Live blogging reminder

Just thought I'd remind people about our live blogging conversation that starts at 8:45. If you can, join us on my blog.

Parent/teacher conferences

Last night's Back to School night/parent-teacher conferences went particularly well. I made it a point to show the parents the class webpage and talked about the paperless policy of my classroom, blogs, Google Docs, and the idea that I'm using the technology to get the students ready for both higher education and the job world. I also invited them to listen to any of the podcasts or read the notes for themselves if they wanted to. More than one parent made a comment along the lines of "Oh, I like that!" and one parent that I had previously emailed to invite to last night's conference said "Oh, I've already been there, and I read [my daughter's] blog." The student's eyes got big, and she said, "You did??!" :-)

I even used the downtime to help the rest of my team create class webpages on Google Sites, and I even got the math teacher to (finally) set up his blog and link to it on his class webpage.

A great night from a Global Learner point of view. :-D

CLAS this spring

I've been invited to be a presenter at the CLAS Regional Spring Conference this March. Subject: the digital classroom in the 21st century. I'm psyched but nervous at the same time. I mean, it's obviously something I'm super enthusiastic about: I'm going to talk about Google Docs, blogging, podcasting, and so forth, but still... it's in front of GROWN UPS, not teenagers! EEEEEKK! (ha ha!)

I'm also looking into the possibility of getting up to that other high school I'd mentioned in an earlier post to train their teachers on digital classrooms. I mentioned the whole thing to Stevi Quate (you know her if you've been involved in the UCD teacher candidate program), who, as it turns out, is familiar with that school and their staff; she "knows people" there, and so is going to look into getting them up to speed as well... stay tuned on that one.

What have I gotten myself into?? ;-)

On a side note, I've recently written an article for an online magazine, Elephant Journal, about digital classrooms. It's the first of a series on education that I've been asked to collaborate on with them. If you're interested, you can check it out here, but you'll likely have to do it at home... last I knew, the SmartFilter blocked it at work. And check out the shirt in my pics. ;-)

Who Owns Digital Content

In March Lawrence Lessig the revered Stanford Law Profesor and creator of Creative Commons delivered spellbinding TED Talk (TED stands for Technology Entertainment and Design) about the future of copyright and creativity. The talk is outstanding for three reasons: (1) He explains our modern culture so that it is easily understood, (2) he addresses issues that are relevant to us as educators and important for us to teach to our students, and (3) he is one of the best visual presenters alive (in fact, his style of presentation is called the "Lessig Method").

Phot Credit (http://flickr.com/photos/jdlasica/)

As leaders in the field of 21st Century education we can learn a lot from this talk. However, I think we can learn even more by showing this talk to our students and colleagues and absorbing their reactions. You will not regret taking 19 minutes to watch this talk.

Watch the Lessig talk and tell me what you think. What do we teach our children to respect about digital content? How do we encourage our students to experiment and participate in digital cutlrue?