““Will Richardson is an outstanding educator. His work has moved classrooms across America from boring, uninteresting rooms filled with the drone of irrelevant information to beehives of interactivity! Educators who attend his presentations or read his blogs gain valuable insight as to how to transform their classrooms with Web 2.0 tools and strategies. I highly recommend Will’s work and his engaging presentation style to any group or organization seeking an innovative, visionary presenter and an educator extraordinaire!”

–Sheryl R. Abshire, President - Louisiana Association of Computer Using Educators www.lacue.org Past-Chair - CoSN

Here is a list of presentations/keynotes/workshops I can offer. Please e-mail me for more information or to discuss a personalized presentation.

A Web of Connections: Why the Read/Write Web Changes Everything

Keynote: The Web has brought a world of information to our fingertips and, in the process, has transformed much of the way we work and live. But now that we have the ability to contribute our own ideas and experiences to the sum of human knowledge that we are building online, the impact of the Web is even more powerful. This shift in how we use the Web is already challenging political, business and media leaders to rethink the ways in which they operate. But what about education? Our model of schooling hasn’t changed significantly in over 100 years, and it continues to be resistant to change in any meaningful ways. Yet in this new world of global connections, of powerful personal learning opportunities online, of shifting notions of information and knowledge, we must begin to re-envision the basic foundations of teaching and learning. If we don’t, if we sit back and watch the world change without us, we risk our relevance and our ability to prepare our students for the world in which they will live and work.

Network Literacy: Leveraging the Potential of a HyperConnected World

Keynote: Learning in the 21st Century is all about networks and the connections we can make to other learners and teachers both in our communities and around the globe. But being literate in this new learning environment requires more than knowing how to read and write. It requires us to edit, publish, collaborate, create and connect in the process of building our own personal learning spaces. How do we build our own networks in effective, ethical and safe ways? How do we incorporate the characteristics of autonomy, diversity, interactivity and openness (Downes) into our own learning practice and, in turn, model and teach that to our children? We’ll explore the growing importance of “network literacy” in our learning lives.

A Shifting Notion of What it Means to Teach

Keynote: The incredible resource that is the Web is changing much about what we can do with our curricula and our students. The classroom is no longer restricted to four physical walls, and it is becoming a truly collaborative space in which to learn. Every student can be a contributor of knowledge to the world. This networked classroom is a more complicated place for teachers, but it’s also one filled with incredible potential for learning. This keynote challenges educators to rethink their roles to make maximum use of the tools and information now available to them.

Weblogs in Schools

Workshop: The almost limitless potential of Weblogs as a teaching tool is fostering an explosion of innovative projects, partnerships and techniques at every level of education from elementary school to graduate programs. The ease with which Weblogs allow for publishing of content to the Internet makes them the perfect tool for bringing new voices into to the classroom and building true educational communities that go beyond traditional school walls. This session will highlight best practice uses of Weblogs in schools and include resources on how to get started.

Creating Live Web TV for the Classroom for Global Audiences

Workshop: In the last few years, streaming pre-produced video content to the classroom has become easier and easier. But now, the next big step is on the horizon: the creation of live streamed Web television from your classroom, from your home, or even on location. New Web tools like those at UStream.tv and Mogulus.com put the power of live streaming in your hands with very little need for equipment or extra computer knowledge. In this session, participants will get a look at the latest in live streaming technologies, will learn about the technical requirements and pedagogical considerations of using it in the classroom, and discuss strategies for involving global audiences in the process. We’ll also look at some best practice examples to get our thinking started.

From Information Literacy to Information Leadership

Workshop: Assessing the relevance and reliability of information is a crucial skill for all educators to master and model. But that type of information literacy is only the beginning. With the explosion of information coming online, school leaders need to employ successful strategies for finding, managing and communicating what’s significant for their own practice and for that of their constituents. This workshop will cover the tools that information leaders are using and the strategies to use them well.


Connective Writing

Workshop: The ability to easily publish to the Internet has opened up all sorts of new possibilities for teachers to help students enhance their writing skills and become more effective communicators. In the age of the Read/Write Web, every reader can truly be a writer as well. Weblogs and wikis provide wide and diverse audiences from around the world for feedback and response. But they also require a more “connective writing” approach, one that can synthesize many disparate ideas from different sources, all connected together through hypertext. This is a think out of the box workshop intended to help you start exploring new ways to make your own writing and your classroom writing more meaningful and more effective.

RSS: Connecting Ideas and Knowledge

Workshop: RSS is a powerful yet fairly untapped tool that educators can use to easily track many sources of information and knowledge. But it’s also evolving into an effective way to connect people and ideas in ways that we’ve be unable to before. Using RSS, we can not only read what others write, we can read what they read, and even read what they create in easy, time-saving ways. This session will take a look at the tools and strategies that can make RSS an integral part of every educator’s professional development and practice.

Podcast, Vodcast, Screencast Nation

Workshop: Multimedia content creation on the Web increased at the rate of 3200% last year, and it shows no rate of slowing down. From audiocasts to screencasts to video for the iPod, there are all sorts of ways that students and teachers can take advantage of the easy creation and publishing tools that can bring this rich media to a wide variety of audiences. This session survey the multimedia landscape, show how schools are already taking advantage of it, and offer some tips on how to get started.

UnConference Sessions

I enjoy doing sessions that are based upon audience participation and questions in a more unplanned and relaxed, interactive atmosphere. It’s a chance to ask the questions that are most important to those in attendance and for me to show what’s most relevant. These sessions can be loosely defined by general topics or wide open. Groups of 20-40 work best for these types of discussions.