What happens when you mix a group of passionate educators with a desire to advocate for change in education? You get action!

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Ed21, a conference for educators - and all learners, is happening this Saturday, February 21st from 8:00 a.m. to 11:00 a.m PST (global time). The conference is a mix of four Ted-like 14 minute presentations with time for conversation in between and after the presentations.

The website answers the question, “What is Ed21?”, with this:

We are interested in discussing how we can reinvent the educational system so students can be:

• independent processors of information

• solvers of real life problems

• curious and passionate about their interests

• effective oral and written communicators

• collaborators who make an impact on their community, one another, and the world

To this end we are committed to challenging the status quo, connecting people with networks, and sharing ideas worth spreading.

I hope you can join us!

 

 

Thanks to our chat room and guests Ernie Easter and Janice Stearns, we got some great ideas to take the Seedlings Ning to it's next level. Come see what's going on! During the first fifteen minutes there are some technical difficulties.

Geek of the Week Links

Chat:

Richard Beach, Liz Boesler, and Candance Doerr-Stevens were our guests on this episode of Teachers Teaching Teachers:

• Richard Beach is a professor of English education at the University of Minnesota, where he teaches and conducts research on media literacy methods, digital writing and identity construction. Richard recently published a new book, Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and other Digital Tools
  
• Elizabeth (“Liz”) Boeser is an English/language arts teacher, Jefferson High School, Bloomington, MN, a teacher featured in Teaching Writing Using Blogs, Wikis, and other Digital Tools who conducted the online role-play activities.
• Candance Doerr-Stevens is a former English teacher, and current graduate student at the University of Minnesota. Candance is also a staff member at the Minnesota Writing Project, and she is studying online role-play with Richard.

Want more? Here are several more links about our guests:

• Liz Boeser’s current Spring, 2009 courses
• Examples of the online role-play:
  • University of North Dakota Fighting Sioux mascot debate (used with Montana, 1948): http://roleplaymascots.blogspot.com and http://mascotroleplay.blogspot.com/
• Resource wiki created for Montana, 1948: http://jhscollegewritingmontana.pbwiki.com/
• Censorship role-play http://schooledthewriteway.blogspot.com/
• NCTE 2008 presentation, San Antonio  VoiceThread: http://voicethread.com/#u11815.b338247.i1791441
• K-12 Online Conference 2008 presentation http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=326

Please enjoy the podcast.

Click Read more to see a transcript of a chat that was happening during the webcast.