Presentation Description: Are you in search of opportunities to make authentic connections with students and teachers? Why not surround yourself with prompts to remind you of compelling stories? Learn how aptly chosen artifacts, deliberately placed, can promote story-telling and relationship-building. Play along and consider how you willing you are to be ‘real’ with your fellow learners.
Presenter: David Truss Location: Coquitlam, BC, Canada @datruss
Presentation Title: Transforming Education
Presentation Description: There are really only two messages in this presentation. First, Education is NOT broken! So let’s start using language that is constructive rather than counterproductive. And secondly, as educators we are inherently leaders, no matter what our role is, and so we need to model what it means to be a connected, life-long learner.
Additional Information:
Resources and opportunities to continue learning and engaging on these topics can be found at: http://trans4med.org
Also, if people would like to share their thoughts on Transforming Education, I thought we could play with the twitter hashtag #Trans4mEd for a while… a way to get connected around a common theme.
Presentation Description: Each year, Bayview Public School (bay.scdsb.on.ca) participates in Canada’s National Family Literacy Day, which is held annually on January 27. Two years ago, the parent council president asked me if we could set up a computer at the school to have families record reviews of their favorite books. Using free services, I was able to have them record these reviews via telephone from home. We got a free local voicemail phone number through freephoneline.ca which forwards messages to my email. We posted these audio reviews, of families and children sharing the books they love to the Bayview Family Literacy Day website.
Several classes and many families have contributed audio reviews and we have even had an author respond to one of the reviews. In the process, we have built up a resource of books that families in our community are passionate about.
I hope this presentation can inspire others to creatively use free tools to energize their own school communities.
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.
Presenter: Jess McCulloch Location: Melbourne, Victoria, Australia @jessmcculloch
Presentation Title: The Black Line Mystery “ a story about the most complicated Chinese character known to mankind and its community.
Presentation Description: Agent 42, Charles the Basset Hound and The Council of Chiefs have recruited many secret agents to help them save the community from The Doom Of Not Knowing how to read Chinese characters, to save them from seeing just random black lines! But they aren’t without enemies. Agent X tries to stop them, saying that Chinese characters are too confusing for the community – why would anyone need to know about them?! Come along to be swept up in the Black Line Mystery, find out what the most complicated Chinese character of all time looks like, what it means and how it is being used to unlock the mystery of all Chinese characters.
Also hear the story of the agents, both virtual and face to face, and how they have started to build a community of their own around this character – a community for the power of good, for the power of knowledge, all with the power of a story.
Presentation
Just imagine you received a real paper letter in the mail. There was no return address, just a red chop mark on the back. You carefully open the envelope and take out a single white page. On the page you see this:
You’ve got no idea what it is let alone what it might mean or why it has been sent to you. On closer inspection you notice that at the bottom of the page is this:
Presenter: Ben Hazzard Location: Port Lambton, Ontario, Canada @benhazzard
Presentation Title: How Do I Know I Made A Difference? (an audio story)
Presentation Description: From the teacher’s perspective change can be scary, exciting, and full of learning. What does trying something new look like from a student’s perspective? Take a moment to consider a student as a teacher begins to explore one new learning opportunity with a class. Open your ears and visualize a whole a different perspective.
Presenter: Shannon Smith Location: Ottawa, Ontario, Canada @shannoninottawa
Presentation Title: Get in the Game – Learning, Leading and Play
Presentation Description: This presentation explores the role school leaders assume in promoting play within learning environments. Play is intimately linked to creativity, the development of cognitive flexibility and a sense of belonging — all things critical for responsive and engaging places of learning. Through modelling a playful approach, school leaders create the conditions under which creativity, innovation, risk-taking and flexible thinking flourish.
Are you in search of opportunities to make authentic connections with students and teachers? Why not surround yourself with prompts to remind you of compelling stories? Learn how aptly chosen artifacts, deliberately placed, can promote story-telling and relationship-building. Play along and consider how you willing you are to be ‘real’ with your fellow learners.