters work with us and our team for about six months ahead of time. We go through their presentation, we talk through with them, like really, what do you want to share? How do you want to narrow this down? You have no idea of how much work our presenters and our team actually do ahead of time in order to make this a beautifully seamless experience. 15 minutes of video feels like it can go really fast.

But in order for that 15 minutes of video to be meaningful for you and relevant and to capture the very best information without any fluff takes a lot of work. So they go through a revision process with our team outside of the of just kind of mapping their session. They will do a draft video. They’ll send it in. We’ll give them feedback. They’ll rework some things.

And then they’ll come in and send us their videos and then along with all the B -roll footage and everywhere they want to overlay that. And then our video production team pulls that all together for each session, makes everything kind of consistent and seamless. And then on the day of the event, we stream each of their presentations at a given time. And then our presenters can come and be in the chat area with participants in real time.

and be able to answer their questions, to share anecdotes, to share additional pieces with our participants in that chat area, which, because they’re not having to focus on being on screen, right? We’ve taken care of that in advance. So it’s the best of both worlds when we do our live stream day, because everybody’s in there, the energy is high, the chat is going crazy, everybody’s chatting with each other, they’re introducing one another, and in fact,

Susan Riley (07:06.584)

Many of our participants love getting the chat archive at the end, which we provide for all of our participants, because there are so many resources that everybody just freely shares in the chat as our live streams are going on in relation to each session. So that chat is like a gold mine and our presenters can be in there as well. And I can’t tell you every time that we’ve had a live stream event and our presenters have been in there.

It’s just an honor, right? Because they’re so willing to share everything. We’ve had Julie Andrews in a chat. We’ve had so many different, Nicholas Ferroni. We’ve had so many different people who have just highlighted and been in our chats and sharing with our participants. It’s fantastic. So that’s how our livestream process works. That happens between 10 a and 2 p Eastern time on the livestream day of the event. For us, this upcoming event, it’s going to be…

on July 12th, which is a Friday. So you can hop in and there are, you’ll have the Live Day chat going on. You’ll have the streamed videos that happen. And of course there’s a schedule so that you can kind of keep on track. Now, a Live Day event can be a long, four hours can be really long, right? So we actually build in brain break times where some of our session providers actually just do brain breaks with our participants. And so,

People can come in and they can experience these amazing artistic brain breaks. One, that gives them some tools to take back to the classroom that they can try. Two, it allows them to be creative, get their blood flowing, get up and moving. So there’s lots of different reasons that we do that. But three, it also makes it really fun. And usually during those brain breaks, we have some giveaways that happen based on what people share. So again, it’s upbeat. It’s not like you’re just sitting in front of a screen for four hours.

We do have those brain breaks built in and this year we will be having some very special guests coming in throughout the day during those break periods to share some wonderful messages of encouragement and highlights just for teachers. Those are going to be some of our celebrity guests that will be coming in, including Matthew McConaughey. I’m super excited. One of my favorite actors. So I’m excited that he’s going to be there along with all of our other celebrities to share in.

Susan Riley (09:31.896)

highlighting and celebrating teachers in between our session periods. So that all happens on the live day. And then after the live day, we have two more days of sessions. These are workshop sessions and they’re broken in by day. So the July 13th, there will be a set of sessions and on July 14th, there will be another set of sessions. Our participants can then go watch those on demand.

whenever they want during the weekend. So if they want to binge them all on Sunday, they can. If they want to watch each of them as they come out on Saturday and on Sunday, they can. It’s really up to you as a participant. We give that flexibility. Once they’ve watched their on -demand sessions and have participated in a live stream, then they get the PD certificate for 15 PD hours. It’s super simple and it’s really meaningful. As we’ve done this each year, the feedback that we get is just,

stellar. Our participants just love being able to have that flexibility, being able to go through the sessions on their own time for some of them, but also getting to experience the excitement of being able to be with other educators at the same time during our live stream. And the sessions themselves, I gotta tell you the sessions themselves get better every year. And so in today’s episode, I did want to highlight just four.

of the sessions that are going to be available for this year’s event. So I just kind of want to give you a taste of what the sessions could be like so that you can experience this a little bit for yourself. I’m giving you a sneak peek, my friends. Nobody else has seen this yet. So and these are only four of 27 sessions. Now our sessions, how do we decide like what sessions to choose and what’s important to share?

We really go based on a couple of different factors. What is up and coming that teachers are being charged with knowing in the upcoming year? And how can we support them with that? For this upcoming year, the science of reading is one of those things. Everybody is gonna be tasked with using the science of reading within the next three years in your school nationwide. So we wanted to be able to help support that to give some background knowledge of what is this?

Susan Riley (11:57.528)

How does that impact the arts? How can the arts and the science of reading merge and really be used together? And we have two sessions all around that. I’m actually interviewing Carrie Curdo from the Reading League, who is gonna be sharing all kinds of great information about just the fundamentals of science of reading. And the project that she did with Rhode Island.

to showcase how the arts can be meaningfully impactful with the science of reading, and just without doing much more than just having the arts themselves. She’s gonna share how that works. And then we have Chris Muncie in our breakout sessions, who’s also gonna be sharing specifically the reading rope, which is a part of the science of reading and how the reading rope and music literacy can work together. So again, lots of great takes on stuff on.

upcoming current things that teachers are going to need to know. We also want to provide sessions that offer hands -on creative learning similar to what we do in Winterfest. And we want to give you tools that are going to be based on things that you’re going to need to use. So we have sessions dedicated to artificial intelligence this time around, how that impacts STEAM with lots of different tools and capacities for how to do that. We also have sessions around

how to connect with math and using visual arts to do that, music to do that, lots of different capacities for doing that. We have sessions all around using technology in the arts. We also have sessions for no technology and the arts, how that works. And we also focus on the level where people are at. So as you know, we have an arts integration continuum that runs everywhere from arts enhancement all the way over to arts integration.

and includes theme -based learning, inquiry -based learning, and co -teaching as well. So we have designed a set of sessions that are applicable to each of those levels so that if you are really in the arts enhancement stage and you’re not ready yet for inquiry -based learning, you can focus on just the sessions that are working on arts enhancement. So again, lots of flexibility, lots of great work that’s going into…

Susan Riley (14:16.952)

this presentation and also really relevant to what you’re working on now. So without further ado, let me highlight some of, give you a sneak peek at just four of these sessions. Three of them are going to come from our live stream day. So you can kind of get a little sneak peek, what you can expect there. And then one of them is during our breakout session. That one happens to be mine on how to craft a really great prompt to get artificial intelligence to give you the answer that you need.

So before we get into that one, let me share my screen a little bit and let’s get going with the art of astrophysics. Let’s start with that one first.

This one, I love, this is going to be towards the end of our day on the livestream day on July 12th. I’m just giving you a little sneak peek at Gareth’s session on the art of astrophysics here.

Susan Riley (17:08.504)

Okay, I hope that you can see how fascinating that session is going to be. Gareth actually walks you through a lesson that he’s created on the art of astrophysics and he has a variety of ways to use that lesson in various grade levels. So I think, first of all, I just get fascinated with space and science and art all coming together. And he does such a phenomenal job of making this practical for the classroom.

So that is Gareth’s session on the art of astrophysics. Now let’s take a look at a panel session. We do have several panels coming into our live stream this time around where we’re having other guests come in and share their experiences around arts integration or STEAM. And this particular session is including students in the panel. So there are gonna be some teachers sharing their experiences.

using arts integration on the panel. But then our host Donna Swift decided to ask the students how they felt about arts integration, what it does for them, what it means for them. And I thought that would be a really great sneak peek for you to see as well. So let’s hop in over there.

Susan Riley (19:52.28)

Okay, and I just love those kids’ responses. I think they are so joyful. And if you were able to watch the video instead of just listening, you’d see some of these students who are literally doing their dance that they had done in their seat because they still remember it. And I think that’s the testimony to arts integration. And it’s certainly this particular panel, I think it would be great to share with administrators, like why arts integration from a student’s perspective as well as from a teacher’s perspective.

We don’t have enough of those kinds of shares. And so I think this is going to be really meaningful for many educators to see what the impact really is for students. And then additionally, we have a session during our live day on cultural responsiveness and how the arts can impact cultural responsiveness, specifically music with Ashley Kutbertson. I wanted to give you a little sneak peek of that one as well.

Susan Riley (21:51.256)

Okay, and so again, just a sneak peek of what Ashley is sharing during that session. I think that example is really meaningful, but then she continues to go into other examples, lesson ideas, and giving you a language to be able to share about cultural responsiveness in the classroom and within through the arts. Sometimes I think we get stuck on how do we talk about this? How do we share this? What does that mean when we get pushback? She shares all of that in this session.

So I think it will be really, really helpful for many educators. And then finally, I want to just share the session that I’m doing in the breakout area, all about artificial intelligence and arts integration and how to leverage your artificial intelligence tools. I’m sharing specifically how to use the Creativity Coach, which is our proprietary AI tool in the accelerator, which has been trained on all of our arts integration components. So…

it’s really helpful for our accelerator members, because it’s going to give you lesson ideas, rubrics, materials. It’s got it all. But in this particular snippet, I’m sharing how you can do this with any AI tool, chat, GPT, whatever you’ve got, how to frame a prompt and why that’s important. And I think that would be helpful to share here as well. Even if you don’t attend the conference, I think these particular snippets,

are really helpful for all of us as a learner. Okay, let’s take a look.

Susan Riley (27:08.97)

Okay, and then we go into even more detail about what that project looks like and how to make adjustments and even how to ask her additional prompts and questions based on her previous response. So I think, again, if you are using AI tools and you need some helpful prompts and ways to work through your AI tools in a really meaningful way, that session, as well as several of the other ones that we have coming, which are Tim Needles is doing a session on…

STEAM and Artificial Intelligence. Renee is our wonderful coach. Renee on our team is doing a whole session on Artificial Intelligence during the live stream day. So again, you can’t go wrong. Now, I hope today gave you just a little taste of what our online conferences are like. And if you are interested in attending this summer’s event, we are still registering until July 8th. After July 8th, everything has to close so that we can get everybody into our new platform.

So you have until July 8th, 2024 to register. All you got to do is go to artsintegrationconference .com. We’ll put that in the show links to make sure that you can get over there, grab a seat. We have three different pricing tiers. So if you just want to attend the live day, that is the cheapest option at like 35 bucks. If you want to attend all three days and have a year of on -demand access to everything so that…

just in case you can’t attend on those actual days, you can still watch everything and get your PD certificate. We have that, that’s our VIP ticket. That’s all the way up to $95. But again, we’re keeping it as cheap as possible and still be able to pay our presenters and provide a wonderful experience for everyone. So I really hope that if you haven’t signed up yet, you consider joining us this year.

because next year we have a very special announcement that’s coming out. I can’t let you know just yet. It’s a secret, but it’s going to look really different next year for our conference event. So if you’re interested and you want to be on the front lines of hearing all about that, as well as getting all of these amazing sessions, tools, handouts, tips, and special bonuses that we’re going to throw in there, definitely visit us at artsintegrationconference .com. Get your ticket.

Susan Riley (29:27.64)

and join us for this summer’s event. I hope that this session today, this our time together today, even if you’re not gonna attend the conference, those little snippets were helpful to you in your practice and getting those creative juices flowing for you as you’re working this summer on thinking about how to bring arts integration or STEAM into your classroom. Thank you so much, friend, for joining me today. Next week, I’m back with another interview that I know you’re gonna find really exciting. Wait, no, next week is the 4th of July, so we’re taking off that week, but the week following you’ll be hearing our next interview, which I think is going to be really helpful to you as well. Thank you once again for tuning in today and for joining me for another episode of the Artworks for Teachers podcast.