Building Understanding

The Learning 2.008 Conference in Shanghai, China is later this week. Continuing ISB’s dedication to always improving learning, we are sending a large group of teachers to the conference.

Awesome.

Keynote and other presenters include (does this look like a who’s who of blogrolls or what?!):

• Brian Crosby
• Clarence Fisher
• David Jakes
• Alan Levine
• Ewan McIntosh
• Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach
• David Warlick
• Jeff Utecht
• Kim Cofino
  

Just to name a few.

In addition to thought-provoking sessions, one key element to the event are the “un-conferences” where conversations develop in pre-determined time blocks about anything.  The conference will monitor Twitter tweets to determine what unconference sessions will occur and then people will just “join the conversation”.

This year, I won’t be presenting – which I did do at last year’s Learning 2.0 with colleague Justin – so my focus is really going to be on learning from others.  This conference is always a tough one because there are always 3 or 4 sessions you want to go to in the same time slot!

I have quite a few former colleagues in Shanghai as well, so it’ll be great to catch up with them and to continue the great networking that this conference brings face2face.  Looking forward to meeting Brian Lockwood and Jenny Luca (all the way from NZ) who are a big part of my Personal Learning Network.

See you in China!

(man, this international education gig is good!)

Technorati Tags: learn2cn, learn2008cn

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And many of them were in Shanghai this past weekend.

Having returned from the Learning 2.0 Conference hosted in Shanghai, China, I am still feeling the exhaustion/elation of a conference in which my thinking was constantly challenged, stretched, and inspired.

Thinking allowed?

Try thinking expected.

It’s not often that you attend a conference that is truly up your alley – where EVERY session has more than one workshop you wish you could attend. Where you can’t even attend your colleagues’ presentations for support, because you don’t want to miss out on learning something new or being inspired by someone else. (Plus your colleague needs you to go elsewhere, since he/she is missing a session due to presenting!)

Learning 2.0 was one of those.

Learning 2.0 was one of a kind.

(Maybe that’s not fair, I haven’t been to EVERY conference.)

I’ll end the superlatives here, because it won’t take long to do a search of the ed blog world to find others out there celebrating this event. Kudos to the organizers. You didn’t do it for the kudos, but kudos nonetheless.

So on to the details.

Reminded of what matters by McKenzie.

Inspired by Richardson.

Thought-provoked by November.

Reflective with Nussbaum-Beach.

Bummed that I missed any sessions with Fryer.

Had a blast with all of the participants. Ed Tech Geeks, the lot of us. And it was great!

I experimented with different, very-visual way to take notes at each of the sessions, which I will share next post.

Justin and I presented our new literacy curriculum, which we called Curriculum 2.0, which I wrote about in my last post.

More on this to come.

In the meantime, thanks to all who made the Learning 2.0 Conference such a positive experience.

Technorati Tags: learn2cn curriculum2.0 fryer richardson mckenzie nussbaum-beach november edtech learning2.0

It is getting close to the Learning 2.0 conference in Shanghai and I am becoming more and more excited to present the work that Justin and I have done in preparing what we believe is a new and better way to approach technology learning in schools – Curriculum 2.0.

Better?

Better than what?

Better than the incredibly thorough, but utterly oppressive I.T. scope and sequences or standards (or some other s-word) that have been the norm at schools.

Better than these documents that – rather than making technology integration accessible – serve to intimidate teachers and foster the counter-productive notion that talking about technology is for tech geeks and experts, thus eliminating it from the classroom.

Better than what we’ve done before and seen fail.

At least we think so.

Here’s the blurb on our workshop in Session 8, Sunday at 10:15 am (I’m not listed in the real program):

Information Technology Curriculum 2.0
By Justin Medved (and Dennis Harter)
At ISB, we believe that technology is a tool for learning. We believe that technology is used as a tool outside of formal schooling for communication, collaboration, understanding, and accessing knowledge. It is our goal in developing an integrated curriculum to ensure that the way students learn with technology agrees with the way they live with technology. At ISB we believe we must focus on the higher-order skills that are necessary for success in the 21st Century. These skills are not tied to any particular software or technology-type, but rather provide students with the opportunity to succeed no matter what their futures hold. In this session we will share our curriculum model and our implementation plan for the next three years.
Room: C-228

It’s a work in progress, but it’s progress that we focus on.

We’d love your feedback, so if you are going to be there, hopefully you’ll attend and give us your thoughts.

If you are coming to Shanghai, introduce yourself here and we’ll meet again in a few days!

Looking forward to it.

Listen to this post

Technorati Tags: learn2cn curriculum2.0

This weekend is the Learning 2.0 Conference in Shanghai, China. Featured speakers include: Alan November, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Will Richardson, Jamie McKenzie, Gary Stager, Wes Fryer and Chris Smith.

Are you kidding me?! That’s like a who’s who of Ed Tech RSS feeds! And as exciting as that line-up is, also attending are Always Learning’s Kim Cofino and Medagogy’s Justin Medved (then again I work at the same school – so I see them regularly) and Thinking Stick’s Jeff Utecht (one of our hosts).

How can I not be psyched?!

SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT: Justin and I are presenting one session on our ideas for embedding the new literacy we all talk about into school life and curriculum. We believe that our approach may give it a chance to be successful finally. We’ve seen too many IT scope and sequence documents fail. Our approach, we believe, makes all of this accessible to teachers and their buy-in ultimately seems to determine the success of a program. If you are at the conference we hope to see you there in room C-228, for Session 8.

We are hoping that the minds of fellow Ed Tech people will help us frame our work and improve it as we go. The collaboration in our jobs is just so great.

Can’t wait…it’s going to be fun.