Instructrional Technology: A New Horizon
VSTE 2025 Call for Proposals
Join us in shaping the future of education by sharing your innovative ideas and practices. Submit your proposal and be part of a transformative experience.
Call for Proposals Deadline
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Reflecting on 40 Years of Innovation
Illuminating the Future: The 2025 VSTE Conference
Educational technology is an ever changing landscape. It is being used more fully and in much more creative ways. Even with all the change, educators are always looking for better ways to integrate technology into their daily practice and climbing to new heights with it. Are you a classroom teacher who is using instructional technology in an interesting and engaging way? Are you an ITRT/ITC/Tech Coach who is helping your school staff transform their instruction using educational technology? Are you an administrator who is transforming how educational technology is used in education? Are your students creating and sharing their learning in ways that other students and teachers would want to hear about? Are you using strategies to connect and collaborate with peers that others could benefit from knowing about? The 2025 VSTE Conference is an opportunity for you to share what your school, your students, and/or you are doing to improve student learning. 40 Years of Reflection. Illuminating the Future is the theme for this year. How are you using what you have learned to look to the future with your use of educational technology?
The 2025 VSTE Presentations Committee is seeking proposals from educators at all levels and backgrounds. We’re looking for presentations that will engage, enlighten, invigorate, transform, or motivate learners and leaders as they integrate educational technology into daily practice. Whether you are a first-time presenter or returning presenter, your presence makes a difference and we want to hear from you!
All presenters will be in person but we are accepting proposals for four types of sessions: Live In-person sessions, Virtual Synchronous sessions, Hybrid session, Flexible Seating sessions, Innovation Station sessions, and Poster sessions.
Session Types Overview
Live In Person Session
One or two presenters will lead a 1 hour presentation. Demonstrating best practices in instruction and professional learning, they may incorporate hands-on activities, lecture type presentations, interactive activities, or any other interesting and engaging formats. The presenter and the audience are in person at the conference.
Virtual Synchronous Session
First Annual Conference
This 1 hour session will have the presenter in person at the VSTE conference while all the session attendees will be virtual. These sessions will be designed to demonstrate successful strategies for learning at a distance as well as share engaging content for the virtual conference attendees.
Hybrid Session
One or two presenters lead a 1 hour session. Demonstrating best practices in instruction and professional learning for both in person and virtual learning. The presenter is in person at the conference. The audience will be a mix of both in person attendees and virtual attendees.
Poster Sessions
Poster sessions are on Sunday ONLY. Create a poster or display showcasing your most exciting activity/tool/strategy from your experience. These presentations will be done in a poster format that will be displayed in the open areas of the conference. Each presentation will have a bulletin board and a small table as the display area. Presenters are encouraged to bring manipulatives, demonstration materials, resources to give out, and sample student work when appropriate. Attendees will be able to walk around and view these posters to learn about educational technology content or strategies. Detailed descriptions and illustrations will be necessary components to the Poster session displays. You and your co-presenter interact directly with the attendees as they walk through the display area.
Flexible Seating Sessions
For these 1-hour sessions, presenters will share about specific topics or tools in a format that showcases the use of flexible seating. Attendees will be able to get first hand experience of the power of flexible seating as an engagement strategy.
Innovation Station Sessions
These 1 hour sessions are a unique VSTE conference experience. They are scheduled in an open, flexible area in the conference center, allowing attendees greater opportunity to interact with both the presenters and the content. For Innovation Station at the 2025 Conference, we are looking for presentations that emphasize a hands-on, interactive format around topics such as STEM, robotics, makerspaces, virtual/augmented reality, and much more. If you would like your proposal to be part of the Innovation Station at the Conference, make sure your description emphasizes the interactive features of your presentation. It should use relevant terms that will attract the tension of both the program committee and your potential audience. The goal is to share the amazing things you are doing in an interactive environment. If you have questions about whether your proposal idea might be a good fit for the Innovation Station area of the conference, or how you might modify a proposal to fit, please feel free to write to us.
Kid Talks Sessions
Kid Talk sessions are led by the Virginia students. They will be able to share their ideas and projects with a poster session presentation and demo. These sessions will be on Sunday only.
Writing an Amazing Title and Description
1) Create an engaging memorable title.
Use keywords that are relevant to your topic. Keep it short and to the point, about 6-8 words in length. Be creative. Make it attention grabbing and use the VSTE25 conference theme if possible.
2) Be thoughtful and thorough in your descriptions.
For your proposal, you will be writing two descriptions – Session Program Description and Additional Description Details.
The Session Program Description should be engaging, succinct and specific. This is the text that conference attendees will see in the program and which will convince them that your session is one they must attend. Sell yourself and your presentation. Specify what attendees can expect to learn from your presentation. Share the key points you will be covering in your session. Be sure to use engaging language that is easy to read, clear, and concise.
The Additional Description Details section is directed at the Presentations Committee and will help us select the great mix of presentations that attendees at the 2025 conference will expect. It should include details about your presentation that will identify what you want your audience to learn and how you plan to accomplish that in the time you have. Include information about the instructional format, specific technology standards you will be addressing, and if appropriate the software/hardware you will be showcasing. Use the first few sentences to grab our attention.
3) Focus your proposal for the session type.
There will be six specific categories of sessions at the 2025 VSTE Conference:
- Live In-person sessions
- Virtual Synchronous sessions
- Hybrid Sessions
- Innovation Station sessions
- Poster sessions (on Sunday only)
- Kid Talks sessions (on Sunday only)
Each of the session types are different. When you submit your proposal you will need to choose only one session type for each submission.
4) Be specific in your audience, content, and grade level area selections.
Identify your intended audience. There are presentations that apply to general audiences, but many sessions work better when you plan with a specific audience in mind. VSTE serves many different constituent groups and we want to make sure we have sessions that target specific needs, as well as sessions that apply to all.
5) Find ways to weave our theme, “40 Years of Reflection. Illuminating the Future’’, into your session!
Think of fun ways to incorporate our theme and help join in the fun of presenting at the VSTE Conference.
6) Submit!
Don’t be afraid to take that far-out idea you have been mulling over and turn it into a session description. New and exciting ideas are one of the reasons the VSTE Conference is a great place to be! The deadline for submission of proposals is April 13, 2025. Don’t wait. Submit your proposal now. Multiple proposal submissions are allowed. Feel free to submit in different categories of session too.
7) Spread the word.
The more sessions we have to choose from the more opportunities for everyone to learn and grow. If you have peers that are doing creative work that you think the VSTE Conference attendees would benefit from, encourage them to submit a proposal too.
