Peterson’s is trying to get an online Higher Ed BlogCon going:
Thomson Peterson’s, PRNewswire, and CASE are proud to present HigherEd BlogCon - Transforming Academic Communities with New Tools of the Social Web. This brand-new, all-online event aims to bring together in a single Web space many of the leading players who are transforming academe with their use of the new tools of the Social Web.
The site has a pretty comprehensive list of topics, including these related to teaching:
The changing nature of in-class activity in the age of podcast lectures
Impact of new media on attendance patterns
Impact of new media on online learning
New media and course platforms
Challenges surrounding intellectual property
What do new media mean for the so-called digital divide?
Video versus screencast versus podcast
Wikis and learning
The RSS divide
The role of games in education
Open courseware
Changing expectations of the student and teacher at the educational interface
Actually, I think that’s a pretty relevant list for those of us in K-12 land as well (aside from the attendance issue.) I might add:
Ethical use of social tools
Privacy and safety concerns
Blogs and learning
Changing expectations of writing and reading literacy
Challenges in teacher preparation
Effective practice in online environments
What would you add? And what do you think about a K-12 Read/Write Web conference, virtual or otherwise???
Spent Firday night, all day Saturday, and most of the day Sunday at Seton Hall with Alan November working with their Executive Ed.D students, and as always, my head is still pretty much spinning. It’s always a treat to work with Alan, but the conversations that this particular cohort got into about the best ways to teach teachers and the ethical use of these technologies and all sorts of other ideas was really pushing my own thinking. What’s that old saying about learning by teaching? Anyway, over the next couple of days I’ll try to get to many of those conversations.
But one thing that struck us over the weekend was the lead headline in the weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal:
“How U.S. Auto Industry Finds Itself Stalled by Its Own History.” And there was a great subhead: “A Need to Change or Die” The article talks about how GM and Ford are struggling in most every aspect of business as they “grapple with past practices.” Here are two icons of the industrial era who are staring reinvention or expiration in the face.
Obviously, the leap to education here isn’t a big one. Imagine this headline instead: “How U.S. Education Finds Itself Stalled by Its Own History.” Here we are, faced with all sorts of new challenges, stuck in a system that seem unable or unwilling to change. We’ve mastered this assembly line method of teaching, programming all of our students in basically the same way throughout their time in school because that was the easiest way to do it. We didn’t have unlimited information or content or ideas, so we created a curriculum that suited the needs of the day. Problem is, life outside the classroom has become drastically different. Life inside hasn’t very much.
Change or die?