CapCon! 2019 is in the books

Every year the 5th graders of Scarsdale participate in Capstone. Capstone is the last two months of school, post-standardized testing. Students choose a topic, research it, and create a final product. It is designed to be a self-directed, passion/interest based assignment. And it used to end with a tri-fold board... But not since 2016!

This post was originally written for the @HeathcoteTech blog and first appeared at http://blogs.scarsdaleschools.org/heathcotetech/2019/06/27/capcon-2019-is-in-the-books/

Once again the 5th graders were amazing and rocked the CapCon! Capstone event.

The students documented the process on their own blogs. The blogs can be accessed via the classroom teacher’s blogs (look for the “My class” menu on the sidebar).

Ms. Boyer

Ms Cooper

Ms. Edwards

Ms. Robert

Check out all of their speeches and movies here:

Basecamp 2019

June 27th, 2019. The first day of summer vacation. But it was also #Basecamp2019 hosted by Chappaqua Schools!

It was a great way to end the school year and kick off summer; reconnecting with colleagues and friends, meeting new ones, sharing, learning... it was a great finish to the year and a perfect way to start the summer.

One of my favorite moments of the day was the Symposium Session run by Daniel Valentin and Valerie Brunow. They created a NCAA-style bracket challenge around poetry and crowning a "best poem." It was great to look at something like poetry in that way, since poetry isn't something you can easily say is best or worst, especially across different genres and the different ways to experience it (reading it, having it read to you, or watching a video of the poet read the poem as they intended).

It was a great session that got me thinking differently about poetry as well as how I might have some fun with a tech-focused bracket challenge.

In addition to watching a number of sessions, I presented a few things during the conference and this blog posts will serve as the central repository for all the things I rambled on about.

And a big thanks for Ellen Moskowitz for capturing my finest summer shirt during my Adobe Spark roundtable discussion

Adobe Spark blog posts
Poetry with Adobe Spark
Social Studies with Adobe Spark Video


Ignite the Student Presentation: Ditch the TriFold and Ignite Passion and Creativity
This is the 4th year we've done CapCon! with TED and Ignite Talks and every year is a new challenge and a new success, and it was great to share it with the folks at Basecamp mere days away from the event.

Check out all the Ignite and CapCon! blogs posts from previous years to see how we've evolved the process.

Thank you to everyone I connected with, reconnected with, came to my session, sat at the roundtable, or just said hello to. I had a great day!

And of course, big thanks to Chappaqua Schools for hosting!

CapCon! 2018 - a capstone learning conference

Every year the 5th graders of Scarsdale participate in Capstone. Capstone is the last two months of school, post-standardized testing. Students choose a topic, research it, and create a final product. It is designed to be a self-directed, passion/interest based assignment. And it used to end with a tri-fold board... But not any more...

Once again the 5th graders were amazing and rocked the CapCon! Capstone event.   

CapCon! a capstone learning conference is our yearly 5th grade culminating activity. For years it was a traditional tri-fold museum, but we just wrapped up the 3rd year of the switch from tri-fold Capstone to CapCon! which is all about student voice and presentations; TED and Ignite style...

CapCon! 2017 - a capstone learning conference

Every year the 5th graders of Scarsdale participate in Capstone. Capstone is the last two months of school, post-standardized testing. Students choose a topic, research it, and create a final product. It is designed to be a self-directed, passion/interest based assignment. And it ends with a tri-fold board...

For the second year in a row our school decided to turn it on it's head. We launched CapCon! last year, and this year we did it again...

We began the 2017 CapCon! season the same way we did in 2016, with a "No more tri-folds" blog post and lesson.

Here's how we did it...

CapCon! 2016 - a capstone learning conference

Every year the 5th graders of Scarsdale participate in Capstone. Capstone is the last two months of school, post-standardized testing. Students choose a topic, research it, and create a final product. It is designed to be a self-directed, passion/interest based assignment. And it ends with a tri-fold board...

This year our school decided to turn it on it's head.

No more tri-folds.

We created CapCon! a capstone learning conference. The vision was to create a professional learning conference experience driven by students, their research, and their work.

We spoke a lot about Ignite talks, TED Talks, professional quality documentaries (we used 60 Minutes and Real Sports as reference points). We created flyers, posters, and all the traditional marketing material associated with conferences like ISTE, ASCD, FETC. We wanted our students to create professional-quality research projects, so we treated them as professionals. Professional learners, creators, makers, and presenters.

And the students were amazing!

Here's how we did it...