Saturday, August 25, 2007

Classroom 2.0 Set Panel for Office 2.0 Conference


Details on our panel discussion set for the Office 2.0 Conference in San Francisco have been posted. Ours is the longest session with the most panelists--should be very interesting!

(This is the same conference where the attendees all receive an iPhone or a PlayStation 3. I chose the iPhone, and have been paying with it for a couple of days. I did not activate the phone service, but have just been using local wifi to test it out. Very fun. Not perfect, but very fun.)

From the conference website:

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Time & Location

Thursday, September 6, 2007, 3:30PM - 5:00PM, Conservatory

Speakers

Steve Hargadon (Moderator), Editor, Classroom 2.0
Kyle Brumbaugh, Technology Coordinator, San Mateo Union High School District
Steve Dembo, Online Community Manager, Discovery Communications
Josie Fraser, Advisor, Childnet International
Adam Frey, Founder, Tangient
Anastasia Goodstein, Editor, Ypulse
Karen Greenwood Henke, Founder, Nimble Press
Rushton Hurley, Founder, Next Vista for Learning
Sylvia Martinez, President, Generation YES

Abstract

Schools and educational institutions are finding significant practical applications for the tools of Web/Office 2.0, but the hurdles to adoption are as large as the potential for change (and possibly directly correlated). As in the Enterprise, there are significant practical challenges to overcome--security, filtering, and comfort with and appropriateness of openness--but there is a great potential for a dramatic rethinking of the role of formal institutions in teaching and learning.

The promise of Web 2.0 technologies is so great that almost all of the basic types of online collaborative software are being used by teachers somewhere, whose own use of the tools is minimizing their sense of isolation and creating a strong communities of practice and professional development. But while these tools open new vistas of collaborative learning, distance education, differentiated or individualized instruction, and proactive educational paths, they also inherently challenge our culturally entrenched and traditional learning structures.

Blogs have been the primary entry point of Web 2.0 into education, but educators in growing numbers are also now engaging students by using wikis, podcasting, collaborative documents, social networking, social bookmarking, photo- and video-sharing, and other tools of user-generated content. In many (but not all) cases, students are coming to school with a broad familiarity with these technologies, but not necessarily with the depth of understanding to use them thoughtfully or carefully. Do they park these skills at the door before coming into the classroom, or can schools help students to learn to use them in productive educational ways? Can we afford to have enough computing technology in schools to do so? Can and should we train existing teachers to use the tools themselves so that they, in turn, can help the students understand and incorporate them into their educational lives? How does collaborative technology change the role of the teacher? How relevant is formal education when access to the world's knowlege-base is often more accessible at home than at school? How significant will collaborative technologies become for the administrative side of education? What role will commercial organizations play in filling in the gaps?

Many feel that educational computing has been the great unfulfilled promise of the last twenty years. Come join us as we discuss how this may be changing, and fast, because of Web/Office 2.0.

3 comments:

  1. Anonymous6:13 PM

    I am jealous. This sounds like a great event. The School 2.0 movement really needs more exposure.

    Any chance of getting PBS or CSpan coverage of the discussion? Otherwise maybe a streaming video.

    Go School 2.0! The classroom is dead.

    - Frank Krasicki
    http://region19.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'm not sure the classroom is dead--or that most people would want to let it die right now.

    I wouldn't even know where to begin to try and get that kind of coverage. I do think we'll try to stream it for the blogosphere.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Steve,
    The conference sounds very interesting. Regarding the use of web2.0 collaboration tools among students, I have a few invitations for YouFig.com I can give you. It's a social collaboration site where students and teachers (among others) can band together to collaborate on any topic, namely academic projects.
    Contact me at akm10 (at) cornell (dot) edu if you'd like an invitation.

    Maybe I'll even make my way to the conference!

    ReplyDelete

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