No point in re-creating the wheel, so I’ve copied the e-mail I sent to my faculty colleagues below (he only difference is that I embedded my teaser video into this post instead of just providing a link):

***

Dearest colleagues,
If I told you that there is an extraordinary educational conference that you can attend at no expense to your travel budget, (or to any other budget, for that matter) and that you could attend largely at your own convenience, you’d listen, right?

Well, beginning on October 13 and continuing through the end of the month, the K12 Online Conference 2008 will be taking place…well…everywhere and anywhere.  As it is written on the homepage of the conference:

The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This FREE conference is run by volunteers and open to everyone. The 2008 conference theme is “Amplifying Possibilities”. This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of October 13, 2008. The following two weeks, October 20-24 and October 27-31, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog (this website) for participants to download and view. Live Events in the form of three “Fireside Chats” and a culminating “When Night Falls” event will be announced. Everyone is encouraged to participate in both live events during the conference as well as asynchronous conversations.

To learn more about the conference, I would suggest reading and clicking through this site. Basically, though, presentations are made via prerecorded videos and broadcast at specific times.  There are also opportunities to “meet” and “talk to” the presenters at a webinar called a Fireside Chat.

The schedule of events can be found here.  You will notice that yours truly is one of the select presenters and my presentation airs on Tuesday, October 21 at 12:00 p.m GMT (which, if I’m correct, is 8:00 EST). You can view a “teaser” of my presentation [below], and teasers for many of the other presentations are being added to the conference blog every day.

I can’t recommend this conference enough, and please pass along this information to your students.  This is a FREE conference FOR educators BY educators.  It is a 21st Century conference about 21st Century teaching and learning.

Thanks for considering this extraordinary learning opportunity and I hope to “see” you at the fireside chats!

Yours,
JB

Tags: conference, education, k12online08, technology integration

On April 16 of this year, I wrote a post entitled “You say you want a revolution?“  In it, I wrote of true visions of the future of education, with particular reference to writing by Dale Mann and a white paper by Roger Schank and Kemi Jona.  I often ask my students to read the Schank/Jona paper to get them thinking about the possibilities for the future of education.  Mostly, my students have visceral reactions and think the ideas in the paper are outlandish and unrealistic.

Outlandish?  Maybe.  Unrealistic?  Nope.  In fact, I just learned that the VOISE Academy opened a week or so ago in Chicago.  It’s billed as a hybrid school, combining computer-based learning with face-to-face socialization opportunities.  As described, the school sounds a lot like what Schank and Jona suggest.

Well, as it turns out, one of the board members of VOISE Academy is…Kemi Jona!

It will be interesting to see how things go in that school.  I’m sure someone will be studying the school; nothing happens in Chicago without somebody studying it.  Some academic colleagues of mine have built entire research agendas around Chicago school reform.  For now, though, I wish VOISE had a better website. It’s a little hard to believe that this particular school launched with such a basic and incomplete website.

Tags: distance learning, Jona, Mann, revolution, Schank

At the end of his article about an innovative offensive scheme called the A-11 being implemented by one high school football team in California, ESPN.com’s Michael Weinreb writes: “And while I do not know if the A-11 can challenge all our assumptions, or if it is merely a lark, I do know that it accomplishes one very important thing: It reminds us that nothing in the universe can ever remain static. Not even football.”

So, clearly, Weinreb has never considered the institution of public schooling.

That oversight notwithstanding…

Just before I launched this blog, I wrote over on LeaderTalk about an ESPN article by Gregg Easterbrook where he explored a different innovative football strategy: no punting or rarely punting.  Easterbrook pointed to research and simulations that rather clearly demonstrated the benefits of a no-punt or rarely punt approach.  Yet, he could only find one high school team that was willing to adopt the strategy.  Why the reluctance in the face of compelling evidence/data?  As I wrote in the earlier post, Easterbrook offers two reasons: “First, ‘because that’s what we always do.’ Second, because if coaches order fourth-down tries that fail, they will be blamed, whereas if coaches order punts, the players will be blamed for the loss.“  More succinctly, coaches are risk and blame averse.

Now, we have Weinreb’s report on the A-11, a radical offensive strategy in football.  Weinreb wonders about the viability of the A-11, but does not directly speculate on why coaches will or will not adopt it.  Rather, more philosophically, he writes: “The dominant paradigm has always tended toward conservatism; in the previous century, it took several decades for the forward pass to gain acceptance. Change is frowned upon, even as it is surreptitiously embraced by coaches, who will plagiarize almost any scheme that might potentially save their jobs.”

Conservatism as the dominant paradigm…change is frowned upon…save their jobs.  Sound familiar educationalists?

If you want to see what the A-11 looks like in action, check out the following video:

Tags: education, football, innovation

I’ve long had an idea of what kind of school I’d like my child(ren?) to attend, but I’ve had a hard time articulating it.  Fortunately, there are plenty of smart and creative bloggers and academicians out there that help me learn and think.  In fact, I still can’t articulate everything fully, so you’ll have to settle for a few links.

So, for me, the future of schooling is approximately:

THIS +THIS + THIS + THIS + THIS

Ubiquitous computing and, therefore, ubiquitous learning.  Knowledge as rhizomatic and negotiated.  IEPs for every child.

I can dream, right?

Tags: education, future, knowledge, learning, school

I think I’m on to something here (of course I do; why else would I be writing this?)…

A. There have been smatterings of dissatisfaction with the recently concluded NECC, particularly among the more experienced and “followed” edubloggers (see e.g. Will and Karl)

B. Great discussions about systemic educational change have been occurring in the edublogosphere, especially over at Chris Lehmann’s blog and Will Richardson’s blog.

I think part of the reason for A is a desire for what’s being discussed in B.

I say that because NECC (the subject of A) is ALL about the micro.; it’s about pedagogy, classroom tools, projects, etc.    The subject of B is macro; it’s about changing the “system.”

So, here’s my proposal.  Let NECC (and ISTE) be what it is; a place to learn about technology integration; a VERY important place for LOTS of educators.  CoSN’s annual conference, on the other hand, is the place where learning and conversations about policy, leadership, change can happen.  Apparently, CoSN doesn’t think professors (or higher ed. more generally) are worthy of attending their shindig, but I’m likely to crash their party next year (besides, I’ve been dying to go to Austin, TX anyway!).

Tags: COSN, education, NECC, policy, technology