Sneak Preview of Mightybell Version 2 on Thursday

Gina Bianchini, co-founder of Ning, is preparing to release Version 2 of her current project, Mightybell, and she is looking for a small and devoted group of educators to give feedback Thursday night on this significant overhaul. As I did with Gina for Ning, I'm again serving (and getting paid) as an educational consultant to help bring the community's voice and ideas to the project. When she released the first version of Mightybell, the Teacher 2.0 community I built there produced their largest community of users--and Gina both appreciates, and wants to magnify, the educator interest in the work she does.

For those of you who might consider attending, I will state this as thoughtfully and carefully as I can:  I think you're going to be blown away by what Gina and her team have created. I won't steal her thunder, but the commitment to social learning, content curation, and online conversation in this version have the potential to make Mightybell the 21st-century replacement for the textbook many of us have been waiting for. (I guess that wasn't very subtle, but those of you who attend will just have to let me know if you think I'm on the mark.)

Date: Thursday, April 5th, 2012
Time: 5pm Pacific / 8pm Eastern (international times here)
Duration: 1 hour
Location: In Blackboard Collaborate (formerly Elluminate). Log in at http://sociallearning20.net. 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.
Recording:  The recording can be played back at https://sas.elluminate.com/p.jnlp?psid=2012-04-05.1512.M.C66383778B1D070A48445A021E2450.vcr&sid=2008350.

Be a Part of Both the Social Learning Summit and the Classroom 2.0 Book Project!

We have two great projects coming up that I really want to encourage EVERYONE to participate in.

First is our Social Learning Summit on Saturday, April 21st--a virtual, free, and worldwide conference being sponsored by the Discovery Educator Network on the use of social media and Web 20 in teaching and learning. One of the goals of the conference is inclusion, meaning we really want to encourage the broadest participation we can, not just for attending but also for presenting (don't be shy--first-time presenters welcome!). We have started accepting presentation proposals already, and you can see the amazing and fun list of accepted HERE, and we are still accepting proposals through this Saturday, April 7th so don't delay. Session blocks are 30 minutes in length, and more information on how to submit can be found HERE.

You can also help us by publicizing the event! It is free and open to anyone who wants to attend any of the sessions through the online Blackboard Collaborate platform. You can direct folks to http://www.SocialLearningSummit.com to learn more, and you can use a logo or artwork from HERE.

Second is the Classroom 2.0 Book Project. Because we know that many people presenting at the Social Learning Summit are likely to also be great contributors to the book, we moved the deadline for contribution submissions to April 21st. This is an incredible project on the fifth anniversary of the Classroom 2.0 network to build a community-sourced set of "chapters" or resources for using social media and Web 2.0 in teaching and learning (sound like the Summit description!?). We have received dozens of excellent chapters already, and every chapter we receive will not only receive tender care by Chris Dawson, our editor, but will also get published and promoted on the Classroom 2.0 site as a stand-alone whitepaper available to download for free. We will then be selecting from these chapters for a print edition of the book to come out later in the year.

You can and are most-welcome to re-purpose material you have used elsewhere for your submission (as long as you have legal permissions to do so). We want you to share your expertise, and especially if you have never done so before! Please consider participating! All the details are HERE, and do help us promote this opportunity if you can.

I hope you get as excited about both of these opportunities as I am. Here's to a very exciting April!