Monday, December 12, 2011

This Week: Crucial Ed Conversations, Edublog Awards Show, Unplug'd Canada, Community News, and the Hack Education Podcast!

Welcome to week eight of this new weekly blog post / email, including the round-up of the week's news and the always-fun podcast with Audrey Watters in which we kept finding ourselves asking: "what would Finland do?" "is a sophisticated factory education still a factory education?," and "do institutions perpetuate the problems they were created to solve?"

ANNOUNCEMENTS + EVENTS
  • Tuesday, December 13th, (8pm US-Eastern Standard Time), as part of the FutureofEducation.com series, I'll be interviewing David Maxfield, co-author of  coauthor of two New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success and Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. David will draw from his academic and business background to discuss the lesson of counter-intuitive courage which is required to avoid teacher burnout and to help effect educational change--and the five crucial conversations that therefore drive educational excellence. The details and connection information page is HERE.
  • Wednesday, December 14th, I'm co-hosting the annual Edublog Awards show, which starts at 7pm US-Eastern Standard Time. Connection information will appear on the official site shortly. You can also keep voting for your favorite social media in education projects in 19 categories until 11:59pm US-Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, the 13th. To support (vote for!) one of my projects, see this blog post.
  • Thursday, December 15th (8pm US-Eastern Standard Time), students, teachers, and business leaders involved in the Blue Valley Schools - CAPS Program come will be our guests of FutureofEducation.com. CAPS, the Blue Valley's Center for Advanced Professional Studies in Kansas, brings juniors and seniors from all Blue Valley high schools for a "unique learning opportunity to deeply explore their interests in a  profession-based learning approach." Designed to inspire students to succeed in Bioscience, Business, Engineering, and Human Services, CAP brings together industry and education for student-driven learning through authentic problem-based work projects. "CAPS is all about students solving real problems, with real tools (used by real professionals), being mentored by real employers, leading to real contribution." Details and connection information HERE.
  • The topic for Saturday, December 17th Classroom 2.0 LIVE! show will be "Unplug’d Canada" featuring co-presenters Rodd Lucier, Ben Hazzard, Tom Fullerton, Alec Couros and Zoe Pipe. Unplug’d Canada was a gathering of Canadian educators discussing what it means to be a teacher, a learner and a change agent and publishing the shared stories, essays and personal insights of the collective vision of the group. Show details and information about "tuning in" are HERE.
  • Don't forget to plan for ISTE Unplugged if you're planning to attend ISTE 2012 conference in San Diego. This will be the fifth year of EduBloggerCon (which is being renamed SocialEdCon), and the always-popular Bloggers' Cafe! More details coming soon, but be sure to add Saturday, June 23rd, into your calendar for when you are making your travel plans! We're also planning both a Global Education Summit and an "Ed Incubator" event--a chance for small and teacher-led ed tech start-ups to demonstrate their projects. 
  • The Library 2.012 worldwide virtual conference is tentatively scheduled for October 3 - 5!
BLOG POSTS / RECORDINGS
  • The recordings are now posted for last week's interviews with Melia Dicker ("Reschool Yourself") and Lisa Nielsen ("An Out-of-the-Box Conversation on Education"). Terrific conversations!
COMMUNITY NEWS
THE WEEKLY ED TECH PODCAST WITH AUDREY WATTERS

Blogger Audrey Watters (Hack Education) sits down with me (virtually) each week to discuss the ed tech news of the week and drill down on stories that have caught her eye (and attracted her writing talent). Audrey is a writer for the NPR education technology blog MindShift, for the data section of O’Reilly Radar, and for the Edutopia blog.

Here's the direct link to our latest podcast: http://audio.edtechlive.com/cr20/WattersHargadon2011-12-10.mP3. The podcast feed link is http://feeds.feedburner.com/edtechlive/hackeducation.

HACK EDUCATION POSTS LAST WEEK

Saturday, December 10, 2011

Live Interview Thursday, December 15th - Blue Valley Schools Great Industry-Education Partnership

Join me Thursday, December 15th, for a live and interactive FutureofEducation.com panel discussion with students, teachers, and business leaders involved in the Blue Valley Schools - CAPS Program.  CAPS, the Blue Valley's Center for Advanced Professional Studies in Kansas, brings juniors and seniors from all Blue Valley high schools for a "unique learning opportunity to deeply explore their interests in a  profession-based learning approach." Designed to inspire students to succeed in Bioscience, Business, Engineering, and Human Services, CAP brings together industry and education for student-driven learning through authentic problem-based work projects. "CAPS is all about students solving real problems, with real tools (used by real professionals), being mentored by real employers, leading to real contribution."

Date: Thursday, December 15th, 2011
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am (next day) GMT (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). Log in at http://futureofed.info. The Blackboard Collaborate 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 Blackboard Collaborate, please visit the support and configuration page. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event at the event page.
Recordings: The full Blackboard Collaborate recording is at https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2011-12-15.1718.M.9E9FE58134BE68C3B413F24B3586CF.vcr&sid=2008350 and a portable .mp3 audio recording is at http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/caps.mp3.

More information about CAPS, with news and video clips, is available at http://www.bvcapsalumni.org.


Live Interview Tuesday, December 13th - David Maxfield on the Five Crucial Conversations That Drive Educational Excellence

Join me Tuesday, December 13th, for a special live and interactive FutureofEducation.com webinar with David Maxfield, coauthor of two New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success and Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. David will draw from his academic and business background to discuss the lesson of counter-intuitive courage which is required to avoid teacher burnout and to help effect educational change--and the five crucial conversations that therefore drive educational excellence.

Date: Tuesday, December 13th, 2011
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am (next day) GMT (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). Log in at http://futureofed.info. The Blackboard Collaborate 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 Blackboard Collaborate, please visit the support and configuration page. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event at the event page.
Recordings: The full Blackboard Collaborate recording is at https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2011-12-13.1303.M.9E9FE58134BE68C3B413F24B3586CF.vcr&sid=2008350 and a portable .mp3 audio recording is available at http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/davidmaxfield.mp3.

For more than twenty years, David Maxfield has led high-leverage research initiatives that uncover causes of and solutions to managerial, cultural, and operational inefficiencies that directly affect the bottom line. David’s career began with his doctoral work in psychology at Stanford University. Since then, his impact on organizational performance has been wide-reaching as he’s helped clients such as General Mills, Harvard Medical School, Pizza Hut, and Spectrum Health increase organizational effectiveness and become measurably more vital.

David is the coauthor of two New York Times bestsellers, Change Anything: The New Science of Personal Success and Influencer: The Power to Change Anything. A respected academic, David has taught at Stanford University and the Marriott School of Management at Brigham Young University. David is the recipient of the Motorola University’s Distinguished Teaching Award and Stanford University’s Dean’s Award for Innovative Industrial Education.

Currently, David is the vice president of research at VitalSmarts, an innovative corporate training company that teaches skills which deliver significant improvements to the results companies care about most. In the past thirty years, VitalSmarts has helped thousands of organizations, including more than three hundred of the Fortune 500, realize widespread and lasting results through its award-winning training programs. Named the 2008 Business of the Year by The Association of Learning Providers, VitalSmarts has also been ranked four times by Inc. magazine as one of the fastest growing companies in America and has taught two million people worldwide.

As vice president of research, David has led a series of research projects on a variety of subjects including the role crucial conversations play in the healthcare industry, and how the ongoing failure rate within enterprise projects is consistently linked to the avoidance of a few key crucial conversations. David has also led research projects about diversity, leadership, and influence.

Thursday, December 08, 2011

Edublog Award Nominations and Time to Vote!

Voting is now open for the 2011 Edublog Awards. The nominations are up, and you can vote until 11:59pm US Eastern Standard Time on Tuesday, December 13th.

Here are the Steve Hargadon / Web 2.0 Labs projects that were nominated, with some encouragement to vote in these and all the categories!


Classroom 2.0, which has received several nominations over the years and won twice, is on the list again.  At 62,000 members, and pretty much the grandaddy of Ning social networking in education, it's still fun to see how it opens the door to seeing the value of social networking for professional development. Vote for it or one of the other great networks HERE.

Not making the cut this year but still worth visiting I think are: The Teacher 2.0 Mightybell social learning experience and Ning network, Aula 2.0 (huge contributors to the Global Education Conference), and Library 2.0 (which grew from 5,000 to 12,500 members this year).


I was actually really sorry to see these categories lumped together this year, as they seem so different to me--at least the Unconference and Webinar Series. Nominated are:

Classroom 2.0 Live. This is the terrific Saturday show with Peggy George, Kim Caise, and Lorna Constantini. Great work, ladies!

Future of Education. This is my complete professional indulgence: find interesting people and interview them. A great, great body of thinkers and doers.

The Global Education Conference. Lucy Gray and I teamed up again for another amazing five days of sessions worldwide. An unbelievable volunteer effort this year, combined with great sessions and an AMAZING keynote lineup Lucy put together.

Library 2.011. A first-year virtual conference with the support of the San Jose State University School of Library and Information Science. Incredible all the way around.

To vote in this category for one of the above or one of the other GREAT nominees, go HERE. It was very fun for me to note that I helped provide Elluminate/Collaborate resources for five others of the nominees: Giftedkids.ie, Reform Symposium, Australia Series, TL Virtual Cafe, and Tech Talk Tuesdays. Way to go, folks!

Not in the final nominations in this category, to my great surprise and profound disappointment, was EduBloggerCon, the all-day unconference before ISTE that I like to think really started the unconference (and some regular conference) movement in ed tech. :(  ISTEunplugged, also something I'm proud of, didn't make it either.


I am nominated in this category--I was hoping I had a fighting chance until I saw the incredible list. :) To vote, go HERE.


Monday, December 05, 2011

Live Thursday: An "Out of the Box" Conversation on Education with Lisa Nielsen

Join me Thursday, December 8th, for another live and interactive FutureofEducation.com webinar as Lisa Nielsen, "The Innovative Educator," joins us for a conversation on a variety of "out of the box" topics, including using cell phones to enhance learning, child-centered and customized learning, the changing role of teachers, "hacking" education, learning without teachers or grade levels, schooling that hurts children, opting out of school, home education, and more!

Lisa Nielsen writes for and speaks to audiences across the globe about learning innovatively and is frequently covered by local and national media for her views on “Passion (not data) Driven Learning,” "Thinking Outside the Ban" to harness the power of technology for learning, and using the power of social media to provide a voice to educators and students. Ms. Nielsen has worked for more than a decade in various capacities to support learning in real and innovative ways that will prepare students for success. In addition to her award-winning blog, The Innovative Educator, Ms. Nielsen’s writing is featured in places such as Huffington Post, Tech & Learning, ISTE Connects, ASCD Wholechild, MindShift, Leading & Learning, The Unplugged Mom, and is the author the book Teaching Generation Text.

Date: Thursday, December 8th, 2011
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am (next day) GMT (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). Log in at http://futureofed.info. The Blackboard Collaborate 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 Blackboard Collaborate, please visit the support and configuration page. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event at the event page.
Recordings: The full Blackboard Collaborate recording is at https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2011-12-08.1501.M.9E9FE58134BE68C3B413F24B3586CF.vcr&sid=2008350 and a portable .mp3 audio recording is at http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/lisanielsen.mp3.

Live Tuesday: A Conversation with Melia Dicker of "Reschool Yourself"

Join me Tuesday, December 6th, for another live and interactive FutureofEducation.com webinar as Melia Dicker joins us for a conversation about education change--both personal and institutional. At age 28, Melia spent a year retracing her steps through her education from kindergarten through college in order to reboot her life and make a fresh start. She called the project Reschool Yourself and documented the experience on her blog (www.reschoolyourself.com). Melia spent four years as Co-Founder and Co-Director of Spark, a California nonprofit organization that matches youth with apprenticeships in their dream jobs. She is currently the Communications Director of IDEA, the Institute for Democratic Education in America, which collaborates with communities around the country to reclaim and reinvent education.

Date: Tuesday, December 6th, 2011
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern / 12am (next day) GMT (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). Log in at http://futureofed.info. The Blackboard Collaborate 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 Blackboard Collaborate, please visit the support and configuration page. Recordings of the session will be posted within a day of the event at the event page.
Recordings: The full Blackboard Collaborate recording is available at https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2011-12-06.1705.M.9E9FE58134BE68C3B413F24B3586CF.vcr&sid=2008350 and a portable .mp3 audio recording is at http://audio.edtechlive.com/foe/meliadicker.mp3.