I am excited to be part of the

2012 Curriculum Mapping Institute LEAD 21 Academy on July 10 and 11, 2012 in Saratoga Springs , New York.

This two- day academy brings together the top education bloggers and network leaders in the United States. Hands on work sessions will guide you in

• creating a vision of who a school network leader must be
• why the school leader must lead the network
• how you can design diverse social network connections infused with knowledge and powered by passion.

As a school leader or teacher, you have the opportunity to design your own personalized social network that will connect your local and global learning communities.   

For early bird discount registration information please visit www.cmi2012.com

Early Bird 10% Discount ends February 1st.

I am honored to share with you a new venture I am proud to be part of:

LEAD21- A New Kind of Leadership through Social Networking

I will be joining Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Angela Maiers, Bill Sheskey and Mike Fisher in March for  a 2 day conference in guiding school leaders in the design of personalized social networks that connect local and global learning (and mapping) communities.

Any questions? Just let me know.

Download the original flyer or click here for more registration information.

A new kind of conference for Jewish educators is being organized. Together, with our head of school, Jon Mitzmacher, and my colleague, Andrea Hernandez, we are planning:

in Jacksonville, Florida.

More information to come soon. Take a look at the following summary of our initial planning.

Idea

We are envisioning a conference based on 21st century professional development where attendees can experience a Jewish day school in transition to becoming a dynamic 21st century learning environment.  We are sharing a vision of teaching and learning that transcends physical boundaries and connects across geographic borders and time zones. We acknowledge that Jewish day schools need to chart a new course, not only by adopting and adapting a secular educational movement, (The Partnership for 21st Century Learning  http://www.p21.org/),  but positioning Schechter Network schools, in particular,  at the forefront of an exciting  paradigm shift in education.

This first year pilot will create a template of a 21st century conference with the flexibility to grow beyond it and expand with the ultimate goal of becoming a premier destination for all forward-looking Jewish education stakeholders.

21st Century Professional Development

Professional development in the 21st century is rooted in the belief that educators need to experience the same skills, tools and teaching strategies that they are expected to develop and implement in their own classroom practice.  The Partnership for 21st Century Learning points out that we need to give teachers and administrators opportunities and the tools to “identify what activities they can replace/de-emphasize”.  21st century professional development takes advantage of a virtual learning network that is available anytime and anywhere.  New literacies of the 21st century, such as information, network, media and global literacies, demand that educators be fluent in communicating, collaborating and connecting through face-to-face, virtual and blended communities of global educators. Veteran educators who embrace this change are energized when they acquire these new skills and competencies; they engage their students with new media and technologies, incorporated into their deep and vast experience in the classroom. 

What will make this conference distinctive and unique

1. A conference planned to meet the needs of Jewishly observant educators and the calendar of Jewish day schools
2. Specifically tailored to individual cross-disciplinary school teams in Jewish day schools with hands-on applications
3. The first conference to present a vision for 21st Century Jewish Day School Education and a roadmap to reach this desired desintation

 Proposed Tracks

• Administrators – how to lead a cultural change in your school
• Technology & Curriculum Coordinators – what innovation could look like and how to drive it
• Admissions and Marketing Directors – how to convey a compelling message to current & prospective parents who want their children to have the best of 21st century education;
• Lay Leaders – how to understand and generate excitement about a unique approach to teaching and learning throughout the community;
• Classroom Teachers – how to increase your students’ motivation and engagement in learning…and yours!

Implementation

The participatory nature of the conference will combine hands-on training, using 21st century tools, with an experiential component.  The conference will include expert presentations, hands-on training and direct experiences in new practices.   Using Alan November’s model of the Digital Learning Farm we will use authentic, meaningful roles and contributions to our learning community  as a means to empower all learners.

The conference website (http://www.edjewcon.org) will be a collaborative environment for reflection and sharing as well as the hub for live social media feeds. Participants will be responsible for contributing to the site during the conference by sharing and reflecting on their learning.  21st century learning is participatory learning.  Through collaboration, participants create a long term hub for dissemination, reflections, resource sharing with and for other Jewish educators and administrators.

Outcomes

Create a Professional Learning Network (PLN) for 21st Century Schechter Schools.

Each school will leave edJEWcon with its customizable road map for becoming a  21st century learning school.  Depending on the school (and the members of the team able to participate), the pathways and timing of each journey will differ, but the destination remains the same.  Heads of School will meet with Heads of School; Admissions Directors with Admissions Directors; Curriculum  Supervisors with Curriculum Supervisors; etc.

Provide school team members with hands-on experiences of 21st century learning so they can not only return with information, but firsthand experience to share with their schools.  We envision the conference operating fluidly between the tachlis (How do I most effectively blog or Tweet?) and the meta (How might my learning of best practices for blogging or using social media impact the classroom teachers in my school?).

I wanted to share my third presentation slides from BLC11

I am currently enjoying a wonderful week at BLC11, Alan November‘s Building Learning Communities Conference in Boston. I wanted to share the presentation slides and resource links to my presentations here on the Langwitches as well.

Pre-Conference Workshop: Orchestrating the Collaborative classroom

Presentation Resource links

Get Globally Connected Resource Links

Stay tuned for my Transforming the Culture of the Classroom: What About 21st century skills, literacy and fluency session.

It all started when I attended a regional Curriculum Mapping Institute in Boca Raton, Florida in 2010. You can read the blog posts I wrote during the conference here:

• Twittering at a Conference
• Curriculum Mapping-Launching Pads to the Future
• Curriculum Mapping- Upgrading Content, Skills, and Assessment
• Curriculum Mapping: The Process to Consensus
• Four Phases of Curriculum Mapping Training
• Creating Consensus Maps- Setting Direction in a School

Having not heard had Heidi Hayes Jacobs and her team before this Regional Conference, I have to say that I was mesmerized. I was finally hearing someone put into words what I had been thinking and intuitively doing in the classrooms. All I remember thinking was: Yes, Yes, Yes!

A couple of months after the Regional Conference, Heidi Hayes Jacobs’ book Curriculum 21 (ASCD 2010) was published. I  blogged extensively as I was reading the book and started to implement the concepts at school.  Since that “fateful” first encounter, I  became a faculty member of the Curriculum 21 team. It is an extreme honor to be part of and learn with this group  of talented, dedicated and visionary group of educators.

This July 2011 the National Curriculum Mapping Institute will again be held in Saratoga Springs, NY.  I want to personally invite the readers of Langwitches to consider attending any of the academies or main conference during CMI2011. There will be a galore of Curriculum 21 workshops, roundtables, think tanks, consultations, etc. in addition to Curriculum Mapping sessions.

If you are considering catapulting your teaching practice or your school culture into the 21st century, this is the PD conference for you this summer.

Let me know if you are attending and we can organize a Langwitches meet-up.

I just finished two great days participating in the ECIS (European Council of International Schools) IT conference in Frankfurt, Germany.

Besides attending very interesting sessions by  David Warlick, Jamie McKenzie, Warren Apel (International School of Amsterdam) and Maggie Hos-McGrane (International School of Zug and Luzern)

I also had the privilege of sharing two presentation with the other attendees. Below you can find my slides from each of the presentation. For further resources and links mentioned during the presentation, please visit my wiki.

• Get Connected: Around the World with Skype
• Ready to start Blogging in the Classroom

Image licensed under Creative Commons by Karen Blumberg

I had the incredible opportunity to attend TEDxNYED at the beginning of this month. The day was full of incredible presenters sharing their stories. Stories that I had heard before, but came alive with the passion of the presenters and the energy of the room filled with attendees ready to absorb, remix and disseminate in their own areas of influence.

While all the talks were interesting and gave a different perspective or angle depending on the experience and position of the speaker, I would like to share with you a few of them that resonated most with me.

Heidi Hayes Jacobs

Alan November

Huma Tavangar

Brian Crosby

Third graders had the opportunity to be called upon being experts. They were asked to skype into an educational conference presentation being given by Kelly Hines from North Carolina and share their experience of using Skype at school.  Students were excited and prepared well by being assigned different job responsibilities during the Skype call.

Here were their job descriptions:

• Answer and Hang Up Skype call
• Greeter (Introduce ourselves)
• Q&A
• Photographer
• Videographer
• Live Blogger
• Note-Taker- laptop
• Note-Taker- paper & pencil
• Note-Taker- Doodler – iPad

Distribution of Job Responsibilities

Mrs Hines sent us three questions ahead of time. As a class, we collaboratively brainstormed how we could best answer these questions.

Question: Preparation & Brainstorming

Skype Prep

Skype Prep

Here is the post from our Blogger:

Today we are skyping with about 50 teachers learning to skype. We are telling stories about our skyping. We are teaching teachers. We had three people to answer questions. We are telling stories of why it’s good to skype.

Here are the notes they took on the laptop about our Skype call:

* Skyping with North Carolina
* Teaching teachers
* About 50 teachers learning
* Answering questions
* Telling stories
* Never skyped
* Showing our teacher
* Asking to check out our blog
* Learning how to skype with other teachers

Here are the images taken by the student photographer (remember third grader!)

Note-Takers

Note Taker- Pencil & Paper

Videographer & Q&A

Doodler/ Illustrator

Here is the screenshot of our “doodler/illustrator” from the iPad.

iPad "Doodler/Illustrator"

Here is an excerpt of the video taken by one of the third graders to document the connection.

It was a fantastic opportunity for the students to practice their oral presentation skills, learn about specific audiences (in this case teachers learning about using Skype in their classrooms) and documentation skills (paper & pencil, video, images, illustrations and blogging).

I am thrilled to be part of the Global Education Conference, starting this upcoming Monday. If you would like to catch my presentation, Globally Connected Learning, join me on

Thursday, November 18th at 6 pm Eastern Standard Time (GMT -5) in Eluminate.

The Session Link will be posted closer to the date and time.

If you were not able to attend, you can listen to the recording of the session.

Please share this incredible opportunity to learn with and from educators from around the world with your own online network as well as your face2face colleagues.

Hope to see you at the Global Education Conference THIS WEEK!

Time: November 15, 2010 to November 19, 2010
Location: In Elluminate – see website for room details for each session

The 2010 Global Education Conference will be held November 15 – 19, 2010, online and free.  Details about the conference are available at http://www.globaleducationconference.com.  The conference currently has scheduled 50 keynote addresses and over 300 general sessions  from 62 countries.  Sessions will be held in multiple time zones focusing on teachers, students, curriculum, policy and leadership and global issues.

The conference is a collaborative and world-wide community effort to significantly increase opportunities for globally-connecting education activities and initiatives.

There is no formal registration required for the conference, as all the sessions will be open and public, broadcast live using the Elluminate platform, and available in recorded formats afterward.  Actual session links will be posted the week of the conference.  See the full hour-by-hour schedule in your time zone at http://www.globaleducationconference.com/schedule.html, and read more details about the sessions at http://www.globaleducationconference.com/all-sessions.html.

• The Twitter account for the conference is http://www.twitter.com/globaledcon
• The “hashtag” for the conference is #globaled10
• The conference Facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/pages/Global-Education-Conference/125602090788788?ref=ts.