These are the slides from the three presentation I did at the Building Learning Communities Conference in Boston this week. While I've played with many of the ideas in these presentations before, in other contexts, I worked hard to re-imagine and rework them for the conference. In particular, the last one, Design (still) Matters! took many hours to put together and I felt like I was going out on a limb because I wanted to continue a conversation I hope started here last year. I'm already thinking about where a third incarnation of that talk might go. As alway, I had so much more to share but, alas, time is short. ;-)

The first and last were recorded as videos which will be shared soon. If you saw any of these presented or in the video archive afterward (I'll update this post with links when they're online) please leave your reflections, stories or personal tales of how they struck you. The comments of critical friends is greatly appreciated.

FYI: there are many active links to the content I discussed embedded on the slides. Click around the centre of each slide to follow the link if there is one.

21st Century Bricoleurs part one
Seymour Papert describes bricolage as a way to learn and solve problems by trying, testing and playing around. How do we learn by playing around with digital stuff? Can we create deep learning experiences that encourage students to show and share what they know with the world and contribute to the global knowledge commons? We will unleash a cornucopia of concrete student centred learning experiences that leverage the power of the world wide web and focus teachers instructional design through lenses that are student centred, knowledge centred, assessment centred and community centred. We will look at both small short term assignments and larger long term projects that will amaze you with what your students can learn and share as 21st century bricoleurs.

21st Century Bricoleurs v2 part one

View more presentations from Darren Kuropatwa

21st Century Bricoleurs part two

21st Century Bricoleurs v2 part two

View more presentations from Darren Kuropatwa

Design (still) Matters!
A practical exploration of the intersection between visual design, presentation design and instructional design. Every day, several times a day, teachers everywhere are called upon to educate, entertain, elucidate, enlighten and maintain attention and amongst their students. With the advent of interactive white boards and/or video projectors in classrooms everywhere, the intersection of these skills is fast becoming a centrepiece of an educators toolkit. This workshop will model and illustrate concrete ways in which teachers can incorporate these skills into their pedagogical practice.

Design (still) Matters!

View more presentations from Darren Kuropatwa

Many people asked for a copy of the Pre-Show slide deck. They are all archived in my flickr account and part of how I participate in the Great Quotes About Learning and Change group. The slides are embeded below but I also have a design challenge for you based on this and Ewan McIntosh's keynote.







In his keynote at the end of the 1st day of the conference Ewan asked everyone to read Dylan Williams 12 page article Inside the Black Box (pdf). He also encouraged people to read A systematic review of the impact of summative assessment and tests on students' motivation for learning (pdf).

Here's your design challenge: Read those articles, or just the bits that most interest you. Pull out a powerful quotation from the article. Find a striking creative commons image on flickr analogically related to your quote. Mash them together and contribute them to the pool of photos in the Great Quotes About Learning and Change group. I can't wait to see your thinking made visible in this way. ;-)

Cross posted from the November Learning blog.

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Community First

Michael Wesch by flickr user poptech

Michael Wesch's keynote this morning was simply breathtaking. In the follow up breakout session someone asked him: "How do you stop students seeing themselves as students, and as collaborators?"

Mike sighed, put both hands on the podium and said: "That's really hard work."

He went on to explain "community first." He uses the first two weeks of class to build a sense of community and togetherness in a shared quest to solve a real world problem. A problem he himself doesn't know the answer to.

"Doing crazy things together creates community." 

Micheal plans his most passionate and enthusiastic lectures for those first two weeks. And he has his students do zany ice-breaking activities to help them get to know each other and break through the veneer of passivity they arrive in his class with. But it's not just about having fun; these activities (like human scavenger hunts) all have a serious edge to them. They have to see that they'll have fun learning here, but we are working hard at learning.

The Lesson Design Arc: schedule-research-paper-video 

The kids begin by co-creating a schedule on a wiki for the research they'll do to solve the problem they've decided to work on. They begin by digging into the problem and reading everything they can on it. Summaries of all their reading are compiled on the wiki. Typically they'll read over 90 articles, papers, or books in the first week of class as they do this. (In more typical University classes they read about three articles in the first week.) Mike guides them, having a little deeper experience in the field then they do, by suggesting other sources they might wish to explore. They continue this research and co-create a research paper for publication. When that's all done, they create very brief condensed video summaries of their research, submit them to Mike who then weaves them together into a brief (5 min?) video. All this is only possible because of the community building work they do together in the first few weeks of the course.

There's a lot more to all this, I'm just summarizing (his integrated, collaborative, calibrated peer review assessment scheme – which goes well beyond <-- that link back there – is brilliant), but that's the broad strokes takeaway I got.

When Things Go Wrong

My Pencil by flickr user jbelluch

Sometimes, when people work together closely on a real world problem things wrong. People get upset. Students goof off in class.

When that happens Mike intervenes using a ritual he learned from an African(?) tribe. It's very similar to the Talking Stick ritual used by many First Nations people of Canada. They use pencils instead. Anyone who is holding the pencil lets go of the little voice in their head that says "You can't say that." and speaks from the heart about what's upset them. The rest of the group talks with them about it. They don't put the stick down until they've resolved whatever the problem is. Mike usually goes first. Sometimes he cries while he's talking to his 400+ students. Then the next person in the group takes their turn.

A Pedagogy to Aspire To

Isn't that an amazing example of "intense imagination, motivation, emotion, and thought?" I had wanted to write about the amazing conversations going here: in the halls, in sessions, over lunch, every time someone stops me to talk really. But this morning's keynote. Just breathtaking. Good teaching is what comes from building strong relationships between teachers and students; relationships with a serious educational edge. (I hear echoes of John Seely Brown in this.)

I've got to think more about how to weave together such a set of diverse sensitivities into my teaching. How do you build a culture of caring in your class?

Seeing History by dkuropatwa

I'm at the Building Learning Communities Conference in Boston this week. I've been asked to guest blog over there during the conference. I'm cross posting here as well. (Maybe it'll encourage me to do this more often ... feels good to be blogging.)

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Riding a Paris Metro David Wong looks up at the ads. All beautiful images captioned with little text. One, an image of the Earth and a single star. The caption: "When you look at Alpha Centauri — the closest star to Earth — you are watching something that happened four years ago."

In their essay What If Ideas Were Fashion? David Wong and Danah Henriksen (from Michigan State University) explore the learning that comes of creating these images. What if we applied a fashion designer's design sense to learning? As they ask in the title of their essay: "What if ideas were fashion?"

Early on they write: "The experience of fashion is often characterized by intense imagination, motivation, emotion, and thought."

That got me thinking. What if we substitute 'learning' for 'fashion' …

What if the experience of learning were characterized by intense imagination, motivation, emotion, and thought?

Have you seen anything at BLC that can be characterized as 'intense imagination, motivation, emotion, and thought?" Any one of those? two? three? all four? I have. I'll mention some examples in my next post. I'm far more interested what you saw. Please share it here in the comments. Better yet, summarize it in a "slide" like one of those you'll find in Dean Shareski's flickr group Great Quotes about Learning and Change. (If you've not seen it yet I highly recommend putting aside 30 minutes or so to get lost in it.) Find a (cc) licensed flickr image that resonated with your favourite quote from the conference so far about learning and add it to the pool.

Picking up on David and Danah's work I just started a new flickr group similar to Dean's. It's called Ideas with Style. It's specifically about mashing together (designing) a striking image with an educational thought, fact, or idea. Check it out, maybe add an image to that pool too.

Remember: neither 'social media' nor 'design' are nouns, they're verbs, and Design Matters!

... was the title of the Keynote address I gave to 500+ educators at this year's B.Y.T.E. conference. The sense I had of the audience was that many of the ideas I talked about here were new to them. A quick survey of the room while giving the talk revealed only about three people had heard of Wolfram Alpha and I think about the same number had heard of the TPACK Framework.

I hope I get a chance to do this talk again. There are a number of things I think I could have done better.

Anyway, if you're interested, here it is in various formats. You pick how you'd like to take it in.

Audio

Download (20 MB)

Slidecast


Ustream Video (thanks to Chris Harbeck

I've had this sitting in draft for about 7 months. It goes all the back to the end of May when I had the good fortune to attend the Microsoft Innovative Teachers Conference held here in Winnipeg. The line up of speakers was excellent, but Rick Van Eck stood out as the highlight of the entire conference for me. (I blogged about Rick's Breakout session at the time.) He has a very down to earth, practical, honest approach to using COTS (Commercial Off The Shelf) games in education. Unfortunately the question period isn't included. Rick really shined during the Q&A afterward where his direct, honest, polite replies to pointed questions impressed everyone.

Anyway, I've mentioned this talk several times in passing since I saw it and now I can point people to hear the man himself. It's short; 22 min 21 sec. Worth every minute. You can click through Rick's slides below the video as he speaks.

(Download mp3, 25.4 MB)

Slides:

Microsoft Innovative Teacher Conference--Keynote

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: games learning)

All across Manitoba on Friday, teachers came together in about 28 different Special Area Groups for an full day of professional development workshops. I was invited by EBIT (Educators of Business and Information Technology) to do a presentation. Mine was the host school and the organizer of the conference is a friend so I said yes.

The idea was to a have more of a conversation than a presentation, where everyone came with a lesson plan they thought they might like to rework to take advantage of the affordances offered by social media and the suite of free tools available online. I shared a number of examples of how I had done this with some of my own lessons.

About 45 minutes into the workshop people started warming up and we had some good discussion. I tried to keep the focus more on pedagogy than tools but that can be hard in a session like this. Judging from the feedback afterward I think folks walked away happy for having been there. I created a wiki as a reference point for the folks that were there.

One of the examples that captured people's imagination was the mapping project my son is working on. It's not done yet, so I guess I'm outing him early. Many people seemed tickled at the idea that they could leave him an encouraging comment on his Google Map where he's bringing together text, images, and video to give an overview of the book Underground to Canada by Barbara Smucker. Remember, what he's got there right now is mostly a partial rough draft, he should have it done in about another 7-10 days. In the meantime, feel free to leave some positive comments or suggestions for him on his map. ;-)

Here are the slides and audio from the session, available here and there. A comprehensive list of links we referenced should be there by the end of the weekend.

Extreme (Web 2.0) Lesson Plan Makeover

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: teaching pedagogy)

Audio (1 hr 41 min 25 sec)
Fast forward through the boring bits.

I was at Alan November's Building Learning Communities conference in Boston from July 15 to 18. This was the third year I was there and it was the best yet because the buzz was different.

Last year I left the conference hearing everyone saying things like:

» I have to learn flickr
» I have to learn wikis
» I have to learn blogs
» I have to learn [insert social media tool du jour]

This year the buzz was much more about pedagogy. The talk in the halls sounded like:

» I can use [this] to teach [that]
» I can see how much easier it would be for my students to understand if I used ...
» My students are going to LOVE learning this way!

I hope that sentiment was captured in the last minute reflection a number of us did together shared via Ustream:

Live Streaming by Ustream.TV

I captured some of the Ustream chat here.

Of course the best part of any conference is the people. I reconnected with old friends, met several "old friends" face to face for the first time, and met some people for the first time. Together, they made the conference feel like going to summer camp. ;-)

The three Keynote presenters (Ewan Mcintosh, John Davitt, and Dr. Pedro Noguera gave talks that dovetailed nicely together with a very strong focus on teaching and learning. They hadn't planned it that way but it seemed as though the three of them had collaborated to deliver a unified message. (If you want to listen to their talks Bob Sprankle has some of the best BLC08 coverage on the net over on his blog.)

I gave three presentations. One was an update from another I gave last year (What Can I Do Now That I Couldn't Do Before), the second (A Day In The Life) was a major revamp of one I did for Alec Couros' and Dean Shareski's graduate classes earlier this year. I worked hard to refine the ideas and practices I was sharing and tie them much more tightly to research on teaching and learning. The third (Everything New is Old Again: living and teaching in accelerating times) Clarence and I did together. This was the first time we had ever presented collaboratively. (This particular collaboration involved skype, google presentations, flickr, and Starbucks; a story unto itself really. ;-))

Mobile phones appear to be coming into their own as a learning tool this year. I tried something different using the photo capabilities of participants' mobiles and flickr. While in session I shared my private "publish directly to my flickr account" email address. I asked everyone to take pictures with their phones and email to the address I gave them (I've since changed the address). My account was set up to tag the photos automatically BLC08. Meanwhile, I had a wiki where I archived all my presentation resources. On a page in the wiki I embedded a slideshow I had created using Slideflickr. Slideflickr allows you to link music located somewhere online to play automatically while the slides are playing. I used Skreemr.com and Jamendo to find the music I linked to the slideshows -- I did this activity in two sessions.

All my BLC stuff is archived on the wiki I made for the conference. For those of you that don't feel like clicking through I've embedded the slides here:

What Can I Do Now That I Couldn't Do Before? v2

view presentation (tags: pedagogy learning teaching presentation)

A Day In The Life V3

view presentation (tags: pedagogy teaching learning presentation)

Everything New Is Old Again

view presentation (tags: blc08 socialchange participatoryculture pedagogy)

This is the closing keynote presentation given by Les Foltos, Director of the Puget Sound Center for Teacher Learning and Technology, at the Microsoft Innovative Educators Conference held in Winnipeg on May 29, 2008. (The site appears to be down, or broken, now. I thought it was supposed to serve as a commons around which a growing network of teachers was going to built. I wonder what happened?)

This is the last podcast from the from the conference I recorded. It's a little noisy to listen to. We were all talking in small groups trying to crystallize what we had learned over the previous two days. The good news is we talked about many of the same things that we had discussed in the previous day's Ustream. The voices you hear talking in our little group are me, Clarence Fisher, Chris Harbeck, John Evans, Andy McKiel, Kathy Cassidy, and another lady whose name, unfortunately, I've forgotten. She was sitting in a neighbouring group and kept looking over at us, interested in what we were talking about. So, I invited her over and I'm glad she joined us. I think we all got a lot out of this conversation. Give it a listen and add your own two cents in the comments below.

(Download File 30.0Mb, 62 min. 30 sec.)

UPDATE

Great news! Chris found the Ustream recording!! Good on ya Chris. ;-)

Watcher beware: a surprising amount of time is devoted to discussing Dean Shareski's eating habits and his coffee mug — we had a lot of laughs. ;-)

Time: 36 min. 13 sec.

Live Videos provided by Ustream.TV

This is the audio from Richard Van Eck's breakout session at the Microsoft Innovative Educators Conference. It's full of very practical ideas for how to incorporate using commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) games in teaching a variety of subjects in the K-12 curriculum. Rick's presentations are very grounded with very little flash in his slides but lots of good concrete ideas to take back to the classroom. The night before this session Rick gave a keynote presentation on games based learning. He was asked if the kind of learning kids do in games based learning transfers well to the content areas. He looked the questioner straight in the eye and said, loudly and clearly: No. Then he fleshed out that answer. I still might be able to track down the audio from the keynote. If I can get it I'll publish it here. In the mean time this is a very practical talk about how to begin using COTS games in your classroom.

At about 19 minutes in Rick tried to get online but was locked out. Thankfully, Chris Harbeck was there and had the password. ;-)

| View | Upload your own

(Download File 14.6Mb, 30 min. 30 sec.)

This is the Keynote presentation given by Arnold Wasserman on the second morning of the Microsoft Innovative Teachers Conference last week. The venue for the conference was the Red River College downtown campus here in Winnipeg. It was a beautiful place to hold the conference. The architecture is an innovative marriage between old and new.

This keynote was immediately followed by a presentation given by Ken Zorniak of Frantic Films. It was an interesting view inside the work that goes into the computer generated visual effects in the movies but we really needed some time to decompress and talk about the things Arnold had said in this talk. Several of us were struck by the many similarities between what Arnold talked about here and the conversation we Ustreamed the day before. Although we didn't record the Ustream we did capture many of the ideas that came up in that session at the end of the day in the session facilitated by Les Foltos from the Puget Sound Centre for Teaching, Learning and Technology.

Here is the podcast recording of Arnold Wasserman's Keynote. Give it a listen. I'd love to hear what you think after you hear Arnold speak.

(Download File 14.8Mb, 61 min. 30 sec.)

I had the good fortune to be invited to attend Microsoft's inaugural Innovative Teachers Conference this past week. As always, the highlights for me were the people and the conversations we had in the hallways and over good food.

By far, the best part was meeting face to face for the first time with Kathy Cassidy and Ben Hazzard. When you mix in Clarence Fisher, Chris Harbeck, John Evans, Joan Badger with an open Ustream feed to bring in Dean Shareski, Alec Couros, and a wider network of passionate educators via twitter you get some of the best professional development around. Unfortunately we didn't record it. However, about 100 seconds were captured by Rodd Lucier, thanks for that Rodd!

Lesson Learned: Always record in Ustream. And if you're watching and wondering if you should screencast, the answer is: yes!

The conference opened with a keynote presentation by Arnold Wasserman from The Idea Factory. His presentation was titled The Culture of Innovation. It was filled with thought provoking ideas but I strongly disagree with his essential message in this first presentation of two: It is impossible to innovate your professional practice unless the organization within which you work is an innovative organization.

Here is the podcast recording of that presentation. Give it a listen. I'd love to hear what you think after you hear Arnold speak.

(Download File 21.4Mb, 44 min. 40 sec.)

I captured three other podcasts during the conference which I will share here over the next few days: Arnold Wasserman (part 2), Richard Van Eck (on educational gaming; he was the highlight presenter of the conference for me), and Les Foltos' closing session that had several of us brianstorming around the idea of what the ideal innovative classroom would look like: physically, pedagogically, and with an eye towards teachers professional development.

We are pleased to announce the call for proposals for the third annual "K12 Online Conference" for educators around the world interested in the use of web 2.0 tools in classrooms and professional practice. This year's conference is scheduled for October 20-24 and October 27-31 of 2008, and will include a pre-conference keynote during the week of October 13. The conference theme for 2008 is "Amplifying Possibilities." Participation in the conference (as in the past) is entirely free. Conference materials are published in English and available for worldwide distribution and use under a Creative Commons license. Some changes in the requirements for presentations are being made this year and are detailed below. The deadline for proposal submission is June 23, 2008. Selected presentations will be announced at NECC 2008 in San Antonio, Texas, USA.

OVERVIEW

As in past years, K12 Online 2008 will feature four "conference strands," two each week. Two presentations will be published in each strand each day, Monday through Friday, so four new presentations will be available each day over the course of the two weeks. Including the pre-conference keynote, a total of 41 presentations will be published. Each twenty minute (or less) presentation will be shared online in a downloadable format and released simultaneously via the conference blog (www.k12onlineconference.org) the conference Twitter account, and the conference audio and video podcast channels. All presentations will be archived online for posterity. A total of 82 past presentations are currently available from K12 Online 2006 and K12 Online 2007. If you are planning to submit a proposal, please review archived presentations from past years to determine what you might offer that is new and builds on previous work. A variety of live events will also be planned during and following the weeks of the conference.

FOUR STRANDS
Week 1

Strand A: Getting Started

Everything you wanted to know about getting started with web 2.0 technologies for learning but were afraid to ask. The presentations in this strand will focus on specific, free tools for newcomers. Whether you have one classroom computer or a laptop for every student, digital technologies can provide new opportunities to connect with other learners, create new and exciting knowledge products, and engage students in an expanded learning process beyond the traditional "boundaries of the bell." Teachers first introduced to Web 2.0 tools are often unaware of the new possibilities for teaching and learning afforded by the Read/Write Web. Presentations in this strand will amplify and model what is possible in terms of pedagogy, student creation of content, and collaboration. Practical classroom implementation ideas will be emphasized. Presentations will focus more on the ways new tools can be used to engage students in learning, rather than focusing exclusively on how specific tools are used. If you've ever felt like everyone else knows more than you about teaching with technology and you need help getting started, this is the strand for you.

Strand B: Kicking It Up a Notch

You've been using blogs, wikis and other technologies for awhile but perhaps haven't seen them transform your classroom and the learning environment for your students in the ways you think they can. This strand amplifies ways new technologies can be used to transform classroom and personal learning. Rather than merely replicating traditional, analog-based learning tasks, how can digital technologies permit teacher-leaders to "infomate" learning to add greater interactivity, personal differentiation, and multi-modal exploration of curriculum topics? Fresh new approaches to using Web 2.0 tools for learning and authentic assessment will be highlighted. Presentations will explore innovative ways Web 2.0 tools can be blended together to help students create, collaborate, and share the knowledge safely on the global stage of the Internet. Maybe it's time to share your insights and experiences with your teaching community. Join these sessions to gain insights on amplifying the possibilities of learning in your classroom and/or your professional practice.

Week 2

Strand A: Prove it.

Although some teachers are excited to "amplify possibilities" using computer technologies, Web 2.0 tools, and 21st Century learning strategies in their classrooms, how do we know if these innovative instructional strategies are really working? Since information technologies and emerging brain research continue to rapidly evolve and change, it is challenging as well as vital to find current, meaningful research to under gird the learning initiatives we are using in our classrooms. What are "best practices" for teaching and learning with the new participatory media? This strand will share research results from the field that support students in using knowledge to communicate, collaborate, analyze, create, innovate, build community and solve problems. In addition, successful methods for developing and/or delivery of action research projects or research-based instruction in today's digital world will be explored. In some cases, participants may be invited to participate in ongoing or beginning research on Web 2.0 tool use, constructivist pedagogy, or other 21st Century research issues. Educational research about emerging professional development strategies, contemporary learning theory, systemic school reform, and other current themes of educational change are also appropriate for inclusion in this strand.

Help us to examine such research questions as:

• » What does research in learning science, instructional design, informal learning, and other fields tell us about today's learner and their success?
• » What design features must teachers incorporate into their instructional activities to support meaningful learning?
• » What is the role of assessment in today's changing classroom? How should assessment be structured to meaningfully assess student acheivement in the context of the modern classroom?

Strand B: Leading the Change

Innovative approaches to teaching and learning using web 2.0 tools are often utilized by a limited number of "early adopter" teachers in our schools. This strand seeks to amplify ways educators in a variety of contexts are serving as constructive catalysts for broad-based pedagogic change using Web 2.0 technologies as well as student-centered, project-based approaches to learning. Presentations in this strand will both showcase successful strategies as well as amplify critical issues which must be addressed for innovative learning methods to be adopted by teachers, librarians, and administrators on a more widespread basis. These issues may include (but are not limited to) issues of copyright, fair use and intellectual property, Internet content filtering, student privacy and safety issues, administrator expectations for teacher utilization of Web 2.0 tools, pilot initiatives utilizing key Web 2.0 technologies in different content areas, and innovative ways students and teachers are providing just-in-time support as well as formal learning opportunities for each other focusing on Web 2.0 tools. Successful approaches for both large and small schools, in rural as well as urban settings, will be included. This strand will explore and amplify a menu of practical ideas for educators in diverse contexts who want to continue amplifying possibilities in our schools.

CALL FOR PROPOSALS

This call encourages all educators, both experienced and novice with respect to Web 2.0 learning tools, to submit proposals to present at this conference via this link. Take this opportunity to share your successes, strategies, and tips in "amplifying the possibilities” of web 2.0 powered learning in one of the four conference strands.

The deadline for proposal submissions is June 23, 2008 at midnight GMT. You will be contacted no later than July 2, 2008 regarding your proposal's status. The conveners reserve to right to reposition a presentation in another strand if they believe it is best placed elsewhere. As in past years, conveners will utilize blind review committees to evaluate all submissions.

Presentations for K12Online08 must conform to the following requirements:

• 1. Presentations must be a single media file of twenty minutes or less in length.
• 2. Presentations must be submitted in a downloadable and convertable file format (mp3, mov, WMV, FLV, m4a, or m4v.) Presenters wanting to use an alternative format should contact their respective strand convener in advance.
• 3. Presentations are due two weeks prior to the week the relevant strand begins. (Week 1 presentations are due Monday, October 6, Week 2 presentations are due Monday, October 13.)
• 4. Presentations must be submitted only one time and on time. Early submissions are welcomed! Repeat submissions (with changes and additional edits) will not be accepted. Presenters should proof carefully before submitting!
• 5. All presentations will be shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported license.

The following are optional but encouraged presentation elements:

• 1. Prior to September 13th, presenters are invited to submit a "teaser" (maximum video or audio file length: 3 minutes) about their presentation. This can be any type of online artifact and does not have to be downloadable. Examples may include videos, animations, posters, audio interviews, etc.
• » In addition to marketing the presentation, teasers can be designed to encourage and solicit community input related to the presentation topic in advance of the presentation submission deadline.
• » View teaser examples from 2007 at http://k12online07.wikispaces.com/Teasers
• 2. Supplementary materials supporting presentations are welcomed. These can be wikis with supporting material links, linked examples of student projects, school district exemplary initiatives, social bookmarking collections, and/or other related content.
• 3. Follow-up projects and/or live interaction opportunities for conference presentations which further amplify the possibilities of the presentation topic may be included. (This can include sharing and building of content prior to, during and after the conference.)

As you draft your proposal, you may wish to consider the presentation topics listed below which were suggested in the comments on the K12 Online Conference Blog:

• » Special needs education
• » Creative Commons, Intellectual Property, Copyright and Fair Use
• » Student voices
• » Community involvement
• » Games in education
• » Specific ideas, tips, mini lessons centered on pedagogical use of web 2.0 tools
• » Overcoming institutional inertia and resistance
• » Aligning Web 2.0 and other projects to national standards
• » Getting your message across
• » How Web 2.0 can assist those with disabilities
• » ePortfolios
• » Classroom 2.0 activities at the elementary level
• » Teacher/peer collaboration
• » Authentic assessment
• » Overcoming content filtering issues
• » Navigating "open web" versus "closed web" publishing of student work

Prospective presenters are reminded that the audience of the K12 Online Conference is global in nature and diverse in their educational context. For this reason presentations and presentation materials which address issues from a variety of perspectives are welcomed.

EVALUATION

Acceptance decisions will be made based on RELEVANCE, SIGNIFICANCE, ORIGINALITY, QUALITY, and CLARITY. Borrowing from the COSL 2008 call for proposals:

A submission is RELEVANT when
⇒ it directly addresses the conference and strand themes

A submission is SIGNIFICANT when
⇒ it raises and discusses issues important to improving the effectiveness and/or sustainability of 21st Century teaching and learning efforts, and
⇒ its contents can be broadly (globally) disseminated and understood

A submission is ORIGINAL when
⇒ it addresses a new problem or one that hasn't been studied in depth,
⇒ it has a novel combination of existing research results which promise new insights, and / or
⇒ it provides a perspective on problems different from those explored before

A submission is of HIGH QUALITY when
⇒ existing literature is drawn upon, and / or
⇒ claims are supported by sufficient data, and / or
⇒ an appropriate methodology is selected and properly implemented, and / or
⇒ limitations are described honestly

A submission is CLEARLY WRITTEN when
⇒ it is organized effectively, and / or
⇒ the English is clear and unambiguous, and / or
⇒ it follows standard conventions of punctuation, mechanics, and citation, and / or
⇒ the readability is good

KEYNOTES

The first presentation in each strand will kick off with a keynote by a well known educator who is distinguished and knowledgeable in the context of their strand. Keynoters will be announced shortly.

CONVENERS

Darren Kuropatwa is currently Department Head of Mathematics at Daniel Collegiate Institute in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. He is known internationally for his ability to weave the use of online social tools meaningfully and concretely into his pedagogical practice. Darren's professional blog is called A Difference. He will convene Getting Started.

Dean Shareski is a Digital Learning Consultant for Prairie South School Division in Saskatchewan, Canada. Dean is an advocate for the use of social media in the classroom. To that end he works with teachers and students in exploring ways to make learning relevant, authentic and engaging. He also is a part time sessional lecturer for the University of Regina. He is celebrating his 20th year as an educator. Dean blogs at Ideas and Thoughts. Dean will convene Kicking It Up A Notch.

Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach, a 20-year educator, has been a classroom teacher, charter school principal, district administrator, and digital learning consultant. She currently serves as an adjunct faculty member teaching preservice teachers at The College of William and Mary (Virginia, USA), where she is in the dissertation phase of completing her doctorate in educational planning, policy and leadership. As the cofounder of the Powerful Learning Practice Network she helps schools and teachers from around the world use community as a powerful tool for systemic change. You can find out more on her website at www.21stcenturycollaborative.com. She will convene Prove It.

Wesley Fryer is an educator, author, digital storyteller and change agent. He summarizes his ongoing work with educators and students in social media environments with the statement, "I'm here for the learning revolution." His blog, “Moving at the Speed of Creativity” was selected as the 2006 “Best Learning Theory Blog” by eSchoolnews and Discovery Education. Social media sites to which Wes contributes are listed on http://claimid.com/wfryer. Wes will convene Leading the Change.

QUESTIONS?

If you have any questions about any part of this call for proposals, please contact one of us:

  • Darren Kuropatwa: dkuropatwa {at} gmail {dot} com

  • Dean Shareski: shareski{at} gmail{dot} com

  • Sheryl Nusbaum-Beach: snbeach {at} cox {dot} net

  • Wesley Fryer: wesfryer {at} pobox {dot} com

Please duplicate this post and distribute it far and wide across the blogosphere. Feel free to republish it on your own blog (actually, we'd really like people to do that ;-) ) or link back to this post (published simultaneously on all our blogs).

Conference Tag: k12online08