Join Us for Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation This Saturday

This Saturday, February 21st, we'll be holding the 2009 edition of Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation. We're completely full in terms of physical registrants, but if you aren't coming in person you can still attend virtually. We'll have Elluminate rooms going for each of the sessions, with live video and audio from the physical rooms, and of course the chat and other features of Elluminate.

We'll be starting around 9 am MST (although the sessions themselves don't start until 9:30). Here's a link to a list of all the Elluminate rooms, and below is our schedule for the day (couldn't get the Gliffy to embed nicely in Blogger, so it's just an image below - follow this link for active hyperlinks to the sessions.) We're excited to have new faces leading the conversations this year (plus an old face or two), as well as a couple of folks from SLA in Philadelphia joining us. We're looking forward to some great learning conversations.

Take Me to Your Leader(s)

I recently had the opportunity to help Will Richardson with a breakout session at the CASE Winter Leadership Conference. CASE is our statewide school administrator organization, with membership including superintendents, central office administrators and building level administrators. While Will�s keynote was the following day, our goal with the breakout was to hopefully initiate some conversations that administrators would take back and continue in their schools and/or districts.

We used Mark Pesce�s Fluid Learning blog post to spur discussion, and created some essential questions and a graphic organizer to go along with it (thanks Ben Wilkoff, Bud Hunt and Mike Porter for help with all that). We also created a wiki page with some additional readings and essential questions, to hopefully spur even more conversations among administrators, teachers, and all stakeholders about the �shifts.�

Hopefully the fifty or so folks in the room felt it was worthwhile, and with a little luck many of them will use what we did � or the additional readings and questions on the wiki � to help continue the conversations in their schools and districts. But I also got to thinking that perhaps I should share out that work here, since it�s unlikely folks would stumble upon that page on the Learning 2.0 wiki by chance.

So, in case anyone can use it, here is both what we used in the session, and the additional eleven sets of readings paired with essential questions. Please consider taking some or all of these to an administrator near you.

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Read Mark Pesce's blog post.

Essential Questions

• Capture Everything: What's worth capturing in my classrooms? My building? My district? Audio? Video? Text-based assignments? Student work? Writing?
  .
  
• Share Everything: Where can I share it? With whom? What audiences is our organization working to serve? How will they benefit from these shared items? Who needs to see what�s going on?
  .
• Open Everything: What are the closed silos of information in our schools that shouldn't be? What things outside of our schools have we closed (blocked)? What can we do to open both of those up?
  .
• Only Connect: How can I help my students and teachers connect with content, with each other, and with others outside the classroom (students, teachers, experts, mentors, the community, etc.) in a meaningful way?
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• What questions do I have for my administrators/curriculum staff? Teaching Staff? IT Staff? Students?

Graphic Organizer for this activity (Word, PDF). Feel free to download and use.

Online, editable pages for each of the questions above: (Capture Everything, Share Everything, Open Everything, Only Connect, What Questions Do I Have). As you have these discussions at CASE, at CoLearning, in your schools, and in your communities, please share out the results on the appropriate wiki page. It might take a few minutes to get the hang of editing a wiki, but you'll figure it out - give it a shot. And, don't worry, there's a history page so if you accidentally delete something, you can get it back.

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Here are some additional resources and recommended activities for administrators to continue their learning about - and sharing of - network literacy.

Additional Recommended Readings and Questions

The following is a long list of thought-provoking blog posts, articles and videos that can help administrators start or continue conversations in their school districts, schools, and communities. Each one is accompanied by a set of essential questions that can guide you as you read the article and can help further spur discussion.

1. Essential Questions
   What literacies must educators master before we can help students make the most of these powerful potentials? What�s one thing you are going to do in the next six weeks to help you begin to master these literacies? How does "authentic" assessment change when the student's audience is the world?
   
   Read Will Richardson's Footprints in the Digital Age from the November 2008 issue of Educational Leadership.
   .
   
2. Essential Questions
   We know that good teachers existed before the current wave of technology, but can a teacher today be the best teacher they can be and truly meet the needs of their students without using technology? What implications does this have for professional development and teacher evaluation? What implications does this have for the technological literacy levels of administrators?
   
   Read Karl Fisch's Is it Okay to be a Technologically Illiterate Teacher? blog post (including comment thread) and National Educational Technology Standards for Teachers (NETS-T).
   .
3. Essential Questions
   What does it mean to be literate in the 21st century? Are we as educators currently literate? If not, what implications does that have for our students, and what proposals can we put in place to get all educators to a basic level of 21st century literacy in a reasonable amount of time?
   
   Read NCTE's definition of 21c literacy along with The Partnership for 21st Century Skills English Skills Map.
   .
4. Essential Questions
   Do you believe schools foster inquiry and passion in students? If so, are your schools currently structured to do that? Are students regularly asked to research, collaborate, create, present and network in your schools? If not, what can you do to change that?
   
   Read Chris Lehmann's blog post Talking to 49 Superintendents along with his Ignite Philly 5 minute presentation.
   .
5. Essential Question
   Of the 10 things the author thinks we should unlearn, pick the three that most resonate with you. Now, how are you going to foster �unlearning� those things for you, other administrators, and teachers in your school/district?
   
   Read Will Richardson�s Steep Unlearning Curve blog post.
   .
6. Essential Questions
   In a rapidly changing, information abundant world, what should students know and be able to do? What should �school� or �learning� look like in a world where almost all factual information is literally a click away? How do we help students create their own Personal Learning Networks? What steps are you going to make to create your own PLN? Which of the suggestions in Shift Happens � Now What? resonates with you, and how can you go about implementing them?
   
   Read Stephanie Sandifer's blog post Shift Happens � Now What? and watch this version of Did You Know?/Shift Happens (Vision Remix, Fall 2007). Also explore the Shift Happens wiki for more information.
   .
7. Essential Questions
   Do you agree that the culture of most educational institutions today is insulated, that it actively tries to block out the �outside� world? If so, do you believe that educational institutions can survive (and thrive) with that culture? If not, what are some steps you can take to open up the culture in your school/district?
   
   Read Bill Farren's Insulat-Ed blog post and we also highly recommend reading Here Comes Everybody by Clay Shirky.
   .
8. Essential Questions
   Where do you rank yourself in terms of competency on the NETS for Administrators? What do leaders really need to know about this? What are you (your school, your district) doing to help your leaders grow in this area?
   
   Read the National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A) along with Scott McLeod�s An Absence of Leadership (pdf) article from ISTE's Learning and Leading with Technology magazine.
   .
9. Essential Questions
   What kind of collaborative partnerships - physical or virtual - can you develop with folks outside of your school(s)? (universities, corporations, other schools, etc.) What steps can you take to engage with these collaborative technologies yourself, both to learn and to model for our students?
   
   Read Will Richardson's article World Without Walls - Learning Well with Others from Edutopia.
   .
10. Essential Questions
    Take a look at the seven survival skills that Wagner postulates through the lens of a typical classroom in your school (or, if you�re at the district level, a typical elementary, middle, and high school classroom). How�s that classroom do on those seven skills? Pick three of the skills and brainstorm ways to work with teachers in your building to strengthen their presence in the typical classroom.
    
    Read Tony Wagner's article Rigor Redefined from the October 2008 issue of Educational Leadership, along with this post on the Google Blog.
    .
11. Essential Questions
    Is it important to bring meaning and significance into the classroom? Do you think the way students portrayed themselves in these videos is fairly accurate for today�s student? How can we leverage the �networked� student, and the technological tools we have at our disposal, to empower our students to pursue real, relevant, and rigorous questions?
    
    Read Kansas State Professor Michael Wesch's blog post and watch some of his videos (A Vision of Students Today, The Machine is Using Us, and Information Revolution). Also watch Wendy Drexler's Networked Student.

Start Reading Blogs

The only way to truly begin to understand the literacy of networking is to participate. We would recommend subscribing to 3 to 5 blogs to begin with (ask your tech folks for help if you don't know how to subscribe). We would highly recommend that you subscribe to Will Richardson's Weblogg-ed and to LeaderTalk. Then find one to three more blogs that interest you, either by asking people you know, following links in Weblogg-ed and LeaderTalk, or by doing a Google Blog Search.

Read those blogs for two to three months, commenting when you're ready and have something to say. Then consider starting your own blog, either an individual blog or a group of educators in your school/district, to continue the conversations you're having about teaching and learning in the twenty-first century.

Consider attending Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation on February 21, 2009.

Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation (2009 Edition)

Well, we did it earlier this year and most folks asked us to put on a 2009 edition, so we're doing it again.

You are invited to attend the Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation Conference (2009 Edition).

What is Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation?
Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation is a one day conference/meetup for teachers, administrators, students, school board members, parents and anyone who is interested in education. It will be held on Saturday, February 21st, 2009, from 9:00 am until 3:00 pm at Heritage High School in Littleon, Colorado, USA (different location than last year - here's a map). We assume most folks will be from Colorado, but everyone is welcome to attend, and we are working on some ideas for virtual participation.

Education is conversation.

Conversation creates change.

The future of education does not exist in the isolated world of theory and abstract conference sessions. Instead, it exists in conversations. It exists in creating a robust learning network that is ever-expanding and just-in-time. Learning 2.0 is not the beginning of this conversation. It is merely a stopping point, a time to talk about the visible difference that we all seek.

We read. We reflect. We write. We share. We learn. Come join us for a day of conversation about learning and technology.

You can learn much more about the conference on the wiki, including information about registering. Here are some highlights:

Tentative Schedule
We're still working on the details so this will be updated before the conference. Also, this may expand if we have more folks register than we are anticipating. (To quote Bud Hunt, "This conference stuff is hard!"). We also need folks to submit proposals to facilitate conversations.

Registration
You must register so that we know how many folks to expect and so that we can have enough lunches available. (Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch?)

Cost
Free, baby. And lunch is included, thanks to the generous support of Littleton Public Schools and St. Vrain Valley Public Schools.

Wireless
BYOL (that would be Bring Your Own Laptop) - we'll have wireless access to the Internet (filtered) - we may test our capacity to handle density of machines, but hopefully things will go swimmingly. If not, we have wired machines in various places you can access.

Questions for Students
We're having a student panel discussion during lunch. Here's your chance to submit some questions for them to consider.

Invite Others
We strongly encourage you to invite other folks from your school, district, neighborhood, or learning network to attend as well. It would be great if everyone could bring at least one person with them that is perhaps new to this conversation.

Call for Conversations

Hey, did you miss it above? We need folks to submit proposals to facilitate these conversations. This doesn't happen without you.

Questions?
Feel free to leave a comment on this post or on the FAQ page on the wiki.

Promote Learning 2.0
Did we mention that you should tell others? Blog about this. Link to the wiki or this blog post. Download a flyer (pdf) and print it out.Or use this nifty image.

Learning 2.0: Brief Reflection and Recap

So, it looks like we pulled off a conference today. I'd estimate we had between 130-150 physical attendees (we had about 170 folks registered, and about 40 didn't pick up nametags, but some other people came and some folks probably just didn't get a nametag), as well as some virtual attendees.

We'll have to wait until everyone fills out the evaluation to get a complete picture of how the day went, but certainly the comments we received - and overheard - were very positive. Overall, things seem to run fairly smoothly, the sessions and conversations seemed to go well, we had enough food for lunch, and our students were amazing (as always) for the student panel discussion. We certainly could've done better on the virtual component - some of the Ustreams didn't work well and it probably would've helped if we'd had some people on site just dedicated to helping with those and managing the various chats. But, as we said all along, we were mainly concerned with pulling off the physical conference and the virtual part was a bonus - so I think we did okay there. Should there be a next time (umm, can we pick somebody else's school?), we'll do better. You can see a couple of CoverItLive Replays on the main page of the wiki, as well as the Ustreams that did work and some partial copy and paste's of chats. There are also quite a few resources on various parts of the wiki, particularly linked from each session page.

I'm really tired, so this post will be brief (for me), but a few thank you's. Thank you to Littleton Public Schools, Arapahoe High School and St. Vrain Valley Public Schools for supporting the conference so that attendees not only didn't have to pay anything, but also got fed. Thanks to all the presenters that gave of their time and expertise. Thanks to the attendees for giving up most of a Saturday to come and help us all learn. Thanks to the five students from Arapahoe and one student from Ben's Cresthill Middle School for sharing your insights with us. Thank you so much to Barbara Barreda and Clarence Fisher who helped us out with a video (produced by Bud Hunt) to start off our day and then participated in a virtual roundtable discussion at the end. And, finally, thanks to Bud Hunt, Ben Wilkoff and Mike Porter for helping take this harebrained idea and making it a reality. 'Twas an honor to work with you.

Reminder - Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation Coming this Saturday

Just a reminder for those of you attending � either physically or virtually � that Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation is coming up this Saturday, February 23rd, from 9:00 am � 2:30 pm MST. If you registered, you should�ve received this email a few days ago with some updated information. And here�s the schedule for the day�s activities.

For those of you interested in attending virtually, we will be attempting to Ustream the seven sessions � channel info here. Please keep in mind that our first priority is pulling off the physical conference, so if the Ustream happens it will be a bonus, but we're going to give it a shot.

We have about 170 folks registered, although I imagine a few will change their minds at the last minute. The weather looks like it�s going to cooperate, everything is planned out and we think (emphasis on think) we�ve thought of everything. It�s going to be interesting . . .

Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation

You are invited to attend the Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation Conference.

What is Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation?
Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation is a one day conference/meetup for teachers, administrators, students, school board members, parents and anyone who is interested in education. It will be held on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008, from 9:00 am until 3:00 pm at Arapahoe High School in Centennial, Colorado, USA. We assume most folks will be from Colorado, but everyone is welcome to attend, and we are working on some ideas for virtual participation.

Education is conversation.

Conversation creates change.

The future of education does not exist in the isolated world of theory and abstract conference sessions. Instead, it exists in conversations. It exists in creating a robust learning network that is ever-expanding and just-in-time. Learning 2.0 is not the beginning of this conversation. It is merely a stopping point, a time to talk about the visible difference that we all seek.

We read. We reflect. We write. We share. We learn. Come join us for a day of conversation about learning and technology.

You can learn much more about the conference on the wiki, including information about registering. Here are some highlights:

Tentative Schedule
We're still working on the details so this will be updated before the conference. Also, this may expand if we have more folks register than we are anticipating. (To quote Bud Hunt, "This conference stuff is hard!")

Registration
You must register so that we know how many folks to expect and so that we can have enough lunches available. (Who says there's no such thing as a free lunch?)

Cost
Free, baby. And lunch is included, thanks to the generous support of Littleton Public Schools, St. Vrain Valley Public Schools, and Arapahoe High School.

Wireless
BYOL (that would be Bring Your Own Laptop) - we'll have wireless access to the Internet (filtered) - we may test our capacity to handle density of machines, but hopefully things will go swimmingly. If not, we have wired machines in various places you can access.

Questions for Students
We're having a student panel discussion during lunch. Here's your chance to submit some questions for them to consider.

Invite Others
We strongly encourage you to invite other folks from your school, district, neighborhood, or learning network to attend as well. It would be great if everyone could bring at least one person with them that is perhaps new to this conversation.

Questions?
Feel free to leave a comment on this post or on the FAQ page on the wiki.

Oh, also feel free to add this image to your blog, or download and print the flyer.

It�s an Honor Just to be Nominated (again)

Update 12-9-07: I'd like to thank the Academy . . .


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The 2007 Edublogs Award nominations were announced over the weekend. They have expanded to 14 categories this year � I encourage you to check them out � there are again quite a few blogs that I haven�t looked at before. Vote early, vote often.




Yes, this blog was nominated again this year, this time for Most Influential Blog Post (for Is It Okay To Be A Technologically Illiterate Teacher? � I did not see that one coming). Much like last year�s nomination, I feel honored to be in such good company. Also much like last year�s nomination, I think I might rank my post as #5 out of 5 in the category (but at least it�s in the top five!).

Don�t get me wrong, I think we�re doing good stuff around here and the conversations around that post were helpful as we explore how best to meet the needs of our students. But the other four posts in this category are stellar � I encourage you to read them:

• Gone Fischin� - from Scott McLeod�s blog Dangerously Irrelevant. (OK, I might be a little biased about this one.)
  



• How to Prevent Another Leonardo da Vinci - from Kris Bradburn�s blog Wandering Ink.
  



• How to Grow a Blog - from Konrad Glogowski�s Blog of Proximal Development.
  



• The Ripe Environment - from Ben Wilkoff�s blog Discourse about Discourse.

Now, I will admit that it�s nice to see that three of those posts have a Colorado connection (mine, Scott�s and Ben�s) � apparently we have an outsized influence on the world (well, at least the edublog world). That fits in nicely with this year�s New Year�s resolution.

Thanks to all of you who nominated the post, whoever you are. Don�t forget to vote (and more importantly, check out all the thought-provoking blogs)!

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