Live November 2nd in Elluminate - Director of "Race to Nowhere" Film on American Schools

Join me this evening for a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com interview with Vicki Abeles, director of RACE TO NOWHERE:  The Dark Side of America's Achievement Culture.  Concerned mother turned filmmaker, Vicki "ams her camera at the culture of hollow achievement and pressure to perform that has invaded America's schools."  This culture, she argues, is "destroying our childrenʼs love of learning and feeding an epidemic of unprepared, disengaged, and unhealthy students."

[This event was originally scheduled for August but had to be postponed.]

Date: Tuesday, November 2nd, 2010
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am (next day) 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 at the event page.
Event and Recording Page:  http://www.learncentral.org/event/90720

This remarkable new film shines a light on the price our kids pay for this “race to nowhere.” Cheating is commonplace, stress-related illness, depression and burnout are rampant, and ironically, young people arrive at college and the workplace unprepared and uninspired. Featuring the heartbreaking stories of young people who have been pushed to the brink and educators who are burned out and worried that students arenʼt developing the skills needed for the global economy, RACE TO NOWHERE points to the silent epidemic running rampant in our schools.

RACE TO NOWHERE is a call to families, educators, experts and policy makers to examine current assumptions on how to best prepare the youth of America to become the healthy, bright, contributing and leading citizens in the 21st century.

Among many others, RACE TO NOWHERE features Dr. Madeline Levine, author of the bestseller, The Price of Privilege, Dr. Deborah Stipek, Dean of the Stanford School of Education, Dr. Kenneth Ginsburg, an adolescent medicine specialist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Dr. Wendy Mogel, author of The Blessing of a Skinned Knee, Denise Pope, author of Doing School, and Sara Bennett, author of The Case Against Homework.

Vicki Abeles learned at an early age that the key to success is hard work and a good education. Raised by a struggling, single mom who encouraged her children to attend graduate school, she worked her way up from nothing to become a successful attorney and businesswoman. As a mother, Vicki wanted her children to have all the opportunities she lacked, growing up. But when her daughters reached middle school, they were overwhelmed by pressure from classes and extracurriculars. When one became physically sick, she and her husband realized they had to rethink the way they were raising and educating their children. Vicki took it upon herself to find out how our broken education system harms both children and adults, and what we can do to change it. It is this investigation that is depicted in this film. Vicki is the co-director of RACE TO NOWHERE.

September 7th - Charles Fadel on 21st Century Learning and STEM

Join us in September for a third (and final?) live and interactive FutureofEducation.com interview with Charles Fadel, who will explore the intersection of 21st Century Skills and STEM.  He will describe how the need to teach for Skills impacts STEM:  by requiring a more critical review of the curriculum to refocus on what is relevant (applicable and significant), and by generalizing approaches found mostly in teaching Sciences (via Projects).

Date: Tuesday, September 7th, 2010
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am (next day) 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 at the event page.
Event and Recording Page:  http://www.learncentral.org/node/95438

Charles Fadel is Global Education Research Lead at Cisco Systems, and the Cisco board member at the Partnership for 21st Century Skills (of which Cisco was a founding member) and Innovate/Educate (an organization dedicated to advocacy of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM)). He is vice-chair of the Education committee of the Business and Industry Advisory Committee to the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) and actively works with three committees of the OECD — CERI, AHELO, and TALIS. He has consulted with a wide variety of education ministries/boards including Massachusetts, France, Chile, Brazil, Costa Rica, Tunisia, and the Dominican Republic, to name a few, and has worked on education projects with more than thirty countries and states. Charles has co-authored a book titled “21st Century Skills — Learning for Life in our Times”, and frequently lectures on this topic, as well as STEM, and Education Technology.

He is presently advising two non-profit organizations, and an innovative school system in Chile (Innova100). He is also incubating a non-profit organization addressing the convergence of 21st Century Skills and STEM to better teach Statistics and Probabilities. He is a visiting scholar at Wharton/UPenn where he recently taught a class on Technologies for Learning. He has recently served on the Massachusetts Governor's Readiness Project as well as its 21st Century Skills task force.

He has contributed many articles or has been interviewed in publications such as Technology & Learning, New Media Consortium, Massachusetts Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development, eSchool News, Education Week, University Business, EETimes, and others. He has presented at numerous education conferences, including the Consortium for School Networking (COSN), the National School Boards Association (NSBA), the National Center for Technology Innovation (NCTI), and the Masie Center's learning conferences.

Charles has been awarded five patents on video, content, and communication technologies. He holds a bachelor of science in electronics with course concentration in quantum and solid-state physics with a minor in neuroscience, and a master of business administration in international marketing. An avid reader, he has autodidactically learned disciplines such evolutionary psychology and comparative linguistics. He also enjoys the lessons of classical history.

Tonight Live in Elluminate: Interview with George Siemens

Join me this evening for a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com interview with George Siemens on the role of new media in learning, systemic change, social media and networked learning, elearning, "connectivism," and more.

Date: Thursday, August 26th, 2010
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am (next day) 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 at the event page.
Event and Recording Page:  http://www.learncentral.org/event/90719

George Siemens is Founder and President of Complexive Systems Inc., a research lab assisting organizations to develop integrated learning structures for global strategy execution. In 2006 he authored a book - Knowing Knowledge (.pdf version available here)- an exploration of how the context and characteristics of knowledge have changed, and what it means to organizations today. In 2009, he published the Handbook of Emerging Technologies for Learning (.pdf version available here) with Peter Tittenberger.

George is currently affiliated with the Technology Enhanced Knowledge Research Institute (TEKRI) at Athabasca University. His role as a social media strategist involves planning, researching, and implementing social networked technologies, with focus on systemic impact and institutional change.

Prior to TEKRI, he was the Associate Director, Research and Development with the Learning Technologies Centre at University of Manitoba.

Tonight - Dan Meyer and His Vision for Math Reform, Live in Elluminate

Join LearnCentral's Math 2.0 Interest Group Wednesday for a live and interactive online event where Dan Meyer will talk about his vision for math reform. WCYDWT - What Can You Do With This - is a design method for creating powerful, technologically supported and rich problem-solving experiences in math classrooms. .

Date: Wednesday, August 25th, 2010
Time: 6:30pm Pacific / 9:30pm Eastern / 12:30am GMT (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/math20event. 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 at the event page.
Event and Recording Page:  http://www.learncentral.org/node/94967

Dan Meyer taught high school mathematics from 2004 to 2010 and currently sudies at Stanford University on a doctoral fellowship. His professional interests are curriculum design and teacher education. His personal interests are graphic design, filmmaking, and infographics. He keeps a steady eye out for collisions between the two. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife. Dan blogs as dy/dan at http://blog.mrmeyer.com.

Wednesday Live in Elluminate: the BYU-Idaho Learning Model

Join me Wednesday for a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com interview with Fenton Broadhead and Kelly Burgener of the private, religious Brigham Young University - Idaho for a discussion of their unique learning model.  Anya Kamenetz highlighted BYU-I in her book DIY-U (my interview of Anya here) for its low costs, its focus on teaching over research, its year-round schedule, its integration of online courses, and its "relentless" measurement of learning outcomes.

Please note that this interview is earlier in the day than usual and as originally listed, but the recorded version (as always) will be posted later in the day if you can't make it live.

Date: Wednesday, August 25th, 2010
Time: 1:30pm Pacific / 4:30pm Eastern / 7:30pm 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 at the event page.
Event and Recording Page:  http://www.learncentral.org/node/90717

Kelly Burgener is currently serving as the associate academic vice president for instruction at Brigham Young University-Idaho. He has been employed by the university for 20 years, and during that time has served as dean of the College of Performing and Visual Arts, chair of the Department of Art, and director of the graphic services office.

Burgener’s educational background includes a BFA from the Art Center College of Design and an MFA from Utah State University. Prior to entering academics, he worked as a designer in Minneapolis. Burgener and his wife, Elizabeth, live in Rexburg with their family of six children.

Dr. Fenton L. Broadhead is the academic vice president at Brigham Young University-Idaho. He came to the campus in 1987, serving two years in the Dean of Student office and as a faculty member in the Department of Economics for 21 years. His areas of focus have been International Economics and Economic Development. He was later named as the dean of the College of Business and Communication on January 1, 2002.

In March of 2008, Dr. Broadhead began serving as academic vice president at BYU-Idaho. He has served on the State Judicial Nominating Committee for Utah, as a board member of TechConnect East and Eastern Idaho Entrepreneurial Center, and as a city councilman, as well as other community committees in Utah and Idaho. He has received recognition for his teaching and community service. Prior to coming to BYU-Idaho, he was a businessman involved in agriculture, gasoline, and real estate.

Dr. Broadhead has been involved in consulting and training in human capital and economic development in domestic and international settings through his company, Peak International. His publications and works include: Instructional Management-Handbook for Effective Teaching, Education-“Investment in Human Capital,” Portfolio of Human Capital Assets, and 10 Principles of Effective Training.

Dr. Broadhead grew up in Nephi, Utah and attended Brigham Young University earning a bachelor degree in economics and a master’s degree in educational leadership. He holds a doctorate degree in education administration with a cognate in economics from the University of Idaho.

He and his wife Carol are the parents of six children and 18 grandchildren.

Free Copy of "Lifelike Pedagogy"

A few weeks ago I interviewed Marcelo Rodrigues, the author of Lifelike Pedagogy and education director of Escola do Max in Brazil, about his philosophy of "real life" education.  Links to his interview are available at FutureofEducation.com.

Marcelo was taken by the fact that another interviewee, David Wood, offered free copies of his book in electronic form during that session, and felt that he would like to do the same for Lifelike Pedagogy.  If fact, Marcelo has created a special page and video for the book in order to help spread the word about the educational model they have built and the work that they are doing.

For those interested in how to run a school based on students choosing real problems and ideas to work on, this is a book that will interest you a great deal.  http://www.lifelikepedagogy.com/book/

Live and Interactive Elluminate Event Schedule for This Week

Below are this week's public, free, and interactive Webinars through LearnCentral.org, the social learning network for education that I work on for Elluminate.  The time of the events below will show up automatically in your own time zone when you are registered in LearnCentral and when you have chosen your time zone in your profile. Event recordings are posted and available after the events if you aren't able to attend them live. If you are looking for an easy calendar import / RSS feed for these events, you'll now find a link on your  calendar page or the calendar page of specific groups!

Be on the lookout for Australia-time-friendly events as part of the new Australia Series, Spanish-language Webinars from the Aula 2.0 Series, and student-oriented sessions from Students 2.0!  We also hope you will 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).

Thanks for your attention, and see you online!

Monday, August 23rd

• 1pm PDT (US) / 4pm EDT (US) / 8pm GMT/UTC (next day) (intl times): FUTURE OF EDUCATION SERIES 
  Amber Mac discusses her book “Power Friending” and demystifying social media, with Steve Hargadon as part of the FutureofEducation.com interview series.
  http://www.learncentral.org/event/92318

• 10:45pm PDT (US) / 1:45am EDT (next day) (US) / 5:45pm GMT/UTC (next day) (intl
  times): AUSTRALIA SERIES
  “Tech Talk Tuesdays: LEEPing into Leadership - Students as ICT Mentors,” with host Anne Mirtschin. “In this session we will discuss LEEP with Lois Smethhurst and her students. LEEP stands for Lodgers’ E-learning Extension and is a special program offered to high achieving students at Berwick Lodge Primary School, Victoria Australia. One of the main goals of the program is to enable students to become ICT leaders in their classroom, modelling and supporting their peers and teachers to utilise ICT skills that enhance learning. The students who participate in the program have lessons in advanced ICT skills and are supported to develop the social and interpersonal skills necessary for leadership and peer mentoring. This is the second year of the program and it is gathering momentum as the students develop confidence and have experience in the role. Equally teachers are becoming more comfortable and adept at utilizing the ICT student experts in their room.” http://www.learncentral.org/event/92356/

Tuesday, August 24ths

• 4pm PDT (US) / 7pm EDT (US) / 11pm GMT/UTC (next day) (intl times): AULA 2.0 SERIES
  “Utilizando Web 2.0 para promover comunicación en las clases de Idiomas – Un Ejemplo de Youtube,” con Thomas Chaskel.
  http://www.learncentral.org/event/93592

• 5pm PDT (US) / 8pm EDT (US) / 12am GMT/UTC (next day) (intl times): FUTURE OF EDUCATION SERIES 
  Join Steve Hargadon as he interviews Kathleen Cushman on her book about student studies on engagement and learning, “Fires in the Mind.” Part of the FutureofEducation.com interview series.
  http://www.learncentral.org/node/90716

Wednesday, August 25th

• 3am PDT (US) / 6am EDT (US) / 10am GMT/UTC (intl times): AUSTRALIA SERIES
  “eT@lking: Second Life Workshop," with host Marian Heddesheimer. Learn how to teleport to interesting places in SL, how you move your avatar and get information about the virtual world. The
  class will start as presentation (using desktop sharing) to show you my own view in the SL Viewer Version 2. The second part will be a live hands-on tour directly in SL where you need to start up the SL Viewer along with the Elluminate virtual classroom. You need to have an account at Secondlife already. If you don't have a (free) account yet, please create one before you come into class at:
  https://join.secondlife.com/?lang=en-US. Please make sure you will be able to run the SL viewer along with the Elluminate virtual classroom to take part of the second part of this workshop.
  http://www.learncentral.org/event/82790

• 1:30pm PDT (US) / 4:30pm EDT (US) / 7:30pm GMT/UTC (next day) (intl times): FUTURE OF EDUCATION SERIES
  Join Steve Hargadon for a discussion about “The BYU-Idaho Learning Model” as part of the FutureofEducation.com interview series.http://www.learncentral.org/event/90717

• 7pm PDT (US) / 10pm EDT (US) / 2am GMT/UTC (next day) (intl times): AUSTRALIA SERIES
  Join Coach Carole for the latest session of “Moderator Masterclasses: Series 3” as she demonstrates how to moderate segments within the Elluminate tutorial and use the moderator tools effectively. 
  http://www.learncentral.org/event/88354

Thursday, August 26th

• 11am PDT (US) / 2pm EDT (US) / 6pm GMT/UTC (intl times):
  “Elluminti: Back to School,” with host Shannon Autrey Forte. As organizations get ready to rollout Elluminate to their students and faculty for the start of the school year, the August Elluminati session will focus on ensuring you have a successful rollout. During the session, we’ll share key resources you’ll need to prepare your users and train your faculty members. Bring your tips and best practices as well to share with the group. This session will be hosted by Zemina Hasham, Senior Director, International Client Services of Elluminate.
  http://www.learncentral.org/event/89292

• 12:30pm PDT (US) / 3:30pm EDT (US) / 7:30pm GMT/UTC (intl times):
  “Informational Text and Multigenre Text Sets.” Join Kimberly Lightle for a presentation on the importance of using informational text in the primary and elementary grades, and how the creation and use of multigenre text sets can enhance instruction. Science and literacy instruction in the elementary grades is the focus of a new series of web seminars for the 2010-2011 school year. The series is sponsored by Beyond Penguins and Polar Bears, an NSF-funded project that provides professional development and instructional resources to elementary teachers. Information about all of the presentations and the recordings of all past seminars are available at http://wiki.nsdl.org/index.php/BeyondPenguins/Seminars.
  http://www.learncentral.org/event/89871

• 4pm PDT (US) / 7pm EDT (US) / 11pm GMT/UTC (intl times):
  EDUBLOGS SERIES
  “Edublogs Fine Focus (topic to be advised).” Join Jo Hart for a fortnightly unconference "Fine Focus" session on a wide range of topics from: how to use tools/applications (the "techie stuff"), edu issues, e-learning tools/strategies and much more. In fact anything "e" that is of interest to educators. Additionally, if you have anything you would like to share we would love you to deliver a session for us. http://www.learncentral.org/event/90227

• 5pm PDT (US) / 8pm EDT (US) / 12am GMT/UTC (next day) (intl times): FUTURE OF EDUCATION SERIES
  Join Steve Hargadon as he interviews George Siemens about “Connectivism” as part of the FutureofEducation.com interview series.
  http://www.learncentral.org/event/90719

Saturday, August 28th

• 9am PDT (US) / 12pm EDT (US) / 4pm GMT/UTC (intl times): CLASSROOM 2.0 LIVE SERIES
  “eduTecher: Webtools and Resources for Teachers and Students,” with co-hosts Kim Caise, Lorna Costantini and Peggy George. Adam Bellow, founder of eduTecher, will share this website featuring resources and information to assist teachers integrating and using web tools in the classroom.
  http://www.learncentral.org/node/93811
  
  
• 7pm PDT (US) / 10pm EDT (US) / 2am GMT/UTC (next day) (intl times):
  “Carribean Educators Network (CEN) Webinar” with host LeRoy Hill. Join LeRoy as guest,
  Dr. Bob Zenhausern, talks to the issue of the diversity thinking styles and how that relates to reading disability.
  http://www.learncentral.org/event/91273