Saturday, September 26, 2009

Free Services from Elluminate for Emergencies, Disasters, or Pandemics

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

  1. 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.

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

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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.

  1. 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

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

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

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

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

danah boyd Live Interview Thursday, September 24th, 2009

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.

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Our Fifth Worldwide Vitiligo Meetup Call

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

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

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.

Tuesday, September 08, 2009

PBS WIDE ANGLE's Time For School Documentary

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/

Sunday, September 06, 2009

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

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.

Saturday, September 05, 2009

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

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

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

Wednesday, September 02, 2009

Global Awareness Panel September 10th

Part of the Future of Education interview series.

Event Link:
http://www.futureofeducation.com/forum/topics/global-awareness-panel
Date:
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
Time:
5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am GMT (next day) (international times here)
Duration: 90 minutes
Location: In Elluminate. Log in at http://tinyurl.com/futureofed.

Lucy Gray hosts a virtual panel on global awareness with an all-star line up (see below). The primary focus will be to highlight the work of many organizations including iEARN, ePals, and the Asia Society and to discuss the concept of global awareness in relation to the Partnership for 21st Century Skills' frame for 21st century learning. Post your pre-show questions below.

PANELISTS

Shari Albright

Bio: Shari Becker Albright serves as the Chief Executive Officer of the Asia Society International Studies Schools Network, a national network of small, internationally-themed secondary schools dedicated to preparing college ready, globally competent citizens for the 21st century. Prior to joining the Asia Society, Shari served as the principal of a public, magnet school in the North East Independent School District in San Antonio, Texas – the International School of the Americas which was the recipient of the Goldman Sachs Prize in International Education.

URLs: http://www.asiasociety.org/education


Kim Cofino

Bio: Originally from the US, Kim has spent the last ten years teaching internationally, beginning in Munich, Germany, continuing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and currently in Bangkok, Thailand. An Apple Distinguished Educator, Kim regularly consults with other international schools interested in implementing 21st century learning, has been profiled on a number of educational websites and journals, and has spoken at conferences and professional development sessions throughout Europe, Asia, and the United States. Her professional blog, Always Learning, is an invaluable resource for teachers seeking examples of authentic student engagement.

URLs: http://mscofino.edublogs.org


Westley Field

Bio: Westley is Managing Director of Skoolaborate, a global initiative, involving over 40 schools and community organisations, that uses a blended environment including online units and virtual worlds to produce engaging student learning experiences. In his day job, Westley is the MLC online learning director leading a 1 to 1 program that is recognized by many as one the best examples of blended learning world wide. Westley presents around the world on topics such as Making 1 to 1 work, Heuristics of implementing elearning, Second Life in Education, Educational Technology, Connecting Students in a Web 2.0 world and Leading in a Flat World.

URLs: http://www.skoolaborate.com, http://www.westleyfield.com


Lucy Gray

Bio: Lucy is the founder of the Global Education Collaborative, an online community designed to connect educators and organizations while promoting global awareness. She is currently employed by the Center for Elementary Mathematics and Science Education at the University of Chicago as an education technology specialist. She is an Apple Distinguished Educator and Google Certified Teacher.


URLs: http://globaleducation.ning.com, http://lucygray.org


Carol Anne McGuire


Bio: Technology Integration Specialist, Apple Distinguished Educator, Discovery Star Educator, ISTE Teacher of the Year Carol Anne McGuire is an award-winning educator who began her career teaching blind and visually impaired students over 20 years ago. She is the founder and “Lead Rocker” of an international project called “Rock Our World.” ROW connects students on every continent to collaborate in music composition, filmmaking and meeting each other in live video conferences. Carol Anne has worked with companies such as Apple, Discovery, Disney, American Film Institute, Google and Will Smith.

Carol Anne Keynotes all over the world on topics such as Global Collaboration, Accessibility, Digital Storytelling, Podcasting, Technology in the Classroom and Movie Making for the Non-Techy Teacher!


URLs: www.rockourworld.org, http://rockourworld.ning.com, http://discoveryeducatorabroad.com/rockourworld


Diane Midness


Bio: Diane Midness is Director for Professional Development for iEARN USA. She is a former high school Media Specialist and Coordinating Teacher for Technology Integration and program coordinator for The University of North Carolina’s Center for International Understanding’s International School Partnerships through Technology.

URLs: http://us.iearn.org


Rita Oates

Bio: Rita is Vice President of Education Markets for ePals, a global collaborative community with more than 18 million users in 200 countries. Earlier in her career, she was director of ed tech in Miami-Dade Public Schools, the nation's fourth largest, serving students born in more than 120 countries. She won a FIPSE grant for ed tech professional development in the district. She has also been graduate program chair in Computer Education and Technology at Barry University, and earlier taught high school English and journalism in three schools in Kansas -- rural, urban and suburban. She was the Education Editor of the first online service in the U.S. with color and graphics, called VIEWTRON, in the 1980s. She has keynoted and given workshops at major ed tech conferences from coast to coast and has written ten books and more than 100 articles about ed tech and school reform. As a child, she lived in Costa Rica and attended a public girls' school in Spanish. Just before joining ePals, she helped create an ed tech plan for the public schools in the United Arab Emirates.

URLs: www.epals.com


Sharon Peters

Bio: Sharon Peters is the Director of Technology at Hebrew Academy in Montreal, Canada. She recently won ISTE's Online Learning Award for the Darfur Video Project. In 2008 and 2009, she led teams who facilitated ICT workshops with an NGO, Teachers Without Borders Canada, to educators in the townships of South Africa and rural Kenya. She has presented keynotes at conferences and workshops throughout North America about new media literacies and global collaborative projects. Her students have participated in several award-winning international web-based collaborative projects with classes around the world using technology to support the learning goals.

URLs: http://wearejustlearning.ca
http://twbcanada.ning.com/
http://take2videos.ning.com/


Julene Reed

Bio: Julene Reed is the Director of Academic Technology for St. George's Independent School in Memphis, TN. She is on the advisory boards of: Apple Distinguished Educators, Dr. Jane Goodall's Roots & Shoots, Polar Bears International, and the Tennessee Distance Learning Association.


Julene keynotes and leads workshops on Global Education, "Going Green," Web 2.0 for Education, Podcasting, Technology Integration, Digital Storytelling, Laptop Learning, Videoconferencing, 21st Century Teaching & Learning, and much more.


URLs: http://edcommunity.apple.com/ali/story.php?itemID=16249


Michael Searson

Bio: Michael Searson is executive director of Kean University's School for Global Education & Innovation. He is chairperson of the Xi Hu Conference on 21st Century Learning, to be held in Hangzhou, China in November 2009. His work often connects local school districts with international partners. Searson is a vice president for the Society for Information Technology and Teacher Education; a member of the Global Learn Asia Pacific Executive Committee; a member of the Apple Distinguished Educator Advisory Board; Curriki Hearst Faculty Fellow. Searson has authored or coauthored a number of grants focusing on the integration of technology into educational settings.