Tag: reform symposium

Reform Symposium 2011 FREE Worldwide Virtual Conference/Professional Development

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Reform Symposium 2011 FREE Worldwide Virtual Conference/Professional Development2317 views

Everyone could use FREE professional development.  As an organizer of the Reform Symposium, I wanted to personally invite you all to our annual Reform Symposium Conference for New Teachers (but don’t be fooled, it is really for ALL teachers), which will take place on Saturday, January 8th, 2011.  You can attend this worldwide conference from the comfort of your home or anywhere you have Internet access.  We have some of the best educational speakers in the world involved. This conference provides you the opportunity to connect with educators and professionals in the field of education worldwide.  Over 2400 educators from 59 countries attended our last conference in July.  This year we will focus on interactive presentations that help teachers with creating engaging classrooms and lessons, building relationships with students, improving literacy, working with interactive whiteboards, and much more.  This year we look forward to 2 keynote speakers, 18 presentations, and open discussion on classroom management, a panel discussion on parental engagement, a mentor program, and an open lab for hands-on support in helping you continue your professional development in online educator communities.  You have never attended a conference quite like this one!  Join us for one session or multiples.

The Reform Symposium virtual conference has opportunities for continuing education credits, connections with educators around the world, an amazing lineup of raffle prizes (including prizes to EVERY educator who registers for the conference), and fantastic keynotes and presenters.

Check out the Reform Symposium website here or download the brochure here.

Please pass the word about this free conference, print out the brochure and stick it in the teachers lounge, stick it in teacher’s school mailboxes, and pass this post on to the administration at your school.

We hope to see you all there!

2010 Edublog Awards- Thank you!

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on 2010 Edublog Awards- Thank you!1890 views

The 2010 Eddies (Edublog awards) are here.  This is the 7th year of the Edublog Awards.  Last year I won an award for Best Educational Tech Support blog.  I couldn’t be more honored.  The Edublogs are a truly special award because you have to be nominated by those who read your blog.  It is truly humbling to be nominated by all of you, who I hold in such high esteem, for an Edublog Award.  This year I (or a project I was involved with) was nominated in several categories.  Of course I would love your votes, but looking at the line up, there are so many incredible blogs to choose from I will understand if you don’t!  Regardless of who you vote for, be sure to check out the blogs, conversations, and people nominated.  You are bound to discover some new and wonderful people to follow and conversations to join in.

You can click on the badges below to vote in each individual category.

iLearn Technology was nominated for Best Individual Blog:

I was nominated for best individual tweeter- ktenkely (this category shocks me the most!)

Best Group Blog- Cooperative Catalyst (I am honored to be one of the contributors to this blog!)

iLearn Technology was nominated for Best Resource Sharing Blog:

I was nominated for two Most influential blog posts – Do you want to form an alliance with me? and Twitter Academy:

iLearn Technology was nominated for best educational tech support blog:

The Reform Symposium (of which I was an organizer) is nominated for Best Educational Webinar Series:

The Reform Symposium was also nominated for Best use of a PLN:

Thank you for the nominations and votes, but more importantly, thank you for the ways that you support and encourage me every single day through comments, tweets, RT’s and sweet notes, I appreciate my readers more than I can say!

Reform Symposium: Opening Keynote Steve Hargadon

Kelly Tenkely2 Comments on Reform Symposium: Opening Keynote Steve Hargadon2247 views

This weekend is the Reform Symposium eConference, 48 hours of free learning! I am going to do my best to keep notes of all of the great conversations and learning when I am not moderating or sleeping 🙂

This was the opening keynote by Steve Hargadon:

  • Information overload vs. Web as a conversation
    We have to get past our perception that participation is only for the elite. Everyone is a participant and a creator.
    The answer to content overload is to create more content because our paradigm shifts and we start seeing everything as conversation.
  • Our students hold in their hands technology that was the stuff of dreams when we were growing up. They are incredible devices for learning. Learning is everywhere.
    We are seeing an amazing shift toward openness. Consider Wikipedia that in a relatively short amount of time an open encyclopedia took the place of a cultural institution.
    MIT is now providing classes to free when anyone goes online. The value is no longer in the specific content but in being actively engaged and they are doing something that is valuable to humanity by providing this openness.
  • Flexbook- online open virtual textbook initiative. This will bring value and save money.
  • Participation is being reinvented, it is a return to participation. It is a pre-broadcast, pre-factory, un-consumer model. This is dramatically changing the lives of youth because their lives are largely interactive.
  • Flickr, YouTube, Facebook, and Myspace are showing us a new model of growth and success that is driven by consumer demand instead of top down economics.
  • Linux is running Google’s servers.  This is incredible!
  • Volunteerism 2.0- we have always recognized value of volunteering but we are now seeing the opportunity to volunteer and participate in ways that weren’t possible before.  Clay Shirky calls this the “Redistribution of Our Cognitive Surplus”.  We are spending time creating instead of consuming.  This is unleashing energy.  Clay Shirky Ted Talk.
  • This is a change in structure it is participative (like democracy).  The Internet is doing this for content and knowledge.  We need the same structure in education.
  • We have to move toward the freedom end of the structure in schools.  We aren’t used to thinking this way.  It is possible for students to be their own driver in education.
  • We are organizing without organizations. What used to take financial resources to pull together to get something happening, doesn’t require that any more.  (Case in point the Reform Symposium conference!!)
  • Wikis let us organize information the way we want them, post at our convenience (not every day like a blog), but social networking has been widely adopted in a way wiki’s and blogs weren’t.  Social networking opened the door to the participation and conversation and made it easy to come in.  Blogs take longer to get the conversation going. Wikis are a little more complex and have a learning curve.  Social networking aggregated web 2.0 tools in a single location.  Facebook is now up to 500,000,000 members.
  • Steve started Classroom 2.0 and it now has 45,000 members, social networking is valuable to the education world.  It gives peer-to-peer practice sharing and conversation.
  • We have to get over that social networking is a dangerous place to be.  It will become the framework structure of the educational experience.
  • Communication platform: social networking + learning management system + live collaboration
  • It makes us rethink how teaching and learning take place.
  • We have to ask how well are we preparing students for this world and how prepared are we from this world?
  • Principles of school 2.0: contributing, collaborating, creating.
  • The best way to predict the future is to be it: Be a learner first, we need great teachers to be a part of the conversation and figure out how to harness web 2.0’s inherent capabilities, keep perspective-students need really great teachers more than ever, join an educational or social network (lurking is allowed), become a part of the conversation and encourage others to do so, help collaborate to build a new playbook and be a voice in the public discussion (Twitter #edchat!!), embrace the change process (this is going to be a wild ride, it is going to challenge the way we think).

Find the recording of the Keynote here.

Reform Symposium Virtual Conference Call for Moderators

Kelly Tenkely4 Comments on Reform Symposium Virtual Conference Call for Moderators3543 views

I am so excited!  The Reform Symposium Virtual Conference is just around the corner.  The line up of Keynote speakers and presenters couldn’t be better and we are putting the finishing touches on making sure the conference goes without a hitch.  If you are planning to attend the conference, we would love to have you join the Reform Symposium social media site.  By registering on the site, you will also be entered in raffles to win some incredible prizes, check them out here.

As we are getting ready for the big days (July 30, 31 and August 1), would you consider volunteering some of your time to help moderate the sessions?  You would be co-moderating the Elluminate session with either Shelly, Chris, or me.  I am happy to train anyone who needs to be trained on how to moderate using Elluminate.  As a moderator, your job would be to help the presenter check their audio prior to the session, record the session, introduce the presenter, and help field questions from the audience.  Not to mention that you get a backstage pass to some of the BEST presenters in education.  If you can help out, please contact me via Twitter by reply or DM or you can leave a comment below offering your help.

I hope to see you all there, can’t wait for the opportunity to get such amazing professional development without leaving home!

Free virtual e-conference: Reform Symposium

Kelly Tenkely3 Comments on Free virtual e-conference: Reform Symposium3172 views

Reform Symposium

Over the past few months I have been working with Shelly Terrell, Jason Bedell, and Chris Rogers on a secret project. 🙂  I am happy to say that I don’t have to keep the secret any longer but can share the project with all of you!  In two weeks (July 31st and August 1st, 2010), we will be holding a worldwide virtual e-conference for free!  The conference is called Reform Symposium and it is a conference for teachers, administrators, students, and parents.  This year the conference is focused on innovative practices in education and what role these practices can play in educational reform.

We have an incredible lineup of presenters and keynote speakers that you can see here.   We hope that no matter where you are in the world, you will join us for parts or all of the conference on these days.

What you can do:

  1. Mark your calendars for July 31st and August 1st 2010
  2. Tweet about the conference using the #rscon10 hashtag so we can follow everyone’s tweets.
  3. Invite your friends, both those you know online and off.
  4. Blog about the conference and then tell us about your blog post on Twitter using the #rscon10 hash tag.
  5. Join the conversations and fun on the Reform Symposium website. You can add friends, start conversations, and chat about the sessions.
  6. Add me as your friend on the website.
  7. Add the Reform Symposium badge to your blog or website to let others know you will be attending.

This conference is for you!  We hope that you will join us for fun, learning, collaboration, and maybe even a few prizes.  See you there!