Monday, October 25, 2010

Thursday Live in Elluminate with Clarence Fisher - Teaching and Learning in a Networked World the

Join me Thursday, October 28th, for a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com webinar with Clarence Fisher.  Winner one of Canada’s highest teaching awards, the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching, Clarence has been called "one of the ...master teachers of the twenty-first century" (by Dean Shareski, no less!).

Date: Thursday, October 28th, 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 Pagehttp://www.learncentral.org/event/113740

Clarence Fisher in His Own Words:

First and most important of all, I am a teacher. I have been teaching for sixteen years and I learn something every day.

I teach full time and enjoy being involved with research to improve what we do in our classrooms. I am involved with efforts to redefine literacy and what it means to be literate in our twenty-first century, technologically advanced society.

I write articles, give presentations, and think about classrooms 2.0 and the possibilities for learning.

My classroom has been featured in several articles in Middle School Journal, Technology and Learning, and in the recent book New Literacies in Action. I have also been featured on CBC, CNET, and MSN.

I have been honoured to win one of Canada’s highest teaching awards; the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching. I have also been named an Outstanding Middle Years Educator in my province, as well as winning several other awards for the innovative integration of technology into everyday classroom life.

I live in a small rural community and think geography is irrelevent on our hyperconnected globe. This leads to the tagline of my blog: “Even From Here.”

Blog: Remote Access

email: glassbeed@gmail.com

Skype: glassbeed

delicious bookmarks: cfisher

Personal flickr page: glassbeednorth

Twitter: glassbeed

What’s up with the “glassbeed?” Read this.

Live in Elluminate with Jim Burke Today - Teaching English and Social Networking

Join me today, October 25th, for a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com webinar with Jim Burke, author, teacher, and the creator of English Companion Ning: "Where English teachers go to help each other."

Date: Monday, October 25th, 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 Pagehttp://www.learncentral.org/event/106902

After spending his first three years at Castro Valley High School, Jim Burke began teaching English at Burlingame High School where he has been since 1992.

Prior to becoming an English teacher, Jim taught special education, first in private schools and later in North Africa where he served in the Peace Corps in the mid 1980s. Starting in 1998, he began writing about teaching, focusing on not only English Language Arts but also adolescent literacy in general.

Since 1998 he has published almost twenty books, the most notable of these being The English Teacher's Companion: A Complete Guide to Classroom, Curriculum, and the Profession, published by Heinemann and available in its third edition. In addition, he now serves as a senior consultant to the Holt McDougal Literature program. More recently, he has taken on new responsibilities with the NCTE and College Board. He was elected this year to the NCTE Secondary Section, and has also been appointed to the College Board's Advanced Placement Course and Exam Review Commission for the English Literature and Language courses. When he can, he speaks to and works with teachers around the country, though he doesn't do this much during the school year since he teaches every day. What he really enjoys, though, is just the daily work of teaching and sharing the lessons he has learned along the way from his fellow teachers and his wonderful students.

http://www.englishcompanion.com/about.htm

What's the Big Idea?: Question-Driven Units to Motivate Reading, Writing, and Thinking

This Week's Live, Interactive, and Free Webinars in Elluminate

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, or you can check the new event time converter on the event page. 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!

We hope you will consider hosting your own public webinars using the free 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!

TECHNOLANGUAGES DROP-IN
Mon 25 Oct 05:00AM New York / Mon 25 Oct 09:00AM GMT / Mon 25 Oct 07:00PM Sydney
Jess McCulloch. As part of the technoLanguages series, there will be a monthly 'Live' session on the 2nd Monday with a prepared presentation etc, and then on the 4th Monday of the month, a 'Drop-In' session where participants can ask more questions, tell their own stories and talk about what interests them. There will be no specific topic or presenter organised for these sessions. Please bring a story or tool or idea to share.
http://www.learncentral.org/event/111266

TEACHING ENGLISH AND SOCIAL NETWORKING (FUTURE OF EDUCATION SERIES)
Mon 25 Oct 08:00PM New York / Tue 25 Oct 12:00AM GMT / Tue 25 Oct 10:00AM Sydney
Steve Hargadon interviews Jim Burke. Part of the FutureofEducation.com interview series. Jim is the creator of the English Companion Ning, 'Where English teachers go to help each other.'
http://www.learncentral.org/event/106902/

TECH TALK TUESDAYS: CYBERSAFETY WHEN LEARNING ONLINE (THE AUSTRALIA SERIES)
Tue 25 Oct 12:45AM New York / Tue 25 Oct 04:45AM GMT / Tue 25 Oct 02:45PM Sydney
Anne Mirtschin. How do you integrate technology into 21st century classrooms? Digital tools can be used to engage students, enhance learning and allow creativity and collaboration. Loosely based around Bloom’s Revised taxonomy, find out how to use web2.0 tools for accessing, storing, analysing, applying and sharing information. Promote student engagement and creativity using digital storytelling, animations and audio/video projects.
http://www.learncentral.org/event/111301

21ST CENTURY LEARNING: RECYCLING IN THE CLASSROOM
Tue 25 Oct 01:00AM New York / Tue 25 Oct 05:00AM GMT / Tue 25 Oct 03:00PM Sydney
Leigh Hofman. Are you looking for a new way to teach about the recycling and sustainability? Would you like to get students excited and engaged in a way that embeds the learning and gets them active? Recycling is an important issue and one that is easy to practice in our everyday lives.
http://www.learncentral.org/event/106072

ANYWHERE, ANYTIME LEARNING WITH VIDEO (ELLUMINATE LIVE EVENTS)
Tue 26 Oct 01:00PM New York / Tue 26 Oct 05:00PM GMT / Wed 26 Oct 03:00AM Sydney
Sebastian Grady. Sebastian Grady, COO of Altus Learning, will share stories from companies that are using video to capture critical knowledge throughout their global organizations. Learn how you can use video to enhance both formal and informal learning programs to reduce cost and increase learning. Video is an effective way for training organizations to capture knowledge from where ever it is in the organization. The training organization is in a unique position to harness this collective knowledge and make it compelling, accessible and reusable by the organization. Video-based learning can be incorporated into formal learning programs as well as left standing alone to serve as a performance support tool. (Pre-registration required.)
http://www.learncentral.org/event/106920

21ST CENTURY LEARNING: RECYCLING IN THE CLASSROOM
Tue 26 Oct 06:00PM New York / Tue 26 Oct 10:00PM GMT / Wed 26 Oct 08:00AM Sydney
Leigh Hofman. Are you looking for a new way to teach about the recycling and sustainability? Would you like to get students excited and engaged in a way that embeds the learning and gets them active? Recycling is an important issue and one that is easy to practice in our everyday lives.
http://www.learncentral.org/event/106077

THE DEATH AND LIFE OF THE GREAT AMERICAN SCHOOL SYSTEM: HOW TESTING AND CHOICE ARE UNDERMINING EDUCATION (FUTURE OF EDUCATION SERIES)
Tue 26 Oct 08:00PM New York / Wed 26 Oct 12:00AM GMT / Wed 26 Oct 10:00AM Sydney
Steve Hargadon will interview Diane Ravitch. Part of the FutureofEducation.com series.
http://www.learncentral.org/node/113749

DESARROLLO DEL PENSAMIENTO LÓGICO EN LOS ESTUDIANTES A TRAVÉS DE SCRATCH (AULA 2.0 SERIES)
Tue 26 Oct 11:00PM New York / Wed 26 Oct 03:00AM GMT / Wed 26 Oct 01:00PM Sydney
Thomas Chaskel y Reinaldo Duque. Scratch es un nuevo lenguaje de programación que facilita la creaciónde tus propias historias interactivas, animaciones, juegos, música yarte, y compartirlos a través de la web. Scratch está diseñado para ayudar a niñ@s (a partir de los 8 años o incluso niñ@s más pequeñ@scon la ayuda de un guía) a desarrollar habilidades propias del siglo21 (pensar de forma creativa, comunicarse claramente, analizarsistemáticamente, utilizar tecnologías con fluidez, colaborar de forma efectiva, diseñar y aprender continuamente). Mientras ellos creanproyectos, estos niñ@s aprenden importantes conceptos matemáticos y computacionales, mientras adquieren un profundo entendimiento del proceso de diseño.
http://www.learncentral.org/event/113257

ET@LKING: RETRIBALIZING, LITERARY STYLE: VIRTUAL BOOK CLUBS AND BOOKCASTS (AUSTRALIA SERIES)

Wed 27 Oct 05:00AM New York / Wed 27 Oct 09:00AM GMT / Wed 27 Oct 07:00PM Sydney
Anne Mirtschin. McLuhan (see the video) predicted we’d have to leave the bookworld behind to be “with it” in the electronic world but with social media we can do it all.  Learn about an evolving virtual book club model, online or inworld, that culminates with the screening of collaboratively produced bookcasts, multimedia aesthetic responses to books. To preview bookcasting, check out this ncbookcast festival You can post questions and comments to the wiki discussion.
http://www.learncentral.org/event/112459

GAGA FOR GOOGLE DOCS PART 2: PRESENTATIONS & DRAWING (MIDDLE SCHOOL PORTAL SERIES)
Wed 27 Oct 06:00PM New York / Wed 27 Oct 10:00PM GMT / Thu 27 Oct 08:00AM Sydney
Rochelle Rodrigo. Having access to a free and easy to use presentation and drawing applications is great; however, the power of Google Presentation & Drawing are in their collaborative and publication abilities. Come to this webinar to learn various tips and tricks to using Google Presentation and Google Drawing. We’ll also talk about ways to incorporate Google Presentation and Google Drawing into various teaching and learning activities.
http://www.learncentral.org/event/92763/

MATH 2.0 WEEKLY: INTERVIEW WITH SYLVIA MARTINEZ (MATH 2.0 SERIES)
Wed 27 Oct 09:30PM New York / Thu 27 Oct 01:30AM GMT / Thu 27 Oct 11:30AM Sydney
Maria Droujkova and Ihor Charischak. An interview with Sylvia Martinez about Generation YES and other exciting projects.
http://www.learncentral.org/event/109079

UPDATED

SURVIVORS VOICE
Thu 28 Oct 12:00PM New York / Thu 28 Oct 04:00PM GMT / Fri 28 Oct 02:00AM Sydney
Mayte Espinoza. The Strongest Oak Foundation, an international NGO based in Calgary, Alberta, is honoured to present two very special guest speakers: Steven Shyaka and Jean de Dieu Tuyisenge. Steven and JD are Rwandan genocide survivors who, as young children in 1994, endured one of history’s greatest tragedies and overcame insurmountable odds to stay alive, despite most or all of their families. Today, they strive to build a better life for themselves and others by leading social and educational projects for those in need. Steven (connecting from a village in Rwanda) and JD (connecting from Simon Fraser University in Vancouver) will share their incredible stories in a motivational speech like none other, certain to inspire you with their passion for life and unwavering resilience.
http://www.learncentral.org/event/111815

BUILDING BETTER FACILITATOR GUIDES (ELLUMINATE LIVE EVENTS)
Thu 28 Oct 01:00PM New York / Thu 28 Oct 05:00PM GMT / Fri 28 Oct 03:00AM Sydney
Sebastian Grady. Good facilitator guides are the cornerstone for building great instructor led training. In this webinar you will learn how to build facilitator guides that are easy to use, easy to build and easy to maintain. (Pre-registration required.)
http://www.learncentral.org/event/106921

TOP 10 INTERNET RESOURCES FOR SCHOOL LEADERS (ADMIN 2.0 SERIES)
Thu 28 Oct 05:00PM New York / Thu 28 Oct 09:00PM GMT / Fri 28 Oct 07:00AM Sydney
Jason Borgen with presenters, Lisa Gonzales and Devin Vodicka. These resources can help you network, save time, and remain current on research. Sites like Doodle, Flickr, Blogger, Tokbox and Twitter will equip you to leave with new skills in building personal learning networks, enhancing communication skills, and improving productivity. Many of the resources can be used with teachers and students to expand their capacity as learners, communicators, and creative thinkers.
http://www.learncentral.org/event/103339

EDUBLOGS - SERENDIPITY (PD OUT OF A BLUE SKY) (AUSTRALIA SERIES)
Thu 28 Oct 07:00PM New York / Thu 28 Oct 11:00PM GMT / Fri 28 Oct 09:00AM Sydney
Jo Hart. Join Jo in another fortnightly unconference sessions. Bring along the burning issues and hot topics YOU would like to discuss. You can also add topic ideas the the Wallwisher. Topic is chosen by poll at the start of the session.
http://www.learncentral.org/event/106996

EPORTFOLIO COMMUNITY OF PRACTICE
Thu 28 Oct 07:00PM New York / Thu 28 Oct 11:00PM GMT / Fri 28 Oct 09:00AM Sydney
Coach Carole. Career Portfolio Manitoba is a pilot project whose vision is to use Essential Skills developed through all forms of learning as a key framework for helping Manitobans build ePortfolios for employability. The blended learning solution is based on a robust paper portfolio program which has been successfully delivered in various forms for two years. Career Portfolio Manitoba is produced and delivered by Learning Agents and Keystone Adult Education Services. It uses Mahara as its open source ePortfolio platform, working in tandem with Moodle, the open source learning management system. Don Presant of Learning Agents and Linda Maxwell of Keystone Adult Education Services will provide "reflection in action" from the front line early in the first delivery of their pilot, together with more detail about the context of the program and how it is being delivered.”
http://www.learncentral.org/event/106134

CLARENCE FISHER ON TEACHING AND LEARNING IN A NETWORKED WORLD (FUTURE OF EDUCATION SERIES)
Thu 28 Oct 08:00PM New York / Fri 28 Oct 12:00AM GMT / Fri 28 Oct 10:00AM Sydney
Steve Hargadon. Steve Hargadon interviews Clarence Fisher, winner one of Canada’s highest teaching awards, the Prime Minister’s Award for Teaching. Clarence has been called "one of the ...master teachers of the twenty-first century" (by Dean Shareski, no less!).
http://www.learncentral.org/node/113740

VIRTUAL FIELD TRIPS (MIDDLE SCHOOL PORTAL SERIES)
Thu 28 Oct 09:00PM New York / Fri 28 Oct 01:00AM GMT / Fri 28 Oct 11:00AM Sydney
Mary Henton. This webinar provides a framework to expand teaching strategies by incorporating digital technology to explore the world, inquire about big ideas, and create authentic experiences. See examples of virtual field trips around STEM concepts. In addition, learn about tools used to create your own virtual journeys and how to access resources for established field trips.
http://www.learncentral.org/event/98510

A WOMAN'S WALK IN GRACE
Thu 28 Oct 09:30PM New York / Fri 28 Oct 01:30AM GMT / Fri 28 Oct 11:30AM Sydney
Catherine Martin. Join Catherine Martin and others worldwide for a discussion on chapter 2 of A Woman's Walk In Grace. This study is open to all who want to discover the magnificence of God's extravagant grace and experience it for themselves. You will learn that grace is God's love in action and it is "the face that love wears when it meets imperfection, weakness, failure, sin. Grace is what love does and is when it meets the sinful and undeserving.”
http://www.learncentral.org/event/100165

JOY IN LEARNING (CLASSROOM 2.0 SERIES)
Sat 30 Oct 12:00PM New York / Sat 30 Oct 04:00PM GMT / Sun 30 Oct 02:00AM Sydney
Kim Caise, Lorna Costantini and Peggy George with Barbara Bray. Join the Classroom 2.0 LIVE co hosts for a session with Barbara Bray. Barbara will provide an overview of learning, the background of flow and why learning can be joyful experience. She will present the Reggio Emilia method and show examples of ongoing assessment that provides evidence of flow and a nurturing environment that can be replicated in any classroom no matter what age of the students.
http://www.learncentral.org/node/113743

K12 ONLINE VIRTUAL FIRESIDE CHAT (K12 ONLINE)
Sat 30 Oct 03:00PM New York / Sat 30 Oct 07:00PM GMT / Sun 30 Oct 05:00AM Sydney
Events Committee. The K12 Online Live Events Committee will host a free, virtual fireside chat to conclude week 1 of the K12 Online Conference. Join us for a unique experience discussing the presentation videos made by the following keynote presenters, Darren Kuropatwa for the “Kicking it Up a Notch” strand and Allanah Allison for the “A Week in the Classroom” strand.
http://www.learncentral.org/node/113748

Monday, October 18, 2010

Amazing Animation and Ideas - Video from Sir Ken Robinson RSA Talk



Thanks to @garymdietz for forwarding this.

Thursday - Online Resources from the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA), Live in Elluminate

Join me Thursday, October 21st, for a live and interactive Classroom 2.0 webinar on "Integrating MoMA’s Online Resources."   Learn about The Museum of Modern Art’s online resources in this one-hour webinar led by Lisa Mazzola, Assistant Director of School and Teacher Programs and Beth Harris, Director of Digital Learning. We will explore the multimedia content created for the current exhibition Abstract Expressionist New York, and lesson plans on Modern Teachers Online. You will also learn how to save images to a personal collection on MoMA.org, and find other resources that pertain to the collection and past exhibitions. Part of our discussion will include how these different media and resources can be integrated into your classroom curriculum.

Date: Thursday, October 21st, 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 Pagehttp://www.learncentral.org/event/111468

Lisa Mazzola








Beth Harris

Wednesday - Jenifer Fox on Children's Strengths, Live in Elluminate

Join me Wednesday, October 20th, for a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com Webinar with Jenifer Fox  as we talk about the "Strengths Movement" within education, and her book, Your Child's Strengths.

Date: Wednesday, October 20th, 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 Pagehttp://www.learncentral.org/event/106901

Jenifer Fox is an international award-winning author and speaker and a recognized leader of the Strengths Movement within our educational system, for parents and organizations that serve youth.

“The necessary changes in our educational system," she claims, "are not coming from our schools, they are incubating in corporate America, and when these changes hit our marketplace, they will transform the broken system."  Ms. Fox bases her claims on her lifetime experience working with young  people and states that if we are to do one thing that will truly prepare children to face the future with confidence and success, it is to develop their strengths.

Her message is straightforward.  Education as we know it today is heading toward obsolescence.  In order for young people to be successful in the future, they will need to know what energizes them, what keeps their interests, what their contribution is going to be and what they have to offer to relationships with others.  Developing your strengths will be as important as understanding technology.

In addition to speaking to parents and teachers about children, Jenifer is an innovative CEO with an expertise in turnaround leadership. This expertise allows her to speak with authority on social entrepreneurs, nonprofit leadership, strategic philanthropy and the impact educational trends will have on our society.  Currently a columnist for the Huffington Post, Fox has published numerous articles on education and adolescent development. She has 10 years as a teacher and 15 as a school principal. Jenifer holds an undergraduate degree from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and two Masters Degrees: an MA from Middlebury College's Bread Loaf School of English and an M.Ed. from Harvard University. She resides in Franklin, Tennessee.

Your Child's Strengths: Discover Them, Develop Them, Use ThemFrom a review of Your Child's Strengths by Megan Howard in Klingbrief:  "In her book, Jenifer Fox advocates for a strengths revolution, providing pointed research and practical advice for those who wish to move past a deficit model in our interactions with children. Drawing upon 25 years of experience in independent and public schools, Fox examines the weakness habit and myths about adolescent rebellion. In addition, she explains that guided-self discovery can allow children to not only identify their strengths but begin to use them in activities, learning, and relationships. The “five why approach,” a questioning process which initiates the examination and expression of underlying reasons for seemingly simple preferences, is one of the many exercises found in the appendix of the book. Your Child’s Strengths serves as a powerful guide for educators and parents who believe in mining strengths and developing growth mindsets in children of all ages."

Tuesday - Nancy White on Networks, Communities, and the Role of Facilitators

Join me Tuesday, October 19th, for a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com Webinar with Nancy White as we talk about her book, Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities.

Date: Tuesday, October 19th, 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 Pagehttp://www.learncentral.org/event/106904

Nancy White is president and founder of Full Circle Associates (http://www.fullcirc.com).  Her passion is to help people connect through online and offline strategies, and she helps non-profits and businesses connect through online and offline strategies. She has a particular interest in the application of online interaction tools and techniques to non-profit virtual teams and international community development. Born in California, with time in Pennsylvania, Sao Paulo Brazil, North Carolina and ending in Seattle, Washington, she loves learning something new every day.

Nancy is a skilled online host and facilitator who hones her craft with distributed communities of practice, online education, virtual teams and on social conversational sites. She is an active chronicler and collector of online facilitation resources, constantly seeking to understand "what works and why" in this evolving world of online interaction. Nancy blogs at http://www.fullcirc.com/ as well as teaches, presents and writes on online facilitation and interaction, social architecture and social media (http://www.fullcirc.com/community/communitymanual.htm). She is co-author with Etienne Wenger and John Smith of Digital Habitats: stewarding technology for communities(http://www.technologyforcommunities.com).

Nancy confesses to online interaction, learning and chocolate addictions. She lives in Seattle with her husband and has two grown sons and granddaughter.

Digital Habitats; stewarding technology for communities

Sunday, October 17, 2010

This Weeks Live, Interactive, and Free Webinars in Elluminate

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, or you can check the new event time converter on the event page. 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!

We hope you will consider hosting your own public webinars using the free 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, October 18th
  • 2am PDT (US) / 5am EDT (US) / 9am GMT/UTC (intl times):
    Reflect and connect: an introduction to a new course,” with host Coach Carole. What do you need to get started in taking charge of your elearning? A peak into a course focussing on building your undertanding of eportfolios. In this presentation Jane and Carole will give you an insight into the background of this course and how it may benefit you. The Moodle course features a series of Elluminate Live workshops during October – December. We will also invite participants to share their ideas, challenges and solutions in methods of reflective practice and the development of eportfolios. We are also seeking expressions of interest from those eportfolio practitioners who may wish to be guest presenters in our Elluminate workshops.
    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/110180
  • 6am PDT (US) / 9am EDT (US) / 1pm GMT/UTC (intl times):
    Blackboard Collaborate's Vision And Roadmap,” with host Rick Ruden. Join Rick for a session with the Blackboard Collaborate Team. The team shared our long-term vision and announced our product roadmap on October 13th at Educause. If you weren't able to attend the conference, don't worry, we are covering the same vision and roadmap during our October 18th webinars. We invite YOU to join us at 9 am or 3 pm EDT/New York. As Blackboard Collaborate, Elluminate and Wimba want to continue our partnership with you to define an open, education-focused learning and collaboration platform that sets the standard for worldwide communication, education, and
    collaboration.

    LearnCentral Link:
    http://www.learncentral.org/event/110840
    (pre-registration required)
  • 12pm PDT (US) / 3pm EDT (US) / 7pm GMT/UTC (intl times):
    Blackboard Collaborate's Vision And Roadmap,” with presenters Rajeev Aurora, Valerie Schreiner and Annie ChechitelliThe Blackboard Collaborate Team shared their long-term vision and announced our product roadmap on October 13th at Educause. If you weren't able to attend the conference, don't worry, we are covering the same vision and roadmap during our October 18th webinars. We invite YOU to join us at 9 am or 3 pm EDT/New York. As Blackboard Collaborate, Elluminate and Wimba want to continue our partnership with you to define an open, education-focused learning and collaboration platform that sets the standard for worldwide communication, education, and collaboration.
     LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/node/111463 (pre-registration required)
  • 7pm PDT (US) / 10pm EDT (US) / 2am GMT/UTC (next day) (intl times):
    AUSTRALIA SERIES

    23 Things for Languages: Taiwan Chat,” with host Penny Coutas. This web event is a chance for a group of language teachers in Perth, Western Australia, to try out web conferencing with real, live ESL students! We're going to be engaging in a couple of 'jigsaw' activities and experimenting with the Elluminate tools.”
    LearnCentral Link:
    http://www.learncentral.org/event/109829
  • 9:45pm PDT (US) /12:45am EDT (US) (next day)/ 4:45am GMT/UTC (next day) (intl times):
    AUSTRALIA SERIES
    Join Anne Mirtschin for another session of the Tech Talk Tuesday series entitled, “Tech Talk Tuesdays: A digital toolbox for 21st century classroomsHow do you integrate technology into 21st century classrooms? Digital tools can be used to engage students, enhance learning and allow creativity and collaboration. Loosely based around Bloom’s Revised taxonomy, find out how to use web2.0 tools for accessing, storing, analysing, applying and sharing information. Promote student engagement and creativity using digital storytelling, animations and audio/video projects.”
    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/111301
  • 10pm PDT (US) /1am EDT (US) (next day) / 5pm GMT/UTC (next day) (intl times):
    Playing your way to education,” with presenter, Leigh Hofman Are you looking for new and exciting ways to teach about the environment and sustainability? How about opening up the world and its animals right there in your classroom? Habitat Heroes (www.HabitatHeroes.com) is an exciting virtual world where children can have fun and interact with friends around the world, while learning about ways to protect the planet and its animals. Education-based games and activities, treasure hunts and puzzles entertain and teach children about animal extinction, climate change, water, biodiversity,
    recycling and other challenges facing Planet Earth. Habitat Heroes 'School Safari', developed in consultation with leading educators and experts, is packed full of teacher's notes, activities, video, quizzes and many other resources to assist teachers in the classroom. Habitat Heroes is used in schools and homes around the world, providing an excellent multi-discipline learning resource. Join Leigh Hofman, Educational Crusader at Habitat Heroes as she takes you through the website and its functionality. Learn how to find and use the various applications of Habitat Heroes and how they might apply in your classroom. An excellent introduction.
    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/104791
Tuesday, October 19th
  • 10am PDT (US) /1pm EDT (US) / 5pm GMT/UTC (intl times):
    ELLUMINATE LIVE EVENTS

    5 Tips For Succession Planning: Engage, Retain And Develop Your Best Talent,” with presenter, Beth ThomasJoin Beth for a webinar and learn how to make your succession plan work for your company, your culture and your top talent. Sponsored by Cornerstone OnDemand and featuring Beth Thomas, Executive VP & Managing Director of Sequent Consulting, this interactive session will provide succession planning tips, as well as best practices around engaging, retaining and developing your best talent.”
    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/106917 (pre-registration required)

  • 11am PDT (US) /2pm EDT (US) / 6pm GMT/UTC (intl times):
    ELLUMINATE LIVE EVENTS

    Learning In Today's World: Blending The Best Of Formal, Informal And Social Approaches- Implementing,” with presenter, Lance DublinThe buzz about informal, formally-informal and social learning continues to grow in intensity. Organizations know they need to jump onto this bandwagon, but they wonder both are these approaches valid and how can I ensure I’m successful. Formal learning is well established and is well understood. But informal learning while seemingly obvious appears too broad, formally-informal seems too ill-defined and the definition of social learning is still evolving. Come and join Lance in this webinar series to learn how to blend these new learning approaches in news ways to extend, enable and enhance learning to meet the needs to today’s world. Come and join to learn when and how you should apply these new blended solutions, how to market them to senior management, mid-management and the workforce, and what it takes to successfully implement them to ensure powerful results.”
    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/node/111465 (pre-registration required)
  • 3pm PDT (US) /6pm EDT (US) / 10pm GMT/UTC (intl times):  
    Playing your way to education,” with presenter, Leigh Hofman Are you looking for new and exciting ways to teach about the environment and sustainability? How about opening up the world and its animals right there in your classroom? Habitat Heroes (www.HabitatHeroes.com) is an exciting virtual world where children can have fun and interact with friends around the world, while learning about ways to protect the planet and its animals. Education-based games and activities, treasure hunts and puzzles entertain and teach children about animal extinction, climate change, water, biodiversity,
    recycling and other challenges facing Planet Earth. Habitat Heroes 'School Safari', developed in consultation with leading educators and experts, is packed full of teacher's notes, activities, video, quizzes and many other resources to assist teachers in the classroom. Habitat Heroes is used in schools and homes around the world, providing an excellent multi-discipline learning resource. Join Leigh Hofman, Educational Crusader at Habitat Heroes as she takes you through the website and its functionality. Learn how to find and use the various applications of Habitat Heroes and how they might apply in your classroom. An excellent introduction.

    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/104111
  • 5pm PDT (US) / 8pm EDT (US) / 12am GMT/UTC (next day) (intl times):
    FUTURE OF EDUCATION SERIES

    Steve Hargadon will interview Nancy White on Networks, Communities, and the Role of Facilitators” as part of the FutureofEducation.com series on social networking in education.
    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/106904/
  • 6pm PDT (US) / 9pm EDT (US) / 1am GMT/UTC (next day) (intl times):
    AULA 2.0
    SERIES “Conferencia K12 Online 2010: Cultivando el Futuro” con Thomas Chaskel. “Jose Rodriguez, Profesor de tercero de primaria en Los Angeles, California en Estados Unidos, Activamente promoviendo el uso de la tecnologia en el aula, Radio internet en la comunidad de http://worldbridges, explorando ensenanza y aprendizage de ingles en la red, y colaborando con docentes en conversaciones en espanol en http://puentesalmundo.net Jose esta al cargo en el 2010 de "Encabezando el Cambio" tema de la conferencia.  
    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/110920
Wednesday, October 20th
  • 2am PDT (US) / 5am EDT (US) / 9am GMT/UTC (intl times):
    AUSTRALIA SERIES
    eT@lking: Playing on the Internet Take 2.0,” with host Anne Mirtschin. Jess McCulloch, an early web 2.0 innovator, will share some websites as well as several ideas for using each with students. Participants will be asked to contribute an idea or two. Jess will share the following - foursquare, PhotoSynth, some visual search engines - Search Cubed and Spezify, Woices, Viddix and Cloud Canvas.LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/111294
  • 10am PDT (US) /1pm EDT (US) / 5pm GMT/UTC (intl times):
    ELLUMINATE LIVE EVENTS

    No-Lecture Webinar: How To Create Extreme, Hyper-Interaction,” with presenter, Ray JimenezWebinars are great. They save time and accelerate learning. However, boring lectures kill webinars. Most webinars are extensions of talking heads clicking their PowerPoints to death. No wonder many learners multi-task and drop out. In this webinar Ray will share both proven and test methods and tactics to avoid 100% Lecture webinars and truly engage your learners in stimulating and mind-capturing learning experiences.”
    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/node/111466 (pre-registration required)
  • 3pm PDT (US) / 6pm EDT (US) / 10pm GMT/UTC (intl times):
    MIDDLE SCHOOL PORTAL SERIES

    “Gaga for Google Docs Part 1: Docs,”
    with host Rochelle RodrigoHaving access to a free and easy to use word processor is great; however, the power of Google Docs is in it’s collaborative and publication abilities. Come to this webinar to learn various tips and tricks to using Google Docs. We’ll also talk about ways to incorporate Google Docs into various teaching and learning activities.
    LearnCentral Link:
    http://www.learncentral.org/event/92762
  • 5pm PDT (US) / 8pm EDT (US) / 12am GMT/UTC (next day) (intl times):
    FUTURE OF EDUCATION SERIES 

    Steve Hargadon will interview Jenifer Fox on her book, Your Child's Strengths,” as part of the FutureofEducation.com series.
    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/106901
  • 6:30pm PDT (US) / 9:30pm EDT (US) / 1:30am GMT/UTC (next day) (intl times):
    MATH 2.0 SERIES

    Math 2.0 weekly: Riverbend Math Center,” with host Maria Droujkova. “Join this webinar for a discussion with Amanda Serenevy, the creator and director of the highly successful Riverbend Community Math Center.”
    LearnCentral Link: 
    http://www.learncentral.org/event/109077
Thursday, October 21st
  • 4pm PDT (US) / 7pm EDT (US) / 11pm GMT/UTC (intl times):
    Mark Hofer and Kathy Swan talk about creating digital documentaries with students entitled, Digital Documentary Toolkits for the History Classroom.
    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/98346
  • 4pm PDT (US) / 7pm EDT (US) / 11pm GMT/UTC (intl times):
    MIDDLE SCHOOL PORTAL 2 SERIES

    Kimberly Lightle will host a webinar of the “21st Century Skills and.... “The U.S. is in critical need for a qualified workforce equipped with skills beyond the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic. The U.S. future workforce needs employees with critical thinking and problem solving, communications, collaboration and creative and innovation skills. We as educators will need to tweak what we already are doing in order to prepare our students for the challenges and opportunities that await them in the 21st Century. Learn how you can incorporate these skills in to your instruction to meet the needs of the 21st century employer.”
    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/101920
  • 4pm PDT (US) / 7pm EDT (US) / 11pm GMT/UTC (intl times):
    AUSTRALIA SERIES

    Jo Hart will host another webinar of the “Edublogs Fine Focus (topic to be advised). Join Jo for a focussed sessions 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.
    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/106994
  • 5pm PDT (US) / 8pm EDT (US) / 12am GMT/UTC (next day) (intl times):
    CLASSROOM 2.0 SERIES

    Steve Hargadon hosts Lisa Mazzola and Beth Harris from the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA)Learn about The Museum of Modern Art’s online resources in this one-hour webinar with Lisa Mazzola, Assistant Director of School and Teacher Programs and Beth Harris, Director of Digital Learning. We will explore the multimedia content created for the current exhibition Abstract Expressionist New York, and lesson plans on Modern Teachers Online. You will also learn how to save images to a personal collection on MoMA.org, and find other resources that pertain to the collection and past exhibitions. Part of our discussion will include how these different media and resources can be integrated into your classroom curriculum.
    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/node/111468
  • 5:45pm PDT (US) / 8:45pm EDT (US) / 12:45am GMT/UTC (next day) (intl times):
    Catherine Martin will host another session in her “A Woman's Walk in Grace” study. Join Catherine Martin and others worldwide for a discussion on chapter 1 of A Woman's Walk In Grace. This study is open to all who want to discover the magnificence of God's extravagant grace and experience it for themselves. You will learn that grace is God's love in action and it is "the face that love wears when it meets imperfection, weakness, failure, sin. Grace is what love does and is when it meets the sinful and undeserving.”
    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/100163
Friday, October 22nd
  • 10am PDT (US) / 1pm EDT (US) / 5pm GMT/UTC (intl times):
    ELLUMINATE LIVE SERIES

    “Flies On The Wall: Conversations In Learning’s Communities Of Practice,”
    with a panel of presenters. Jay Cross, Jane Hart, Charles Jennings and Clark Quinn will present an enlightening and highly interactive event with six of the most innovative thought leaders in learning. Jay Cross and his colleagues at the Internet Time Alliance have their fingers on the pulse of how successful organizations are taking advantage of social networks and communities of practice to improve performance.  To get an international perspective on what’s going on in the world of learning and where we’re headed, join in their interactive conversation.
    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/106919 (pre-registration required)
Saturday, October 23rd 
  • 11am PDT (US) / 1pm EDT (US) / 5pm GMT/UTC (intl times):
    MATH 2.0 WEEKLY SERIES

    “Math 2.0 weekly: APGS language for computer art,” 
    with host Maria Droujkova. Join Dani Novak for a demonstration of beautiful math art and games you and your students can create with APGS.”
    LearnCentral Link: http://www.learncentral.org/event/109078/

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Live Tonight in Elluminate - Students on Homework

Join us tonight, October 14th, for a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com Webinar with Kathleen Cushman on homework.

Is your homework the kind of “deliberate practice” that forms the backbone of lasting learning? Or do your students see it as busywork to avoid wherever possible?  Kathleen and the students of What Kids Can Do took up that subject in Chapter 8 of their new book Fires in the Mind: What Kids Can Tell Us About Motivation and Mastery. In this session, high school students talk with her about what makes some schoolwork worth doing after school. Come share your own ideas and strategies!

Date: Thursday, October 14th, 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 Pagehttp://www.learncentral.org/event/106899

Kathleen Cushman is an educator and journalist who has specialized in the lives and learning of youth for over two decades. In 2001 she co-founded the nonprofit What Kids Can Do (WKCD), and under its auspices she has since written nine books in collaboration with diverse youth from around the nation.

Cushman’s latest book is Fires in the Mind: What Kids Can Tell Us About Motivation and Mastery (Jossey-Bass, 2010). On her blog, she facilitates a national conversation with educators and parents about motivation and mastery, in school and out.  Support from MetLife Foundation made possible this work, through the WKCD initiative known as the Practice Project.

Cushman’s other books with youth include the best-selling Fires in the Bathroom: Advice for Teachers from High School Students (New Press, 2003) and its two sequels, Fires in the Middle School Bathroom (New Press, 2008) and Sent to the Principal (Next Generation Press, 2005, 2006). She is also author of the two-volume First in the Family: Advice about College from First-Generation Students (Next Generation Press, 2007, 2008). To contact her directly, go to http://firesinthemind.org.

Fires in the Mind: What Kids Can Tell Us About Motivation and Mastery

Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Live and Interactive with Roger Schank on "Our Broken Education System"

Join me Wednesday, October 13th, for a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com interview with Roger Schank, one of the world's leading visionaries in artificial intelligence, learning theory, cognitive science, and the building of virtual learning environments. He is CEO of Socratic Arts, a company whose goal is to design and implement learning-by-doing, story-centered curricula in schools, universities, and corporations.

Date: Wednesday, October 13th, 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 Pagehttp://www.learncentral.org/event/106897

(This long bio, and the short intro above, courtesy of Roger's website.)  In the early 1970’s, while an Assistant Professor at Stanford, Roger Schank achieved worldwide fame when he was the first to get computers to be able to process typewritten everyday English language sentences.

In order to do this, Schank developed a model for representing knowledge and the relationships between concepts that enabled his programs to predict what concepts might be coming next in a sentence. This spawned an entire field in psychology devoted to determining how people make inferences from what they hear.

After moving to Yale in 1974, Schank worked on getting computers to read newspaper stories. His work was heavily funded by the U.S. Department of Defense, which was interested in trying to get computers to predict world trouble spots by reading the news and analyzing it. He built the first newspaper story-reading program in 1976. Five years later, Schank was made Chairman of Computer Science at Yale and ran their Artificial Intelligence lab.

In order to get computers to know enough about the world to tie sentences together, Schank came up with the notion of a script. Scripts were needed to keep the inferences that computers made from exploding exponentially. For example, a computer could understand that what you order is what you eat in a restaurant if it had a set of expectations about what happened in a restaurant (the script.) Scripts were a powerful idea that enabled Schank’s machines to read about any subject that was well structured. Psychologists began testing people to see if they operated with scripts as Schank had suggested and the evidence was overwhelming that Schank had discovered something important about people even though he working in computer science. His book with Robert Abelson on the subject, Scripts, Plans, Goals and Understanding: An Inquiry Into Human Knowledge Structures became a classic, overwhelmingly cited by social scientists for years to come.

While in the process of getting the computers in his lab to understand news stories, conduct conversations, answer questions, tell stories, and imitate other human cognitive capabilities, Schank began to realize that something important was missing from his computer models. They did not have the memory capabilities that humans have. This seemed odd at first, because humans would appear to be less capable than computers when it comes to sheer capacity. Entire volumes can be “remembered’ by a computer after all. No human can match this feat.

What was missing was the ability to generalize. Schank’s programs would read stories that were coming in but they would fail to notice if the same story came in twice or if one story was an update on a situation found in a previous story. In short, while the programs could answer questions and summarize what they had read, they really could not remember what they had read. They had no real understanding because they could not see events as being similar, so they didn’t get smarter as a result of what they had read. You could keep saying the same thing to them and they wouldn’t notice. Schank began to realize that understanding and memory and the ability to generalize were all really the same thing.

Schank began to turn his attention to learning. He believed that if we could understand how people learn then we could apply that knowledge to getting computers to understand more deeply. The story-understanding problem was, after all, really a learning problem. The computers hadn’t learned anything from what they had read. To get smarter over time, the computers needed to match new information to old information—in other words, they needed a clear model of what they already knew in the first place.

So, Schank began to build knowledge of real world events into the computer so that new events could be matched to that information. At this point Schank noticed two phenomena about people’s memory processes that were critical to learning: reminding and expectation failure.

People get reminded all the time. A person reminds you of another person. A place reminds you of another place. And, an experience you have reminds you of another experience you have had. Schank began to study how reminding works.  He observed that remindings revolve around expectation failure. You expect something to happen as similar situations have happened before-- and if it doesn’t, you wonder why. Schank realized that people have expectations about everything, what word will come next in a sentence, what a person is likely to do next, what things will look like, what will happen as a result of actions taken, and so on. When these expectations fail, people must make sense of what happened. They can’t continue to be surprised by the same things. At some point, they need to modify their expectations to include things that they hadn’t been originally able to predict. When a restaurant serves bad coffee, at first you are surprised. Eventually you predict the bad coffee and stop ordering it. This is learning in its most rudimentary form.

In order to get computers to learn, Schank realized, they would have to have expectations and they would have to know when new events failed to meet those expectations. They would then have to explain the expectation failures and modify their expectations.

At the same time that Schank was doing this work, psychologists at Stanford who were still following what Schank was doing from the days when he was on their faculty found some interesting experimental results. They discovered that people confuse very different events in their memories when those events have certain similarities. They argued that Schank’s scripts didn’t explain this. Schank agreed and he modified his theory in a way that accounted for the Stanford data and his new concerns about learning. He suggested that people stored memories in packages that were concerned with event groupings smaller than “restaurant.” If a person left their wallet somewhere they might not remember where but they would know that they had used the wallet in a “paying” event and they would try to reconstruct where various paying events may have taken place by seeing if they could connect them to the script of which they were a part. (Maybe it was in a restaurant they had eaten in.) This meant that people were learning and storing memories inside small packages of expectations (Schank called them Memory Organization Packages.) This accounted for the psychologist’s data and enabled Schank to begin to build knowledge into the computer in such way that learning could take place. This was the basis of his most famous book, Dynamic Memory: A theory of reminding and learning in computers and people.

Around this time something happened that changed Schank’s focus permanently-- his children went to school.

While he was trying to get computers to learn, the school system was trying to get Roger Schank’s children to learn. Schank noticed that both the methods and the content used in each case were completely different. Schank was concerned with how a computer would acquire scripts and other kinds of procedural knowledge. He could, of course, simply put them in the computer, but then the issue was how to get them to understand what to do when a script failed. Scripts change over time after all. Schank realized that computers needed to be able to fail and to explain their failures in order to learn. In order to do this, they would need goals that they were trying to pursue that they might fail at achieving and the ability to figure out what to do so that they would succeed next time and realize the goal. His job therefore was to give the computers the ability to have experiences and to analyze their failures. Teaching, he believed, was best done when the computer was stuck and could take advice from an outside observer.

On the other hand, schools seemed to hold the collective belief that the essence of learning was the acquisition of new information about facts, rather than improving and expanding one’s own internal processes and abilities. Schank realized that he needed to expand his children’s horizons as the school wasn’t going to do it. (He later wrote a book for parents on how to do this.)

While talking to educators about the source of the problem, Roger discovered that there were various vested interests in education that were committed to things staying the way they were. Predicting that computers might serve as a vehicle by which changes might be accepted, Roger began to seek funds for building a computer curriculum where these issues could be dealt with.

In 1988, Andersen Consulting decided to give Schank funding to further experiment with his ideas if he was willing to shift his focus to training their employees. Schank believed that there was still much to be learned before he approached the schools, so he was happy to begin with adult learning. In 1989 he moved to Northwestern University where he was given a chaired professorship and established the Institute for the Learning Sciences (ILS). In short order, ILS had nearly 200 employees and had attracted various government sponsors (the Army, the EPA, the National Guard) and other corporate sponsors (IBM, who sponsored software for children, Ameritech, and others.)

The premise of what ILS built was based on learning through simulation supported by just-in-time story telling. The software that was built allowed a student to play a role in a simulated world. For Andersen this might mean managing fictional employees (played on video by actors). For the EPA this meant running a public meeting and dealing with an angry populace. For the Army this meant convincing fellow officers of your plan of attack. For children he built programs that allowed them to travel the country in search of places where movie events took place (to learn geography) or to play the role of anchor and writer on the evening news (to learn about modern history.) ILS built hundreds of these kinds of simulations.  World experts on every topic were videotaped and when a student ran into trouble in trying to accomplish something they listened to advice (sometimes contradictory) from the best and brightest about what they had done in similar situations.

This kind of software (one student, many recorded experts, simulations of all possible situations and responses) is very expensive to build. During the 1990’s, money was available and some very high quality programs were delivered. Andersen Consulting was so excited by what ILS had built that they decided to enter into the business of building it for their own clients. Many ILS graduates started or joined a wide variety of companies to build simulation-based learning by doing software.

But by the time universities were ready to try out on line degree programs that could instantiate Schank’s ideas in a real school, there was little money available. So, he developed a much less costly version of his educational model, which he called the Story Centered Curriculum (SCC). In an SCC students inhabit a fictional world which is analogous to one which they hope to enter in real life.

In 2001, Schank agreed to run Carnegie Mellon’s new West Coast Campus, offering Masters degrees in computer science. The curriculum consists entirely of projects—students work in teams, one project at a time, mentored by experts. Each project leads naturally to the next, and taken all together, they embody the story of life in this fictional world—in CMU’s case, the life of a software engineer or e-commerce consultant.

That same year he founded Socratic Arts, a company that is devoted to making high quality e-learning affordable for both businesses and schools, and Engines for Education, a non-profit organization dedicated to designing and building new curricula for primary and secondary schools.

In 2006, Schank called a meeting of people who shared his desire to change the nature of how education is conceived. Together they came up with a game plan for the creation of a Virtual World Academy, an online school offering an alternative to traditional education with international standards. Engines for Education then went on to create VISTA, the Virtual International Science and Technology Academy. Thanks to a generous grant from The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, the first full-year curriculum in Health Sciences is complete and now available.

In 2008, Schank and the president of La Salle University at Barcelona re-created the Institute of the Learning Sciences at the Business Engineering Institute at La Salle. It will offer four online Masters degrees in Business Administration, eBusiness, Business Technology, and Learning Sciences. Enrollment began in March 2010.