BLC09 - Tuesday

Turning Classrooms into Learning Studios: Lights, Camera, Learn! – Marco Torres, Teacher, Creative Director, Media Coach and Alas Media
Marco Antonio Torres is an internationally recognized teacher and filmmaker who uses the movie making process to make his classroom projects explode with empowerment and enthusiasm. This two-day event will be a practical, hands-on session where teachers will learn not only valuable and practical tips on how to make a great movie, but also how to plan and manage such projects. Teachers will also find out how to market this program to their communities and also learn how to share the projects with the world! See how movies have a place in your content area classroom/ new studio. Lights, Camera, LEARN! (Equipment and software will be provided during the workshop. If you do have your own digital video camera, we highly recommend you bring it.)

9:00 am – 3:00 pm
Park Plaza – White Hill

Walden Pond – Observe American History First Hand Through Science – Carolyn Staudt, Curriculum Developer, Concord Consortium
Spend two days in the birthplace of the American Revolution, Concord, MA, and be part of the next revolution in technology-enhanced science learning. This workshop will include scientific technology investigations and a digital storytelling adventure at Walden Pond. The Concord Consortium and Apple Computing have a number of powerful free computational models, probes, ProbeScope microscopes, geocaching (GPS) techniques and tools that can be combined into interactive, computer-based curricula for any grades 3-14, as well as hundreds of learning activities based on these resources. Additionally, the Concord Consortium has editing software that makes it easy to modify these activities and create new ones that can be tailored to the needs of students with different learning styles. Since it is all online, students can be monitored as they use the materials, providing teachers and researchers with detailed insights into student thinking. Help get these powerful resources, all developed with National Science Foundation (NSF) funding, that are aligned with ISTE, NSES and NCTM standards, into wider use. Bring your own laptop, or borrow an Apple iBook for a hands-on experience, and leave with activities that you can use with your students.

8:30 am – 3:00 pm
Walden Pond, Concord, MA

The Second Annual ePals Globally-Connected Classroom Conference – Tim DiScipio and the ePals Team The Internet’s largest K-12 community and leading provider of safe collaborative tools will feature the most active ePals teachers and instructional technology directors on ePals protected email, blogs and literacy tools. Experts will demo innovative ePals classroom applications and global project-sharing to enhance 21st Century literacy skills, and enhance teacher, parent and student communication.

8:30 am – 3:00 pm
Park Plaza – St. James

A Boston Learning Adventure – John Davitt, Writer, Educator, and Broadcaster
If you could learn all this without getting out of your chair - we’d have called it an “Undersitting!” Participants in this pre-conference will get to move around the city as a natural part of their learning activities. Participants will take part in fieldwork in and around the parks of Central Boston followed by a practical hands-on investigation of the curriculum potential of geocaching and createascapes. This session will culminate in a review of the latest potential for simple classroom robots. A resource CD with software and tools to make your own GPS based learning resources will be provided.

8:00 am – 12:00 pm
Park Plaza – Stuart

A Few New Things: Learning, Sharing and Applying 2.0 Tools – Dr. Joyce Valenza, Teacher-Librarian, Springfield Township High School
New information and communication tools appear at an ever-increasing rate. But we have no textbook for applying these impressive new tools. No established pedagogical guides. We have to work at sharing effective practice for this new landscape. How can we apply 2.0 tools, to inspire learning and engage learners, especially as they relate to improving information fluency, promoting effective communication and inspiring creativity? Joyce will suggest her own list of new things essential for 21st century practice. As a group we will apply those tools to our own educational settings—classrooms and our libraries. We will introduce a “thing,” brainstorm its potential uses and in teams or pairs, create and share our usable learning tools.

8:00 am – 12:00 pm
Park Plaza – Beacon Hill

Readers and Writers Differ: What “New” Literacy and an Expanding Toolset Mean for Our Teaching (and Learning) – Dr. Sara Kajder, Assistant Professor, Department of Education, Virginia Tech
The shifts in how we define literacy and the toolset we use in our work as readers and writers make this an incredibly exciting (and sometimes daunting) time to teach. What does it mean to teach and learn in a classroom that values new literacies? Where are our students learning to read and write? What can we do with technology to engage, empower and evoke our students’ thinking, insights and knowledge – and how does that differ from what we have done before? Are our students REALLY digital natives? As much as our talk will pose critical questions, the bigger goal is to explore practice. We’ll examine methods for co-constructing literacy practices alongside our students and think deeply about what learning means within those examples and contexts. Keep in mind – though this is a workshop that is targeted to challenge and move the thinking and practice of any teacher who works with readers and writers in the classroom, it is intentionally interdisciplinary, reflecting how we learn/inquire and what it means to really value and “leverage” the learners in our classrooms.

8:00 am – 12:00 pm
Park Plaza – Cambridge

Capturing Stories, Capturing Lives: An Introduction to Digital Storytelling – David Jakes, Coordinator of Instructional Technology, Glenbrook South High School
Everyone has stories. Stories come from a variety of places, from a person’s past, from their family and school, and from their imagination. Digital storytelling is the process of capturing those stories, first by writing, and then by making the story come alive by adding powerful multimedia elements such as voice, video, imagery and music. In this session, learn how those elements are combined to help students of any age group tell a story that can be heard. Learn the components of effective storytelling and how to integrate a storytelling experience into instruction. See examples of amazing student products and learn how a digital story is created and assessed. All participants will have the opportunity to build and share their own digital story. Leave the session with a set of resources and ideas that will help you use this powerful learning process successfully with students the very first time. Note: This session is cross-platform. Participants are asked to come to the session with a laptop computer with either iMovie or Photostory 3 already installed.

8:00 am – 12:00 pm
Park Plaza – Berkley/Clarendon

Connective Learning - An Introduction to Google Tools in Education – Brian Mull, Director of Innovation and Lainie Rowell, Consultant and Trainer, November Learning and Google Certified Teachers
Discover Google. It’s more than just an ordinary search engine. Learn how to tap Google’s free online toolset and knock down the walls of your classroom, engage students and make connections in new and exciting ways. This session will introduce you to a variety of tools that can be used at home, school or anywhere. No downloads required!

8:00 am – 12:00 pm
Park Plaza – Whittier

Building Learning Communities: Putting It All Together – Jim Wenzloff, Learning Mentor, November Learning, Howie Diblasi, Educational Technology Trainer and Speaker and Seth Bowers, Director of Information & Instructional Technology, CCSD 62
In this four-hour session you will learn the basics of information literacy, plus have the opportunity to work with members of our team as you explore how to build a blog, create a podcast or start a wiki. Learn how to integrate all of these tools together in meaningful and effective ways. Our team will show you how it all fits together and will be available during the course of the conference week to work on projects and integrate new ideas. The results will be expanded opportunities for authentic work, global audience and your students making a knowledge contribution.

1:00 – 5:00 pm
Park Plaza – Whittier

Leadership: Managing the Transition – Alan November, Senior Partner, November Learning
How can leaders maximize student engagement and academic achievement? How can leaders encourage teachers and students to collaborate with peers and professionals around the world? The goal of this session is to provide school leaders with maximum capacity for effective leadership in the 21st Century. Alan will outline essential skills for leaders and offer practical guidelines and creative solutions for building accountability into the planning process. Articulating vision and managing change will be emphasized, along with the following:

Alignment of curriculum to standards
Designing more rigorous, demanding and globally connected assignments
Building capacity for family and community involvement
Addressing issues related to equity
Developing critical thinking skills
Designing staff development programs
Defining new roles for students
Sharing best practices

1:00 – 5:00 pm
Park Plaza – Berkley/Clarendon

Motivate and Inspire: Teaching with Primary Source Documents – Stephanie Greenhut, Education Technology Specialist, National Archives
Primary source documents - letters, reports, maps, photographs, diaries, posters, recordings and more, created by those who participated in or witnessed the events of the past, are magical teaching tools! They motivate students to make connections to both the past and the present, and inspire students to consider the future. In this hands-on session, participants will engage in a variety of Archival Adventures - analyzing documents, exploring online resources and brainstorming document-based projects to implement in their own schools and communities. Participants will be reminded that while primary sources provide students with tangible links to the past, they also:

Encourage critical thinking
Make students question where information comes from
Drive students to determine validity and reliability of sources
Push students to consider and recognize bias
Enable students to realize the importance of referencing multiple resources for information

1:00 – 5:00 pm
Park Plaza – Cambridge

Active Learning Approaches – Getting Students to Make Their Own Learning Tools – John Davitt, Writer, Educator and Broadcaster
This session will explore strategies for using ICT tools as a catalyst for active learning approaches - from simple animation to digital drawing and tracing. The subtext for all work will be how to inspire and challenge learners with simple but careful combinations of digital tools. Delegates will make their own random learning event generators and take them away along with a range of resources on CD. The session will also look at how to combine Flash, Audacity and Wordle to create Learning Cinegraphs.

1:00 – 5:00 pm
Park Plaza – Stuart