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Presenter: Dave Edwards Location: Wilmington, NC USA Twitter:@eduk8andlead
Presentation Title: When Leadership and Learning Collide
Presentation Description: Today’s educational leader has to understand the 21st century learning process and map it to today’s workforce needs. Gaining an understanding of what it takes to foster innovation/creativity/change in schools and classrooms is imperative for leaders at all levels. This thought-provoking presentation explores how leadership at all levels can make the difference between effective learning environments and poor learning environments. When there is good leadership (at all levels), learning can occur and innovation is spawned. Dave takes a look at how educational leaders can foster this culture and allow learning and leadership to collide through effective best practices and new strategies tailored to your needs.
Dave is the Chief Communications and Professional Learning Officer for the NC Virtual Public School, the 2nd largest state virtual school in the nation. He is also the President and CEO of Ignite Learning Partners, LLC, a new education and training solutions provider. He is an innovative leader whose passion to see education transformed drives everything he does. He works to see innovative learning become the constant, and leadership become the catalyst to foster a 21st century learning ecosystem. He is an avid tweeter, strong family man, youth leadership advocate, and when not working spends time writing and playing music for charitable causes.
Presenter: Dr. James Beeghley Location: Mechanicsburg, Pa USA @fifer1863
Presentation Title: Tradigital History: Bringing the Past Alive
Presentation Description: Many teachers would indicate that there is insufficient time and they lack available resources to fully and properly cover the topic so they instead focus on famous people, famous dates in history and other major events. In addition to traditional resources such as textbooks and secondary sources, the Internet opens the doors to vast libraries of information and resources for teaching about history. This is important because while reviewing these resources, students might brainstorm, using prior knowledge, and engage in problem-solving strategies similar to the work of historians thus adding important dimensions to their learning (NCSS, 1994).
This presentation describes uses of technology, in particular digital historical resources, for the teaching of history and social studies. Digital historical resources such as the Valley of the Shadow project challenge traditional interpretations of historical events in today’s K-12 social studies classrooms. In addition, digital historical resources from sources such as the National Archives or The Library of Congress can be used to challenge and clarify popular ideas about our history such as the causes of the Civil War. For example, primary source documents could be used to challenge and clarify some of the more popular misconceptions about the causes of the Civil War because K-12 teachers usually do not consider this as an open ended question.
The presentation will discuss how to encourage students to learn more about early photography, use analysis skills, and to research additional while using original photographs from throughout history.
Attendees will be shown how to use photographs as part of a CSI theme in order to incorporate Science and other content areas. Furthermore, the session will address how educators can use audio and video to teach and engage students in “doing history”. The session will present information on the use of Web 2.0 in teaching history including how to create/use Web 2.0 tools for their classroom use.
Presentation Title: Hardware is not Enough – The Teacher/Facilitator Partnership
Presentation Description: Building and sustaining 21st century teaching and learning practices to develop purposeful play requires a new kind of support structure, focusing on human relationships and pedagogy. Many schools label this position as a Technology Facilitator, but there are a surprising number that don’t yet see the need for this role. It is the partnership between the teacher and facilitator that brings out the full potential of any technology-rich classroom, particularly a 1:1 learning environment.
Chrissy Hellyer (Grade 5 classroom teacher) and Kim Cofino (Technology and Learning Coordinator) will describe and share examples of their successful Facilitator-Teacher partnership at (and beyond) the International School Bangkok in this video presentation. Chrissy will offer insights, examples and resources from the perspective of the practicing classroom teacher. Kim will offer strategies, processes and resources from the perspective of the technology facilitator.
Presenter: David Wees Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada @davidwees
Presentation Title: Computer Based Math
Presentation Description:
Computers in math education are typically seen as a tool for delivering content, assessing student understanding, or in some few cases, as a vehicle for exploration of mathematical ideas. Conrad Wolfram has suggested that computers could be used to replace the computation step of solving mathematical problems, so that students’ time could be freed up to learn the other aspects of mathematical problem solving.
This presentation is an attempt to explore the consequences of this idea, and to frame my opinion of the use of computers in mathematics education.
