Steve Hargadon

Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

2009-11-07T17:52:00.000-08:00

Part of the FutureofEducation.com interview series.

Date: Thurday, November 12th, 2009
Time: 5:00m Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern / 1:00am GMT next day (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tr.im/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

Join me as I talk with Larry Cuban, Emeritus Professor of Education at Stanford University, and the author of the 2001 book “Oversold and Underused: Computers in the Classroom.” His blog is at http://larrycuban.wordpress.com/about/, and a previous interview I did with him is documented at http://www.stevehargadon.com/2006/09/interview-with-larry-cuban-author-of.html.

In his own words: "I am a former high school social studies teacher (14 years), district superintendent (7 years) and university professor (20 years). I have published op-ed pieces, scholarly articles and books on classroom teaching, history of school reform, how policy gets translated into practice, and teacher and student use of technologies in K-12 and college.

"My most recent research projects have been a study of school reform in Austin (TX) 1954-2009 and of a large comprehensive high school in Mapleton (CO) being converted into several small ones between 2001-2009. The Austin book, As Good As It Gets, will come out early 2010. The Mapleton study was done with Gary Lichtenstein, Arthur Evenchik, Martin Tombari, and Kristen Pozzoboni and will be published in 2010 with the title Against the Odds.

"Currently, I am studying a high school where teachers and students have had 1:1 laptops for the past four years."

Richard Halverson and Allan Collins - Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology

2009-11-07T17:29:00.000-08:00

Part of the FutureofEducation.com interview series.

Date: Wednesday, November 11th, 2009
Time: 5:00m Pacific / 8:00pm Eastern / 1:00am GMT next day (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tr.im/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

Join me as I talk with Richard Halverson and Allan Collins about their recently published Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology: The Digital Revolution and Schooling in America. In their book they argue that the knowledge revolution has transformed our jobs, our homes, our lives, and therefore must also transform our schools. Much like after the school-reform movement of the industrial revolution, our society is again poised at the edge of radical change. They offer a vision for the future of American education that goes well beyond the walls of the classroom to include online social networks, distance learning with anytime, anywhere access, digital home schooling models, video-game learning environments, and more.

Rich Halverson is an Associate Professor in the Educational Leadership and Policy Analysis department at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Rich is a co-founder of the Games. Learning and Society Research Group and the Learning Sciences Program at UW-Madison, and has appointments in the Educational Psychology and Curriculum and Instruction Departments. Dr. Halverson holds a PhD in the Learning Sciences from the Northwestern University School of Education and Social Policy, as well as an MA in Philosophy from Northwestern. Raised in Manitowoc, WI he is a rabid Packers fan and fantasy sports enthusiast. More at http://www.education.wisc.edu/elpa/people/faculty/halverson.htm.

Allan Collins self-description: "I am retired now as Professor Emeritus of Education and Social Policy at Northwestern University. I’ve studied teaching and learning for over 30 years, and written extensively on related topics. From 1991 to 1994 I was Co-Director with Jan Hawkins of the US Department of Education’s Center for Technology in Education. I also served as a founding editor of the journal Cognitive Science and as first chair of the Cognitive Science Society. Recently I was chosen by French psychologists as one of 37 living scholars who have had the most impact on the field of psychology. I am best known in psychology for my work on semantic memory and plausible reasoning, in artificial intelligence for my work on reasoning and intelligent tutoring systems, and in education for his work on situated learning, inquiry teaching, epistemic forms and games, design research, and cognitive apprenticeship." More information at: http://allancollins.northwestern.edu/.

Henry Jenkins on the Popular and Participatory Culture

2009-11-07T15:57:00.000-08:00

Part of the Conversations.net interview series.

Date: Tuesday, November 10th, 2009
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 1am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate at http://tr.im/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

Steve Hargadon and you spend an interactive hour with Henry Jenkins in the Elluminate LIVE environment.

Henry Jenkins joins USC from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he was Peter de Florez Professor in the Humanities. He directed MIT’s Comparative Media Studies graduate degree program from 1993-2009, setting an innovative research agenda during a time of fundamental change in communication, journalism and entertainment. As one of the first media scholars to chart the changing role of the audience in an environment of increasingly pervasive digital content, Jenkins has been at the forefront of understanding the effects of participatory media on society, politics and culture. His research gives key insights to the success of social-networking Web sites, networked computer games, online fan communities and other advocacy organizations, and emerging news media outlets.

Jenkins is recognized as a leading thinker in the effort to redefine the role of journalism in the digital age. Through parallels drawn between the consumption of pop culture and the processing of news information, he and his fellow researchers have identified new methods to encourage citizen engagement. Jenkins launched the Center for Future Civic Media at MIT to further explore these parallels.

Jenkins has also played a central role in demonstrating the importance of new media technologies in educational settings. At MIT, he led a consortium of educators and business leaders promoting the educational benefits of computer games, and oversaw a research group working to help teach 21st century literacy skills to high school students through documentary videos. He also has worked closely with the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to shape a media literacy program designed to explore the effects of participatory media on young people, and reveal potential new pathways for education through emerging digital media.

His most recent book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide, is recognized as a hallmark of recent research on the subject of transmedia storytelling. His other published works reflect the wide range of his research interests, touching on democracy and new media, the “wow factor” of popular culture, science-fiction fan communities and the early history of film comedy. Altogether, he has written or edited 13 books on media and popular culture. His new book project is Spreadable Media, which is being developed with Sam Ford and Joshua Green, in collaboration with the Convergence Culture Consortium. The Convergence Culture Consortium seeks to apply concepts of participatory culture, transmedia storytelling, moral economy, and spreadable media to address challenges confronting the contemporary media industry. The consortium is best known for running the Futures of Entertainment conference, which brings together researchers and industry leaders to discuss cutting edge trends impacting popular culture.

Henry Jenkins blogs regularly about fan studies, transmedia stories, media policy, and new media literacies, among other topics, at henryjenkins.org.

See much more (!) at http://www.henryjenkins.org/aboutme.html

NotSchool.net - a Proven Successful Alternative to Traditional Education

2009-11-07T15:03:00.000-08:00

Part of the FutureofEducation interview series.

Date: Monday, November 9th, 2009
Time: 10:00am Pacific / 1:00pm Eastern / 9:00pm GMT (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tr.im/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

In this session we'll talk with the UK and US organizers of the NotSchool.net program, an online community which aims to engage teenagers who are out of school in the long term into learning. Between 500 and 700 young people are involved each year.

Notschool.net offers an alternative to traditional education for young people who, for a variety of reasons, are unable to engage with school or other complementary provisions such as home tutoring or specialist units. After almost 9 years and 5000 young people, Notschool.net is a full-time alternative provision; successfully demonstrating that young people for whom 'school does not fit' can renew their confidence in learning and gain a range of qualifications that recognize their progress.

Jean Johnson has worked in the education field for twenty five years, beginning her career teaching in East London schools working with difficult and disaffected teenagers. She began working with new technologies in 1993 and was one of the first teachers to pilot the use of the Internet in schools. She was part of the early developer group of schools for Oracle’s Think.com, contributing to the final design of the software. Since then she has been involved in a number of high profile online projects both in the UK and abroad; working with schools as far apart as Sweden, Finland, USA, India, Japan and New Zealand. Projects have included Web for Schools, The Virtual Classroom, Learning in the New Millennium and Schools Online. Her work within Europe was influential in developing a model for the use of the Internet in schools in the EU. In 1998 she was presented with an award as Teacher of the Year. Since 2000 she has led Notschool.net research project working in the field of social inclusion for disadvantaged youth, focussing particularly in the creative and innovative use of multimedia to develop learning. Jean has published a number of reports and papers including extensive work on Internet based accreditation and content delivery models. Jean has contributed to a number of TV and radio programmes. She has been described as the ‘pre-eminent expert internationally’ in the use of ICT to engage disaffected and excluded students.

Sometimes described as the technical brain behind Notschool.net, Jonny Dyer has worked on the project since 2000. He brought with him an extensive academic research experience, technological expertise and knowledge of alternative learning paradigms.

Beth Baker and Glen Taylor are with Inclusion US Inc. (IUS) a not for profit organization dedicated to engaging at risk youth in learning. To accomplish their mission, IUS has developed IUS Global Schools, based on the Inclusion Trust's "Not School" program in the United Kingdom. Currently, Beth is a Michigan Education Policy Fellows Program participant and Education Consultant at Wayne County RESA. While teaching 6th grade, she received a U.S Congressional Commendation, and was a Michigan STAR award recipient.

Bruce Umpstead is Director, Office of Educational Technology and Data Coordination, for the Michigan Department of Education.

This Week's LearnCentral Event Listing

2009-11-02T13:09:00.000-08:00

Be sure to check out the sections below which also introduce you to groups and recordings that have been created in LearnCentral that are noteworthy. Look for them below the events!

Public Events

The time of the events below will show up automatically in your time zone when you registered in LearnCentral and when you have chosen your time zone in your profile. Remember that event recordings are posted and available after the events if you aren't able to attend them live.

We hope you'll consider hosting your own public webinars using the LearnCentral public room--instructions are available by joining the "Host Your Own Webinar" group on the main announcement tab (http://www.learncentral.org/group/3432/host-your-own-webinars).

Monday, November 2nd, 12pm Pacific Standard Time (US): Caroline Hall leads a Middle School Partal 2: Math and Science Pathways (MSP2) live session "Let There Be Light!
Teaching EMS at the Middle Level." LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/32433. This rescheduled event will have taken place when you see this list, but there will be a recording link listed on the event page shortly.

Monday, November 2nd, 2:30pm Pacific Standard Time (US): Michael Horn and Katherine Mackey of Innosight Institute discuss their recently released education case study that details the rise of the Florida Virtual School. LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/34325

Wednesday, November 4th, 8:30am Pacific Standard Time (US): Elluminate's
Shannon Autrey holds a "Bright Ideas" meeting to celebrate a year of Bright Ideas for using Elluminate! The feature showcase is "Explore Objectsd" and will be followed by an opportunity to hear and share solutions, inspirational stories, and to share your own Bright Ideas! LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/24292

Wednesday, November 4th, 5pm Pacific Standard Time (US): Maria Droujkova and the Math 2.0 group in LearnCentral look at the Curriki community with Joshua Marks. LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/28913

Thursday, November 5th, 1pm Pacific Standard Time (US): Deirdre Bonnycastle hosts Dr.
Kalyani Premkumar who will discuss Concept Mapping, providing evidence and examples on how useful they have been in a medical school. LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/19931

Thursday, November 5th, 4:30pm Pacific Standard Time (US): Karen Richardson from the Virginia Society for Technology in Education hosts special guests Pam Moran,
Superintendent of Albemarle County Virginia Schools, and a teacher to discuss how to balance the demands of standards, technology, and project-based learning. LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/31907

Saturday, November 7th, 9am Pacific Standard Time (US): Steve Hargadon (that's me) joins Kim Caise for the weekly Classroom 2.0 LIVE series. Our topic: Social Networking in Education, based on a newly-released white paper I've written and looking at the powerful and positive value of "educational networking," especially for teacher professional development. LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/23022

Coming Up Next Week:

November 9th, Monday: An interview with the Not School folks in the UK and Michigan

November 10th, Tuesday: Henry Jenkins from MIT Media Labs

November 11th, Wednesday: Richard Halverson and Allan Collins on their book, Rethinking Education in the Age of Technology

November 11th, Wednesday: The Classroom 2.0 LIVE Beginners Series

November 12th, Thursday: Lary Cuban discusses technology and education

November 12th, Thursday: MSP2 Session on "Laboratory Safety: What's Your Responsibility?"

Noteworthy Groups

LearnCentral lets you create groups, with their own discussions forums, events, and portfolios. Here are some groups that you might find of
interest.

K12 iTunes U: http://www.learncentral.org/group/34020/k12-itunes-u. "Focused on the Apple's iTunes U free online content for K-12 educators spearheaded by the State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA)"
World Languages: http://www.learncentral.org/group/16712/world-languages. Created by Benjamin Stewart. "A group for those interested in the teaching and learning of world languages."
Elluminate Moderators Forum: http://www.learncentral.org/group/32846/elluminate-moderators-forum. Created by Amanda Reed. "A group for anyone who has attended Elluminate training or is learning to use Elluminate Live! for online learning and collaboration."

This Past Week's Noteworthy Recordings

LearnCentral public events are all recorded, and we're hoping to build a great library of events for you to have at your disposal. Recording links are in the "Post-Event" field at the bottom of the event listing pages. (If you hold apublic event and want the recording listed here, be sure to remember to post the recording link after the show!)

"New Features in Diigo 4" with Maggie Tsai on Classroom 2.0 LIVE!: http://www.learncentral.org/node/23021

Thanks for your attention, and see you online!

Today Live: Innosight Report on Florida Virtual School with Katherine Mackey and Michael Horn

2009-11-02T10:49:00.000-08:00

Part of the FutureofEducation.com interview series.

Date: Monday, November 2nd, 2009
Time: 2:30pm Pacific / 5:30pm Eastern / 10:30pm GMT (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tr.im/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

In this live and interactive interview with Michael Horn and Katherine Mackey of Innosight Institute we discuss their recently released education case study that details the rise of the Florida Virtual School. From its humble origins in a $200,000 grant and 77 students in 1998, the Florida Virtual School has grown exponentially to serve over 70,000 students in over 154,000 enrollments in the most recent school year thanks to a series of policy and design decisions. Michael Horn writes: "As we seek to understand the power of disruption to transform the education system into a more student-centric one, understanding Florida Virtual School's disruptive growth and drawing the right lessons from it are vital."

Download the full case study here: http://www.innosightinstitute.org/media-room/publications/education-publications/florida-virtual-school/

Michael B. Horn is the co-founder and Executive Director, Education of Innosight Institute, a not-for-profit think tank devoted to applying the theories of disruptive innovation to problems in the social sector. He is the coauthor of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (McGraw-Hill: June 2008) with Harvard Business School Professor and bestselling author Clayton M. Christensen and Curtis W. Johnson, president of the Citistates Group. BusinessWeek named the book one of the 10 Best Innovation & Design Books of 2008, Strategy + Business awarded it the best human capital book of 2008, Newsweek named it as the 14th book on its list of “Fifty Books for Our Times,” and the National Chamber Foundation named it first among its 10 “Books that Drive the Debate 2009.”

Disrupting Class uses the theories of disruptive innovation to identify the root causes of schools’ struggles and suggests a path forward to customize an education for every child in the way she learns. Horn has been a featured keynote speaker at many conferences including the Virtual School Symposium and Microsoft’s School of the Future World Summit.

Prior to this, Horn worked at America Online during its aol.com re-launch, and before that he served as David Gergen’s research assistant, where he tracked and wrote about politics and public policy. Horn has written articles for numerous publications, including Education Week, Forbes, the Boston Globe, and U.S. News & World Report. In addition, he has contributed research for Charles Ellis’ book, Joe Wilson and the Creation of Xerox (Wiley, 2006) and Barbara Kellerman’s Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters (Harvard Business School Press, 2004).

Horn earned his MBA from Harvard Business School and an AB from Yale University, where he graduated with distinction in History.

Katherine Mackey is a Research Fellow in Innosight Institute’s Education Practice. Prior to joining Innosight Institute in September 2008, she was an eleventh-grade English teacher at Highland High School, a public high school in Utah. She worked previously as a designer at Houghton Mifflin Children’s Books. She is the co-author of a strategic five-year Academic Master Plan for Salt Lake Community College and has assisted with the formation and writing of professional development packets for the Utah State Office of Education. She has also worked as an intern for Senator Orrin G. Hatch for two summers.

Mackey holds a BA in English and French from Wellesley College and an MA in Education from Harvard University.

SRI on Tapped In, Educational Networking, and the Future

2009-10-19T08:09:00.000-07:00

Part of the Future of Education interactive interview series.

Date: Tuesday, October 20th, 2009
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.
Event Page: http://www.futureofeducation.com/forum/topics/sri-on-tapped-in-educational

Judi Fusco and Patti Schank from the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) join us to talk about the Tapped In network, educational social networking, and the future of electronic communities in education:

1. What is the difference between community and social networking?
2. What does community brings to the learning process (e.g., Communities of Practice and how that guided their work in Tapped In)? What are examples of successes and what have different organizations/small groups have achieved?
3. Ho do we create community in online situations?
4. How do we understand what the community gives to the participants?

Dr. Judith Fusco is a research scientist in SRI International's Center for Technology in Learning, and specializes in researching and developing online communities, technologies, and resources. Since 1998, she has directed the community development of TAPPED IN, an online community for teacher professional development. While developing the community, she has worked with master teachers from all over the world; and organizations like, NCREL, PBS, Pepperdine University, and Los Angeles County Office of Education. She has helped grow Tapped In from 300 teachers to over 20,000 and has helped many organizations learn to work online.

Dr. Fusco's research on the community involves examining social and technical supports necessary for online community, individual and group readiness, investigating models for online professional development, understanding the nature of local K-12 education communities of practice, generally analyzing and applying social network analysis (SNA) techniques to quantitative data gathered in the community. In addition, she is part of the OERL (Online Evaluation Research Library) team. She is co-leading the evaluation of the OERL web site and working with professors to investigate how OERL might be used in graduate level evaluation courses.

Before coming to SRI International, she worked at Apple Computer, Inc. leading the community development of Convomania, on an online community for kids who are sick or have a disability. The community of Convomania ended in January of 1998, so Dr. Fusco, Teresa Middleton (CTL alum) and others formed the online community PatchWorx, a 501c3 non-profit organization for kids who are sick or have a disability.

For more, see http://ctl.sri.com/people/displayPerson.jsp?Nick=jfusco

Patricia Schank is a cognitive and computer scientist at SRI's Center for Technology in Learning. Her current research interests are human computer interaction (HCI), social computing, computer supported collaborative learning (CSCL), and computer supported cooperative work (CSCW). Working with teams of developers and researchers, she applies a range of design and engineering processes (interface design, prototyping, user testing, architecture specification, and implementation) and research methodologies to develop and analyze innovative socio-technical environments. Dr. Schank has a Ph.D. in education (emphasis in cognition and learning) and an M.S. in computer science (emphasis in artificial intelligence) from the University of California at Berkeley, where her dissertation work focused on modeling and aiding scientific reasoning through an integration of theory-based cognitive simulations, experimental studies, and instructional curricula.

For more, see http://ctl.sri.com/people/displayPerson.jsp?Nick=schank

Esther Wojcicki on Creative Commons and Open Education

2009-10-12T16:47:00.000-07:00

A FutureofEducation.com interview.

Date: Wednesday, October 21st, 2009
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.
Event Page: http://www.futureofeducation.com/forum/topics/esther-wojcicki-on-creative

Esther Wojcicki has been a Journalism/English teacher at Palo Alto High School in Palo Alto, California for the past 25 years where she built the journalism program from a small group of 20 students in 1985 to the largest high school journalism program in the nation winning major national and international recognition. Her program is an example of the effectiveness of Project Based Learning and using journalism as a tool to get students engaged in critical thinking skills, writing skills, and Web 2.0 skills. She is working to help other schools adopt similar programs. The program includes 400 students, four journalism teachers, and five award-winning journalism electives including a newspaper (The Campanile) , a news magazine, (Verde), an online site (http://voice.paly.net), daily television (InFocus), and a sports magazine, (Viking). The publications have won Gold and Silver Crowns from Columbia Scholastic Press Association, the aceMaker Award and the Hall of Fame Award from National Scholastic Press, and best in nation from Time Magazine in 2003. The website was honored with two Webby Awards in 2005.

Esther is Chair of the Board of Creative Commons and a strong advocate of Open Education Resources and Creative Commons licensing. She is a 2009 MacArthur Foundation Research Award receipient on the Student Journalism 2.0 project (http://sj.creativecommons.org/). She has won multiple awards including California Commission on Teacher Credentialing, 2002 California Teacher of the Year, and 2009 Columbia University Scholastic Press Association Gold Key Award. She is a consultant for both the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Hewlett Foundation and a blogger for HuffingtonPost.

Howard Rheingold Presents "Thinking Tools" on Howard's Brainstorms!

2009-10-12T16:29:00.000-07:00

Join us as Howard Rheingold starts a series in Elluminate called "Howard's Brainstorms!" He'll spend an interactive hour with you discussing education, literacies, and anything else on his mind!

The topic for the show this Thursday evening: "Thinking Tools: PersonalBrain, Devonthink, Social Bookmarking, Outlining, Visualization, and More."

Date: Thursday, October 15th, 2009
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/convnet. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.
Direct show page: http://www.conversations.net/forum/topics/howard-rheingold-presents

Free Classroom 2.0 Workshop - Vancouver 24 October 09

2009-10-12T11:36:00.000-07:00

I'll be speaking at the CUEBC conference in Vancouver later this month, and staying an extra day to run a free Classroom 2.0 workshop for teachers on Saturday, October 24th, from 8:30am - 2:30pm. If you're in the area, you are most welcome to sign up and attend! (The workshop will actually be in Surrey, BC.)

The sign-up and agenda links are at http://wiki.classroom20.com/Vancouver+Surrey+2009. More information on what to expect and how our workshops run is below.

Our Classroom 2.0 LIVE Workshops are hands-on workshops that focus on the use of Web 2.0 in education. They are intended to be much like the Web itself: free, open, engaging, participative, and highly collaborative.

The workshops are also designed to be highly practical, and beginners are especially invited and encouraged to attend--in fact, if you are a beginner, you are the reason we are holding these workshops! We promise you will have a lot of fun as you learn about these important technologies. Each workshop is a blend of presentations, facilitated discussions, and hands-on creation--with lots of time for "drilling down" by getting individual help and instruction.

More seasoned Web 2.0 users will also learn new things from each other, as well as helping to organize the events. In true Web 2.0 fashion, you get to help plan the sessions at your local workshop, and the schedule is designed to be flexible. Each is spearheaded by local organizers, but with support and encouragement from Classroom 2.0, and drawing heavily from the expertise of local educators using Web 2.0.

The workshops are free because of generous sponsorship from companies that share our driving belief: that Web 2.0 is going to have a dramatic and positive effect on education. Please learn more about them, and thank them for supporting this program if you have any contact with them.

Computer Games as Educational Tools

2009-10-05T11:26:00.000-07:00

Part of my FutureofEducation.com interview series, coming up this week!

Date: Thursday, October 8th, 2009
Time: (Please note corrected time) 3pm Pacific / 6pm Eastern / 10pm GMT (next day) (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

The Learning Games Network is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization, whose mission is to develop and facilitate the use of computer games as educational tools. Its flagship project, ISLE, is an online gaming platform in which users will enter a virtual world and engage in activities and games that will help teach a new language. The development of the Interactive Social Language Education (ISLE) platform is an effort to create an international community of learners of all ages to explore and acquire second language skills through a wide variety of digital media channels that both create an immersive electronic learning experience and complement local informal and formal instruction. This builds upon the initial work of another Hewlett Open Educational Resources project, the Open Language Learning Initiative, which is currently undergoing testing in Chinese middle schools.

A consortium of partners, which includes the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, the Learning Games Network, The SuperGroup, FableVision, and MIT Education Arcade, is creating the web-based ISLE gaming platform as well as a series of initial games and activities to support Spanish-speaking English Language Learners in U.S. middle and high schools. This development is being pursued as part of an open strategy, which enables multiple developers and organizations to build on top of the platform.

The ISLE platform provides an underlying information architecture that allows games and activities to use vocabulary coded with multiple variables in its Global Learning Object database. With these objects tied to language-specific learning goals, data captured during game play can be used to measure student performance and generate assessment reports. Depending on learners’ achievement and scoring, the system can either raise the bar and introduce more difficult words and phrases or remediate by re-populating the games with the learning objects to reinforce the basics.

Jeff Applegate is the Learning Games Network's Outreach Coordinator. Jeff comes from an eclectic background, with dual degrees in Government and Theatre from Cornell University, and experience as an actor, database developer, writer, editor, and teacher. He comes from a family of educators, and has woven the thread through much of his other work experience. The Learning Games Network has proven to be an exciting focus for integrating a number of those passions and interests toward the end of enhancing kids' ability and desire to learn.

Alex Chisholm (Executive Producer, ISLE Platform) is a media research and development consultant who creates transmedia entertainment and educational properties. in recent years, he has developed and managed several projects with NBC Universal, including iCue with NBC News, and the online games for NBC Olympics. He serves as the Software and Video Gaming Judge for the National Parenting Publication Awards (NAPPA). Over the past 10 years, Chisholm has collaborated on research, product, and program development with Microsoft, Electronic Arts, Sony Pictures Imageworks, LeapFrog, NBC Universal, Children's Hospital Boston, and the Hewlett and MacArthur Foundations. He holds a B.S. from Cornell University. Chisholm is the Executive Director and a founding member of the Learning Games Network.

Scot Osterweil (Principal Investigator and Creative Director) directs and leads the design on a number of MIT Education Arcade projects, including Labyrinth, Caduceus, and iCue. Before coming to MIT, Scot was the Senior Designer at TERC, where he designed Zoombinis Island Odyssey, winner of the 2003 Bologna New Media Prize, and the latest game in the Zoombinis line of products (Riverdeep/TLC). Scot is the creator of the Zoombinis, and with Chris Hancock he co-designed the multi-award winning Logical Journey of the Zoombinis, and its first sequel, Zoombinis Mountain Rescue. Scot is the also the designer of the TERCworks games Switchback, and Yoiks!, the latter also with Chris Hancock. Other software design work includes InspireData (Inspiration Software) and its predecessors Tabletop, and Tabletop Jr. Previously, Scot worked in television production and theater. He is a graduate of Yale College. Osterweil is the treasurer and a founding member of the Learning Games Network.

Corrected Webinar Time for "Computer Games as Educational Tools"

2009-10-05T07:33:00.000-07:00

The correct time for Thursday's "Computer Games as Educational Tools" Webinar is 3pm Pacific / 6pm Eastern / 10pm GMT (next day) (international times here).

Dennis Littky Talks About Big Picture Schools

2009-10-05T06:19:00.000-07:00

Interview for my FutureofEducation .com series, coming up this week!

Date: Tuesday, October 6th, 2009
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

Dennis Littky is the co-founder and co-director of Big Picture Learning and the Met Center in Providence. He is nationally known for his extensive work in secondary education in urban, suburban, and rural settings, spanning over 40 years. As an educator, Dennis has a reputation for working up against the edge of convention and out of the box, turning tradition on its head and delivering concrete results. Presently, Dennis’s focus is to expand the Big Picture Learning design to include college-level accreditation through College Unbound, where students will have the opportunity to earn a B.A. and advanced certifications through a critically challenging, real-world based, and entrepreneurial course of study.

Dr. Littky holds a double Ph.D. in psychology and education from the University of Michigan. His work as a principal at Thayer Junior/Senior High School in Winchester, N.H. as featured in an NBC movie, A Town Torn Apart based on the book Doc: The Story of Dennis Littky and His Fight for a Better School. In 2004, he (along with Samantha Grabelle) published a book about the Big Picture Learning design entitled The Big Picture: Education is Everyone’s Business, which went on to win the Association of Educational Publishers’ top award for nonfiction in 2005. In 2003, Dennis was recognized as a leader in the small schools movement and awarded the Harold W. McGraw Jr. Prize in Education. Fast Company ranked Littky #4 among the top 50 Innovators of 2004, and the George Lucas Educational Foundation recently selected both Dennis and Elliot as part of the Daring Dozen – the Twenty Most Daring Educators in the World.

Web: http://www.bigpicture.org/

Free Services from Elluminate for Emergencies, Disasters, or Pandemics

2009-09-26T13:43:00.000-07:00

As part of my work for Elluminate on the LearnCentral.org social network for educators, I've created a document on the use of Elluminate and LearnCentral on "learning continuity" in the case of some kind of emergency, disaster, or pandemic.

While I hope that readers might join LearnCentral as a part of their regular exploration of resources available for educators, I would also hope that even if you haven't joined LearnCentral, the following will give you some simple and immediate steps you can take in the case of some kind of education disruption.

Quick-Start Guide to Using LearnCentral in an Emergency, Disaster, or Pandemic

LearnCentral is a free social learning network for education with features that can be used immediately for planning and responding to events that impact learning continuity. With LearnCentral, you get forum discussions areas, public and private groups, robust meeting and event calendaring, document and file storage and sharing, and real-time meeting capability.

LearnCentral also integrates free Elluminate vRoom technology and offers a free public conference room. vRooms are three-person online meeting rooms with a rich set of sharing capabilities, including audio, video, whiteboard, text chat, application sharing, and web-touring. The public conference room allows you to schedule and hold larger public meetings and other events.

In an emergency or pandemic, you can immediately invoke the capabilities of LearnCentral and Elluminate for:

Small administrative, faculty, or staff meetings (vRooms)
Individual student meetings and/or parent conferences (vRooms)
Collaborative meetings with state and national authorities (vRooms or Public Room)
Large training meetings including remote guest speakers to address learning continuity (vRooms or Public Room)
Ongoing crisis training for instructors and students (Groups, vRooms, or Public Room)
Maintaining class organization, lessons, assignments, and communications (Groups)
Remote "bridging" of sick students or teachers from home (vRooms)
School and staff organization and communication (Groups)
Distribution of learning or other materials and resources (Groups)

Steps

Sign up for LearnCentral at http://www.LearnCentral.org.

Upon signing up, you are automatically provisioned with the free three-person Elluminate vRoom, which can be accessed from the “Home” page.

Join the existing "Pandemics, Disasters, and School Closings" group for help and discussions at http://www.learncentral.org/node/3781

Utilize the free training for LearnCentral and Elluminate

Free training sessions for LearnCentral are held live each workday and are listed in the community calendar on the site. For free written, live, and recorded training resources for Elluminate, visit http://www.elluminate.com/support/training.

Create a group or groups for your organization

Create a group or groups by using the main group menu option, then use the “Invite” function to send invitations to join to your colleagues or community. Each group has its own discussion area, calendar for events, and portfolio for storing and sharing documents.

Join the “Host Your Own Webinars” group at http://www.learncentral.org/node/3432.

Join this group and familiarize yourself with the instructions on how to schedule a free large event in LearnCentral.

Distribute the LearnCentral.org information to your parents, students, staff, or appropriate individuals

Include the links to any groups, individuals, or events that you have created. Encourage them to sign up for LearnCentral, and let them know they can use the meeting and other capabilities for free as well.

More Information

For additional emergency, preparedness, and learning continuity resources, visit the Elluminate-sponsored EdReady.org website and wiki.

For more information about Elluminate, visit www.elluminate.com. For more information about how Elluminate can help you maintain learning continuity, visit http://tinyurl.com/yd8mxyj.

For more information about having your own LearnCentral community for private continuity of learning, read LearnCentral Private Edition datasheet at http://tinyurl.com/yadzqj9.

Interview: Allan Weis on The Business of Changing Lives

2009-09-26T12:57:00.000-07:00

From my interview series at FutureofEducation.com:

Date: Thursday, October 1st, 2009
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

Allan H. Weis is the author of The Business of Changing Lives: How A High-Tech Company Invested in Kids and Creativity (Greenleaf Book Group, September 2009), a new book that details the creation and growth of his company, Advanced Network & Services (ANS). He celebrates two decades of social entrepreneurship, as ANS has earmarked all of its resources - $128,000,000 – to build national networking infrastructure and foster significant social change.

He is the founder and president of ANS, a company he started in 1990 to advance education and science by accelerating the use of computer networking technology. An Internet pioneer, Mr. Weis led the ANS team that built the largest and fastest part of the Internet , which provided the underlying network for the National Science Foundation. In 1995, the assets and operations of ANS were sold to America Online Inc. With the proceeds of that sale, ANS became a preeminent force in education and philanthropy.

A passionate believer in the power of the “Net” to revolutionize learning and close the educational resources gap among students, Mr. Weis founded ThinkQuest® in 1995. A philanthropic initiative designed as a competition, ThinkQuest honored its annual winners with up to $2,000,000 in scholarships and cash awards, and became the fastest growing Internet-based educational program in the world. ThinkQuest helps students and educators learn computer and networking technology as they create educational Web sites that are used as teaching tools. In 2002, ThinkQuest was donated to the Oracle Foundation, except for a successful spin-off, ThinkQuest NYC.

Mr. Weis was also instrumental in creating the Internet2 project, a collaborative program between universities and corporations to construct the next generation of the Internet. In addition, he started the National Tele-Immersion Initiative, the most challenging network application that integrates virtual reality and networked computing.

Prior to his work with ANS, Mr. Weis spent 30 years with IBM. Before he retired in 1990, Mr. Weis served as vice president of IBM’s Engineering & Scientific computing business, where he had worldwide responsibility for strategy, development and technical support for IBM’s high performance systems and applications. His department served the nation’s top research labs and universities.

Mr. Weis has served on many national committees that deal with the future of communications and computing technologies, such as the panel on Information Technology and the Conduct of Research of the National Academy of Sciences. He has been a member of the World Technology Network since 2002 and was a member of the CEO Forum on Educational Technology.

Mr. Weis attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, as an Alfred P. Sloan Fellow, where he earned a Master of Science degree. He resides in Sarasota, Florida. For more information, please consult: www.advanced.org.

Howard Rheingold, Joyce Valenza, and Frances Jacobson Harris: Librarians and Truth Detection

2009-09-26T09:10:00.000-07:00

A conversation on FutureofEducation.com.

Date: Wednesday, September 30th, 2009
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

Howard Rheingold is the author of:
Tools for Thought http://www.rheingold.com/texts/tft/ The Virtual Community http://www.rheingold.com/vc/book/
Smart Mobs http://www.smartmobs.com

Was:
editor of Whole Earth Review http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whole_Earth_Review
editor of The Millennium Whole Earth Catalog http://www.well.com/user/hlr/mwecintro.html
founding executive editor of Hotwired http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HotWired
founder of Electric Minds http://www.rheingold.com/electricminds/html/
Non-resident Fellow, Annenberg Center for Communication, USC, 2007 http://www.annenberg.edu/info/rheingold.php
Visiting Professor, De Montfort University, UK

Has taught:
Participatory Media and Collective Action (UC Berkeley, SIMS, Fall
2005, 2006, 2007 ) http://www.seedwiki.com/wiki/participatory_media_and_collective_action/participatory_media_and_collective_action.cfm
http://www.sims.berkeley.edu/programs/courses/296a-pmca
Virtual Community/Social Media (Stanford, Fall 2007, 2008; UC Berkeley,
Spring 2008, 2009) http://socialmediaclassroom.com/vircom09
Toward a Literacy of Cooperation (Stanford, Winter, 2005)
Digital Journalism (Stanford University Winter, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008 )
http://socialmediaclassroom.com/digitaljournalism09

Current projects:
Social Media Classroom http://socialmediaclassroom.com
The Cooperation Project http://www.cooperationcommons.org
Participatory Media Literacy https://www.socialtext.net/medialiteracy/
HASTAC/MacArthur Foundation grantee http://tinyurl.com/yqjsmr

Recent Videos:
21st century literacies 40 min video http://blip.tv/file/2373937
JD Lasica's 6 min video interview with me, same subject: http://bit.ly/eFqeI

(photographer credit: Robin Good)

Joyce Valenza has been the librarian at Springfield Township High School (PA) since 1998. For ten years, she was the techlife@school columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer. Joyce is the author of Power Tools, Power Research Tools and Power Tools Recharged for ALA Editions. She currently blogs for School Library Journal. Her NeverendingSearch Blog (now on the SLJ website) won an Edublogs Award for 2005 and was nominated again in 2008. She won the AASL/Highsmith research grant in 2005. Joyce is a Milken Educator and an American Memory Fellow. Her video series, Internet Searching Skills was a YALSA Selected Video for Young Adults in 1999. The video series Library Skills for Children was released in 2003, and her six-volume video series Research Skills for Students was released in Fall 2004. Super Searchers Go to School, was published by Information Today in 2005. Her Virtual Library won the IASL School Library Web Page of the Year Award for 2001. Joyce is active in ALA, AASL, YALSA, and ISTE and contributes to Classroom Connect, VOYA, Learning and Leading with Technology, and School Library Journal. Joyce speaks nationally about issues relating to libraries and thoughtful use of educational technology. Joyce earned her doctoral degree from the University of North Texas in August, 2007.

Frances Jacobson Harris (http://www.uni.uiuc.edu/library/harrisvita.htm) is the librarian at University Laboratory High School at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She team teaches a required computer literacy course sequence for eighth and ninth grade students which includes information literacy and Internet ethics components (http://www.uni.illinois.edu/library/computerlit). Frances has presented and published on topics related to young adults, Internet ethics, and digital information. She is currently preparing a second edition of her book, I Found It On the Internet: Coming of Age Online, published by the American Library Association, 2005.

Interview: John Seely Brown

2009-09-26T08:39:00.000-07:00

Part of my Conversations.net interview series on the impact of the Internet on culture and society.

Date: Tuesday, September 29th, 2009
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/convnet. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

John Seely Brown is the Independent Co-Chairman of the Deloitte Center for Edge Innovation. In addition, he is a Visiting Scholar and Advisor to the Provost at USC.

Prior to that he was the Chief Scientist of Xerox Corporation and the director of its Palo Alto Research Center (PARC)—a position he held for nearly two decades. While head of PARC, Brown expanded the role of corporate research to include such topics as organizational learning, knowledge management, complex adaptive systems, and nano/mems technologies. He was a cofounder of the Institute for Research on Learning (IRL). His personal research interests include the management of radical innovation, digital youth culture, digital media, and new forms of communication and learning.

John, or as he is often called—JSB— is a member of the National Academy of Education and a Fellow of the American Association for Artificial Intelligence and of AAAS and a Trustee of the MacArthur Foundation. He serves on numerous public boards (Amazon, Corning, and Varian Medical Systems) and private boards of directors. He has published over 100 papers in scientific journals and was awarded the Harvard Business Review's 1991 McKinsey Award for his article, "Research that Reinvents the Corporation" and again in 2002 for his article “Your Next IT Strategy.”

In 2004 he was inducted in the Industry Hall of Fame.

With Paul Duguid he co-authored the acclaimed book The Social Life of Information (HBS Press, 2000) that has been translated into 9 languages with a second addition in April 2002, and with John Hagel he co-authored the book The Only Sustainable Edge which is about new forms of collaborative innovation. It also provides a novel framework for understanding what is really happening in off-shoring in India and China and how each are inventing powerful news ways to innovate, learn and accelerate capability building.

JSB received a BA from Brown University in 1962 in mathematics and physics and a PhD from University of Michigan in 1970 in computer and communication sciences. In May of 2000 Brown University awarded him an honorary Doctor of Science Degree. It was followed by an Honorary Doctor of Science in Economics conferred by the London Business School in July 2001. And in May of 2004 he received an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Claremont Graduate School. In 2005, he received an honorary doctorate from University of Michigan and delivered their commencement speech.

JSB is an avid reader, traveler and motorcyclist.

Part scientist, part artist and part strategist, JSB's views are unique and distinguished by a broad view of the human contexts in which technologies operate and a healthy skepticism about whether or not change always represents genuine progress

International Advisory Boards

Barcelona, the Government of Catalonia’s Minister for Innovation, Universities and Enterprise International Advisory Panel on Research and Innovation, 2007 -

Singapore Ministry of Education’s International Review Panel for R&D Programme on Digital Media in Education, 2007-present

Singapore Ministry of Education’s, Media Development Authority , International Advisory Panel, 2007 –present

Singapore Management University, School of Information Systems, Advisory Board, 2006-present

Singapore’s Scientific Advisory Board of the National Research Foundation, 2006-present

Honorary Degrees

* 2000 - Brown University - Doctor of Science
* 2001 - London Business School - Doctor of Science in Economics
* 2004 - Claremont Graduate School - Doctor of Humane Letters
* 2005 - University of Michigan - Doctor of Science

Links:

Website: http://www.johnseelybrown.com
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/jseelybrown

danah boyd Live Interview Thursday, September 24th, 2009

2009-09-23T10:11:00.000-07:00

I'll be interviewing danah as part of my Conversations.net series.

Event Link: http://www.conversations.net/forum/topics/danah-boyd
Date: Thursday, September 24th, 2009
Time: 12pm Pacific / 3pm Eastern / 7pm GMT (next day) (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/convnet. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

danah boyd is a researcher at Microsoft Research New England and a Fellow at the Harvard University Berkman Center for Internet and Society. She recently completed her PhD in the School of Information at the University of California-Berkeley.

Dr. boyd's dissertation "Taken Out of Context: American Teen Sociality in Networked Publics" focused on how American youth use networked publics for sociable purposes. She examined the role that social network sites like MySpace and Facebook play in everyday teen interactions and social relations. She was interested in how mediated environments alter the structural conditions in which teens operate, forcing them to manage complex dynamics like interacting before invisible audiences, managing context collisions, and negotiating the convergence of public and private life. This work was funded by the MacArthur Foundation as part of a broader grant on digital youth and informal learning.

At the Berkman Center, danah co-directed the Internet Safety Technical Task Force to work with companies and non-profits to identify potential technical solutions for keeping children safe online. This Task Force was formed by the U.S. Attorneys General and MySpace and is being organized by the Berkman Center.

Dr. boyd received a bachelor's degree in computer science from Brown University and a master's degree in sociable media from MIT Media Lab. She has worked as an ethnographer and social media researcher for various corporations, including Intel, Tribe.net, Google, and Yahoo! She also created and managed a large online community for V-Day, a non-profit organization working to end violence against women and girls worldwide. She has advised numerous other companies, sits on corporate, education, and non-profit advisory boards, and regularly speaks at industry conferences and events.

danah maintains a blog on social media called Apophenia - http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/. Her Twitter account is http:// www.twitter.com/Zephoria.

Our Fifth Worldwide Vitiligo Meetup Call

2009-09-15T09:47:00.000-07:00

Our next world-wide Vitiligo web meet-up is scheduled for Sunday, September 20th, at 8am US Pacific / 11am US Eastern. The international time link is here: http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/fixedtime.html?month=9&day=20&year=2009&hour=8&min=0&sec=0&p1=137.

To connect to the actual Elluminate session Sunday, use this link: http://www.tinyurl.com/vitiligo. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

Lee Thomas, the Emmy-award winning reporter and author of Turning White will be guest at our meeting!

From the website for this book, Turning White:

TURNING WHITE IS CHANGING LIVES

IN HIS THOUGHT-PROVOKING MEMOIR, Turning White, Emmy Award-winning TV broadcaster Lee Thomas shares the physical and mental battle he is waging with Vitiligo—a skin disorder that is literally turning him white. At age 25, Thomas had a dream job in a dream city—a feature/entertainment reporter for the ABC network’s flagship TV station in New York. Then he discovered a few white spots on his scalp, the small beginnings of a disease that has spread to half his face—a fact he covers with makeup when on camera. As someone in the public eye, Vitiligo has transformed not only Thomas’ color, but his life. “Even people who have known me for years avoid eye contact when they see my face without makeup for the first time,” he writes. Recently, Thomas turned the spotlight on himself during a special report for WJBK FOX 2 Detroit, where he is currently an entertainment reporter.

Lee’s inspiring story has touched people from South Africa to Sacramento. The book has lead this award-winning broadcaster around the country speaking at national conferences, businesses and literary events touching people with his empowering and motivational story.

Interview: Michael Horn--An Innosight "Education Disruption" Case Study: Alpine Online School

2009-09-14T21:44:00.000-07:00

Part of the FutureofEducation.com interview series.

Date: Thursday, September 17th, 2009
Time: 3pm Pacific / 6pm Eastern / 10pm GMT (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

Michael B. Horn is the co-founder and Executive Director, Education of Innosight Institute. He is the co-author of Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns (McGraw-Hill: June 2008) with Harvard Business School Professor and bestselling author Clayton M. Christensen and Curtis W. Johnson, president of the Citistates Group.

Leland Anderson, visiting research fellow at Innosight Institute, is an assistant principal at American Heritage School in Utah. He has a master’s in School Leadership from the Harvard Graduate School of Education.

Since the publication of Disrupting Class, Innosight have focused their research on disruptions at work in education—from their promise to their current shortfalls and from how they work in the trenches to what other pieces of the system must fall into place for them to transform the education system into a student-centric one.

The first of these case studies details how a small district in Utah has employed online learning to serve students it had not been serving. You can download the full case study here: http://www.innosightinstitute.org/innosight/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/Alpine-Online.pdf.

The publication of this case study represents an important milestone for Innosight. They will now publish one case study every couple months, and we will soon follow this up with analytical white papers that contain policy prescriptions and new insights using the theories of disruptive innovation. Michael will be reporting on future studies here at the Future of Education.

Interview: Anne Gilleran on the eTwinning Program

2009-09-14T21:42:00.000-07:00

Part of the FutureofEducation.com interview series.

Date: Tuesday, September 15th, 2009
Time: 11am Pacific / 2pm Eastern / 6pm GMT (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/futureofed. The Elluminate room will be open up to 30 minutes before the event if you want to come in early. To make sure that your computer is configured for Elluminate, please visit http://www.elluminate.com/support. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event.

Anne Gilleran is the coordinator of the European School Leadership Network project. She is the EUN's main contact person for the European School Heads Association (ESHA).

She is also a member of the Pedagogical Advisory Group for the eTwinning action. A school principal and educational researcher by profession, her research interests focus on ICT as a medium of social change, social constructivism and the creation of online communities.

Anne will be giving us a tour of the eTwinning program. From the eTwinning website (http://www.etwinning.net):

GENERAL

What is eTwinning?
eTwinning is an action that supports online-based projects between at least two schools from at least two different European countries. Schools form a project and use Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to carry out their work. As schools communicate and collaborate via the Internet, there are no grants or administrative conditions connected to the scheme and face-to-face meetings are not required.

What can I do in an eTwinning project?
You can work on any topic you and your partner wish to work on. Projects should have a good balance of ICT use and classroom activities, and should preferably fit into the national curricula of the schools participating in the project.

Do I need to be an advanced ICT user to be involved?
Definitely not! One of the objectives of eTwinning is to improve teachers’ abilities in ICT and to make it part of daily life in the classroom. eTwinning caters to all levels of ICT knowledge.

Who can participate?
An eTwinning project can be carried out by two or more teachers, teams of teachers or subject departments, librarians, head teachers and pupils from schools across Europe. Collaboration can be within the same subject or cross-curricular through the use of ICT.
Pre-school, primary, secondary and upper secondary schools can all participate (age range of pupils, 3-19).

Which countries are part of eTwinning?
eTwinning applies to the Member States of the European Union: Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom. Overseas territories and countries are also eligible. In addition, Norway, Turkey and Iceland can also take part.

PBS WIDE ANGLE's Time For School Documentary

2009-09-08T11:18:00.000-07:00

Classroom 2.0 has been asked to co-sponsor a live Web event this Thursday at 12:00pm (Eastern Daylight Time) related to the PBS WIDE ANGLE documentary project, Time for School. While the event is not in my preferred online tool (remember I work for Elluminate!), this is a good chance to extend the relationship Classroom 2.0 has with PBS and give educators a chance to hear and talk with the film’s producers and experts on global education.

The event take place this Thursday, September 10th, at 12:00 noon Eastern Daylight Time. To listen live go to Blog Talk Radio in your Web browser, and you can call (718) 506-1351 with any questions for our guests. Students are welcome to join as well.

WIDE ANGLE’s unprecedented, award-winning 12-year documentary project, Time for School, follows seven kids in seven countries struggling to get what nearly all American kids take for granted: a basic education. This year's Time for School is being broadcast in two parts, the first of which was shown last week and can be watched on the Web at http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/time-for-school-series/full-episode-time-for-school-3-part-1/5532/. The second, concluding part is being broadcast Wednesday, September
9, 2009 in most areas, but date and time varies, so check your local listings: http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/schedule/.

More information on Time for School from their Website:

We started filming in 2002, watching as kids first entered school in Afghanistan, Benin, Brazil, India, Japan, Kenya and Romania, many despite great odds. Several years later, in 2006, we returned to film an update and now, three years later, we travel to check in on our young teenagers who are making the precarious transition to middle school.

Among the highlights: in Afghanistan we reunite with 16-year-old Shugufa, who resolutely remains in school despite the Taliban¹s recent acid attacks on young women her age. We visit the biggest slum in Nairobi, Kenya, where 15-year-old Joab¹s mother has died and his father has abandoned the family, and, incredibly, Joab manages to stay at the top of his class while also raising and feeding his two younger siblings. And in the blazing desert of Rajasthan, India, we encounter Neeraj, 15, only to learn that she has been unable to realize her dream of making it to 10th grade: since our last visit her night school has closed, and she now helps support her family by grazing the livestock full-time while her brothers continue their education.

These children's stories put a human face on the shocking fact that more than a hundred million children are currently out of school; of these, two thirds are girls. WIDE ANGLE plans to continue revisiting all the children, and their peers and families, through 2015, the year they should graduate and, not coincidentally, the U.N.'s target date for achieving universal education, a Millennium Development goal endorsed by all 191 members of the United Nations.

You can watch the 2002 and 2006 episodes online at:
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/wideangle/episodes/time-for-school-series/introducti
on/4340/

Open Source in K-12 -- Two Great Conference Opportunities

2009-09-05T21:53:00.000-07:00

OK, here are two great opportunities around Open Source Software for K-12 that are coming up SOON!

1. The K-12 Open Minds Conference in Indiana, which had an uncertain future after changes in the Indiana Department of Ed, is BACK ON! Not only is it on, but the format is changing in some really GREAT ways.

First, the conference is now free. Really, free. No registration fee. :)

Second, Michigan City Area Schools are hosting the event (significantly contributing to the "free" part!). So join us on October 6th and 7th, 2009 in Michigan City (Indiana) for the third annual K-12 Open Minds Conference about Open Source in K-12 Education.

Third, the conference will now include both formal sessions and informal sessions--including conversations and gatherings around topics of interest in various areas of Open Source. So come to learn and/or present, and to share experiences and projects related to open technologies on a variety of topics such as teaching and learning, leadership, and technical issues.

Conference Website: http://k12openminds.org to register (presenters still wanted and very much encouraged!)

2. For the fourth year in a row, the 2010 Computer Using Educators (CUE) annual conference will have an Open Source Pavilion and formal speaker series. Yeah for CUE!

AND there is only 1 week left to submit a proposal to speak at CUE. We need great speaker proposals on Open Source in K-12 at this conference, so please consider submitting to present! Please submit online by next Friday, September 11th, at: http://www.cue.org/conference/present.

Jane Nelsen on Parenting 2.0: Parenting in the Age of the Internet and Social Media

2009-09-05T11:38:00.000-07:00

Part of the Conversations.net interview series.

Date: Wednesday, September 9th, 2009
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/convnet.

Dr. Jane Nelsen is a licensed Marriage, Family and Child Counselor in South Jordan, UT and Carlsbad, CA. Join us as we talk about the unique challenges that the Web 2.0 world brings to parenting.

Jane's doctorate degree in Educational Psychology from the University of San Francisco in 1979 is secondary to the education and experience she achieved from her successes and failures as a mother of seven children. She now shares this wealth of knowledge and experience as a popular keynote speaker and workshop leader throughout the country.

She is the author and/or coauthor of the following books:

* Positive Discipline
* Raising Self-Reliant Children in a Self-Indulgent World: Seven Building Blocks for Developing Capable Young People
* Understanding Serenity
* Positive Time-Out: And Over 50 Ways to Avoid Power Struggles in the Home and the Classroom (Positive Discipline)
* Positive Discipline for Teenagers (Positive Discipline)
* Positive Discipline in the Classroom, Revised 3rd Edition: Developing Mutual Respect, Cooperation, and Responsibility in Your Classroom (Positive Discipline)
* Positive Discipline A-Z, Revised and Expanded 2nd Edition: From Toddlers to Teens, 1001 Solutions to Everyday Parenting Problems
* Positive Discipline for Single Parents : Nurturing, Cooperation, Respect and Joy in Your Single-Parent Family
* Positive Discipline for Preschoolers: For Their Early Years--Raising Children Who are Responsible, Respectful, and Resourceful (Positive Discipline Library)
* Positive Discipline: The First Three Years: From Infant to Toddler--Laying the Foundation for Raising a Capable, Confident Child (Positive Discipline Library)
* Positive Discipline for Your Step Family
* Parents Who Love Too Much: How Good Parents Can Learn to Love More Wisely and Develop Children of Character
* Positive Discipline for Parenting in Recovery
* Positive Discipline: A Teacher's A-Z Guide, Revised 2nd Edition: Hundreds of Solutions for Every Possible Classroom Behavior Problem
* Positive Discipline in the Christian Home: Using the Bible to Develop Character and Strengthen Moral Values
* Positive Discipline for Childcare Providers: A Practical and Effective Plan for Every Preschool and Daycare Program (Positive Discipline)
* Positive Discipline for Working Parents: Raising Responsible, Respectful, and Resourceful Children When You Work Outside the Home

Educational Social Networking with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach

2009-09-05T11:19:00.000-07:00

Part of my FutureofEducation.com interview series.

Date: Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/futureofed.

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach is a 20-year educator who has been a classroom teacher, technology coach, charter school principal, district administrator, university instructor and digital learning consultant. Currently, she is in the dissertation phase of completing her doctorate in Educational Planning, Policy and Leadership at the College of William and Mary.

She is the owner and founder of 21st Century Collaborative, LLC, a digital learning consulting business through which she gives keynotes, workshops and supports nonprofits in their grant work. Find out more at http://www.21stcenturycollaborative.com.

Through the Powerful Learning Practice Network which she co-founded with Will Richardson, she works with states, districts, and schools around the world to re-envision their learning cultures and communities. http://plpnetwork.com.

Additionally, she is the co-founder of the K12Online Conference, a free, annual global gathering of educators, hosted on the Web and packed with cutting-edge ideas. In 2008, K12Online attracted more than 100,000 participants world-wide. Find out more at http://k12onlineconference.org.

Sheryl is a published writer and regular presenter at state, national and international conferences speaking on topics of homelessness, teacher leadership, virtual community building, educational leadership and 21st Century reform.

Sheryl lives near the Atlantic Ocean and spends her spare time playing on the water with her four children.

Some Past Clients Include:

Alabama Best Practices Center
Belize Ministry of Education
Center for Teaching Quality
Center for Teacher Leadership
Miami-Dade Public Schools
National Association for the Education of Homeless Children and Youth
National Education Association
Project Hope
Standford Research Institute
Telecommunications User Association of New Zealand
The Institute for Advanced Learning and Research
Teachers for a New Era
Teacher Magazine
Virginia Community College System
Virginia Department of Education