It was strange this morning. As an international delegate to Lausanne Collegiate School’s Laptop Institute, I was invited to attend a breakfast at the host hotel for all non-US attendees. Although most of the “international” delegates were Americans teaching overseas, there was certainly an international flavour.

I was at a table with educators curently teaching in International Schools in Poland, the Netherlands, India Switzerland and the Bahamas (a real rough posting!). Besides being geographically closer to the USA than any of these locations, I quickly realized that there was something far more drastic that separated us…they were all from private schools catering to economically advantaged families. Their schools are relatively wealthy, especially compared to local schooling in their areas.

The discussions at the table centered around programs such as IB and AP – programs that most educators in my part of the world havn’t even heard of – and the networking between them and the challenges faced by a somewhat transient student population. They did, however, freely admit that discipline issues faced in our public schools (many had PS experience in the US) did not exist. Student are motivated and excel.

Later, I had a chance to talk to Oanh Vovan, head of French at the American School of Bombay, ojn the bus ride over to Lausanne about her students. While they live in the lap of luxury (weekend trips to ski in Switzerland or shop in Dubai) they live sheltered lives to the poverty that surrounds them in Mumbai. She feels for them, and so do I.

I have often wondered about working internationally. There are obviously possibilities. But I am not sure if I would feel that I would really be doing it for selfish reasons (travel, new experiences) of because I want to make a change. One of my motivators is to see change happen.

I think public schools in North America need good teachers. As the world flattens, maybe the exodus of western teachers will stop, and we’ll start to see a flow the other way. I kind of like that idea. Our kids have a lot to learn about the world, and who better to learn it from than the world.

I am leading two workshops today, one is on On-Line Global Collaborative Projects and the possibilities they offer. I need to think a bit about how International schools fit into that. With their obviously sheltered environment in international settings, can their students really offer a fair view of the world to our students. Or, just maybe, these types of projects can provide both ends with opportunities to learn about their parts of the world.

I like to think it can be the latter.

Technorati tags: laptop2007, laptopinstitute07, laptopinstitute, education, technology, whipple, conference

— Live blogging —

Will Richardson
A Web of Connections: Why the Read/Write Web Changes Everything

Will is not in good health this morning…voice is raspy, but is ready to go anyway…:)

This is an extremely compelling moment for educators, we need to be thinking creatively to prepare our students for their future…

Will brings three viewpoints from which he approaches the conversation…(not-so-happy) parent, educator, edublogger

Will runs his presentation from http://willrichardson.wikispaces.com …starts with stats from Karl Fisch’s “Did You Know” video

Will uses Obama’s website to illustrate…Every candidate has a myspace site for the presidential election…first primary is not in Iowa or NH, but on MySpace next January 2/3…open primary…

Journalism is changing…bloggers and web 2.0 have made traditional journalism tougher…participant journalism…readership is going down…trying to figure out how to manage this new environment…

“businesses are not products, they are conversations” -Wikinomics…think ebay and consumer reviews…

problem – politics, business are changing, but education is not responding…

2/3 of kids have social networking sites…but educators do not…lag in understanding…skills and literacies involved in making sense of information is different from even 10 years ago…

Access is disparity issue…how do we get universal access…

Kids and teachers used to be in parallel…but kids have turned away and they aren’t coming back…so we need to move to join with them again…how do we do that? Need to join together and create networks of learners…number one skill for kids is to be able to create their own personal learning networks …

Blogs are a huge tool for learning…but the shift is not complete…many teachers only digitize previous practice…just another way to hand things in…we need to start looking at the need to shift pedagogies and practice…the start of conversations…responses to posts and feedback…

Imagine a classroom where everyone is passionate about the ideas and topics…hard to replicate in the physical world…we need to be findable…important to sharing ideas and learning….our kids are also beginning to build networks on-line…e.g. fan-fiction…writing chapters to books and movies…etc…others can share with like minded / interest…many are kids,,,and most do this outside of school and just want to connect with others…

Students are building networks using social networking sites, but we need to teach them about how to leverage networks through social networking…e.g. Meg cabot…author…connecting with readers…students need to learn that building networks will be crucial to learning…

Problem is when content shifts (e.g. Pluto)…we need to be teaching our kids to find information… not to memorize information… our curriculum should be shifting to teaching kids to find information…

Open Courseware – building network for any subject that kids have passion for… we are not the only place for kids to learn subject matter…

We need to teach wikipedia…wikis themselves provide other conversations…back channel negotiations in discussions…this will be an important skill for kids to know…how to co-create and collaborate on the fly…who owns what? what is intellectual property? this will be an on-going issue…

How many teach kids to read and write in hypertext environments…there is a literacy to doing this well…links are the key to building networks…if our kids are not writing with links to build networks they are not going to be ready for the 21st century…

Teaching practice needs to change…once we get Internet connection…we are no longer the smartest people in the room…our job is to connect our students to the smartest people available…e.g. Secret Life of Bees…students blogged…open…connected…author collaboration…

Classrooms cannot be four walled any longer….we must get outside the walls…activities must be real…authentic and engaging…why are kids filling out worksheets…why can’t kids be doing something real…e.g. radio willow web…kids as editors, publishers and teachers…real audience… engage people globally…

Marco Torres – students work “must have wings” – needs to have a purpose beyond the classroom…e.g. “Buckle Up” PSA…limitation is connection and willingness to understand they have a global audience and can do real work…

No question the way we live and work is shifting…we can’t continue to teach kids content…we need to teach kids how to build learning networks…ideas of teaching have to change…there are better teachers out there…

Most of the shifts have been around replication of old practice in digital environment…teachers don’t understand the pedagogy possibilities… we need to talk about what is stopping teachers from understanding the shifts that are occuring on a personal level…educators need to understand the changes…suck it up and get it…

Question…who are your teachers? Who are you learning from? There are powerful opportunities out there who you can connect with…how are you building you learning networks? You have to participate in on-line network…how are you modeling your learning? can kids answer the question…how does my teacher learn? We need for kids to see their teachers using and modeling learning…this is the way we do business now…next five or ten years are crucial…if we don’t change…options to opt out are growing…we need to make sure we keep them with us…

– end –

Technorati tags: laptop2007, laptopinstitute07, laptopinstitute, will richardson, education, technology, whipple, conference

I am off tomorrow morning for the prestigious Laptop Institute conference, hosted by Lausanne Collegiate School in Memphis. I am looking forward to this one for a couple of reasons.

First of all, this is a quality conference. While not as large as NECC or some of the other ETC’s…LI has a personal feel and a real focus on 1:1 programs. After teaching in 1:1 for three years and spending the last year as a technology mentor for a large 1:1 program, I am excited to be able to meet and share ideas with colleagues in similar environments.

I am also excited to have been invited to share two workshops, one one developing and managing global collaborative projects and another on using wikis – my fave tool – in the classroom!

The conference is also a watershed of sorts for me. Last year I attended with a team-teaching colleague as we planned to spend another year sharing a classroom with 55 students. It was at LI that I first heard David Warlick, who turned me on my head with his ideas regarding literacy and learning in the digital age. Since then David’s ideas, and through him connections to a personal learning network (many of whom I met at NECC) have made the past year a wild ride!

Will Richardson is on the stump this year. I purposefully avoided Will’s sessions at NECC, but I am very excited about hearing his message!

And to think, just a year ago I was a teacher who liked technology. Now I am a learning-leader focused on 21st century literacy and learning. It’s not about the technology – and I get it!!

Hope to see you in Memphis!

Technorati tags: laptopinstitute, laptopinstitute07, education, technology, whipple, warlick, richardson

Twas an incredible first day in Atlanta. After rising late (we were all exhausted from the ordeal of the day before) we strolled two blocks to mid-town, the over to Centennial Olympic Park and the “World of Coke”. In this city that is headquarters to the most popular soft drink in the world, Coca Cola rules!

We enjoyed a tour through an actual production facility and historical displays of all kinds, but the highlight was definately the 4-D theatre presentation, complete with 3-D glasses, moving seats, wind and water! What a ride…

The sign identifies a robot that is used in the processing facility. When I saw it I began to wonder…how many of our classrooms are like this machine…repetitively sanitize the container, fill with product and cap, and try not to shake too much before opening at test time. I fear that far too many match this analogy.

What will it take to move our schools toward a more individual approach, where students themselves decide what product they want to hold and how they want to be filled. What role canm technology play in this change?

NECC is underway…more later.

Technorati tags: necc07, necc2007, education, technology

You would think that getting up at 4 am to catch a 5:45 am flight would be sufficient – especially when you live less than three minutes from the airport! But alas, conference travel never seems to go easy for me.

In a role reversal from last year’s trip to Memphis for the Laptop Institute, this time it was Delta’s turn to bail out Air Canada when their plane refused to start on the tarmac in the wee hours – something about a dead battery.

While we (myself and four others on our tech mentor team) did manage to make our way – over three hours late – to Toronto on our original aircraft, that’s where the real fun began.

After missing our original scheduled connection to Atlanta – and with the balance of AC’s schedule to Atlanta full for the rest of the day – Air Canada then rescheduled us through Boston, where we would catch a Delta flight to Atlanta. Even though it was kind of a zig zag across the northeast, it wasn’t a bad option, except it would get us in four hours later than scheduled, and a full hour after first pitch in the 3:30 start for the Braves and Tigers.

Ha ha!…not so simple…after our delayed flight was even later than expected, and a wrong turn in the Toronto airport, we missed the flight to Boston. By now, all we could do was laugh!

We put ourselves in the hands of the VERY nice staff at Air Canada who managed to rebook us direct to Atlanta on the competition, Delta. We had just under two hours – which seemed generous – but we needed every second as it turns out. After a quick retrieval of our bags, a rush through customs back into Canada (we never really left but were caught in a kind of no-mans land and had to “re-enter” the country), a quick monorail trip to Terminal 3, and a check in with Delta, we were almost there!

But there’s always a “but”…we arrived in the US customs and immigration line with 30 minutes to spare, but it was a very long and slow moving line…after finally getting released there (again thanks to some nice help from a polite young customs officer) it was off to security…where, despite the fact that we had less than ten minutes to flight time, our group was flagged (I suppose because we were five in the party with last minute tickets)…all our carry on’s were swabbed and searched, we were all patted down, the whole works…

It was then a mad rush to the gate to grab a shuttle bus to take us to our plane, and off we went – with a few minutes to spare…I was quite content to squeeze even into these small seats on the CRJ-200 commuter jets…where I write this while cruising at 31,000 feet above South Carolina or somewhere in the vicinity…

Count ‘em – one late flight, two missed flights, and another almost missed…been an interesting day to say the least….but kudos go out to both the staff at Air Canada and Delta….a special mention goes out to the guy and gal who rebooked our flight and the attendant in the Canada customs area who retrieved our luggage…without them we would be arriving in Atlanta much later than what we will now.

It’s probably still too late for the game, but I might be able to sneak over to the edubloggercon gathering…we’ll see…wither way, I am just glad to be 30 minutes from NECC!

Technorati tags: necc07, necc2007, education, technology, whipple, edubloggercon

Well….I am all set to fly (well…not really ready…but close enuff!) to Atlanta on Saturday for the National Educational Computing Conference, better know in ed tech circles as NECC.  I am going with our district’s technology mentor team, led by our Technology Learning Specialist Bryan Facey.  Bryan’s a vet of NECC.  The rest of us are NECC virgins.  They are all great educators and working with them this year has been a blast! I am pumped!

First of all, this is huge!  18,000 people huge!  The thought of all those like-minded educators out there to mix and mingle, trade ideas and collaborate with is simply overwhelming!

Secondly, this conference has ALL the biggies. Most of the people who I learn from most will be there in person.  I look forward to (hopefully) saying hi to David Warlick (again!), Vicki Davis, Jeff Utecht, Will Richardson (who I will see again in Memphis in July), Karl Fisch, Wesley Fryer et al. These are all people whose blogs have been part of my personal learning circle…and I want to thank them.

Hopefully our flights will be on time Saturday so I might be able to catch at least the last bit of the edubloggercon, a meeting of bloggers (like me) who generally have a passion for technology and education.

In addition, anyone who is anyone that has new technology to sell / giveaway will be there.  The vendors space alone can’t be covered in a day…but I at least hope to hit the highlights.  I’ve also been invited (as a Canadian delegate) to attend a reception hosted by Apple Canada one evening, which will include a behind the scenes tour of the CNN facilities in downtown Atlanta.

And…it gets even better….

To top it all off…Braves – Tigers play Saturday and Sunday, and the Nationals are in town Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday!

I will be blogging at NECC when I get the chance, so you can follow my comings and goings.  And if you want to follow as a cyber-delegate, the tags at technorati is necc07 or necc2007.

See you there!

Technorati tags: whipple, education, teaching, technology, necc07, necc2007, warlick, vicki davis, karl fisch, will richardson