Skip to main content

Heading to Educon 2.1



This afternoon, I'll be heading off to Educon 2.1 at the Science and Leadership Academy(SLA) in Philadelphia. Chris Lehmann, the principal at SLA has been a strong proponent of student-centered instruction, and Friday will provide an opportunity to meet with students and staff to "learn how they learn" at SLA.


Tomorrow will be a Pre-Conference on Constructing Modern Math/Science Knowledge, led by Gary Stager, executive director of the Constructivist Consortium, and frequent blogger on educational issues.


I'm hoping that the conference will provide some good examples of implementing student-centered learning without sacrificing high student acheivement.
The best part of the conference will be networking and connecting. The focus of Educon is not so much on the tools, but on learning.
The guiding principles of the conference are:
  1. Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all members
  2. Our schools must be about co-creating -- together with our students -- the 21st Century Citizen
  3. Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around.
  4. Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate
  5. Learning can -- and must -- be networked.

I'll be blogging the sessions here, and cross posting notes on the Go Wireless wiki. Feel free to post comments, or questions and I'll try to get them answered!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Nos Chemins vers la paix: Award Winning Video!

Valley View Middle School French Imersion teacher, Heather Palmer created this award winning video, Nos Chemins vers la paix , for the Tel.A.Vision " Vision For America " Contest. Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com Powered by One True Media , Tel.A.Vision.tv allows students to create videos that share their vision for the future. Heather wanted to use this video to promote the Wiki she and her students created for "6 Billion Paths to Peace." On the wiki, Palmer states: Our project was inspired by the program " Six Billion Paths to Peace ", an initiative of the Shinnyo-en foundation. We like the challenge the program offers us: commit to making a difference in this moment, in this day, in this lifetime! Palmer received her award last week at the National Service Learning Conference, in Nashville, TN. Way to go, Heather! NOTE: A few weeks ago while looking at the copyright free music available on the site, I notice a cover of the "Spinal ...

Redefining Awesome...Connected Learning

Last September, Will Richardson challenged our faculty to " Redefine Awesome " in what learning looked like in our district. The last few weeks, have seen some great connected learning opportunities happening at Valley View Middle School that get at what Will was talking about.  Project Lead the Way Tim Berendt, a teacher in our Project Lead the Way program, began using Twitter this year as a way for his students to share the work they are doing with the outside world, and also as a tool for formative assessment.  Students tweet out what they hope to accomplish at the beginning of the class period, and then tweet what they completed at the end. In many cases, students have received feedback and encouragement from people outside the district, such as this exchange from Autodesk, the company that makes the software the students use!  Berndt did a great job at the start reminding students to follow our Web 2.0 Code of Ethics , and how they could use hashtags to label ...