{"success":true,"data":[{"ID":207,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1351693733,"CreatorID":62,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"You Say You Want Tech Standards? Here Come the NITS!","Handle":"You_Say_You_Want_Tech_Standards-Here_Come_the_NITS","ShortDescription":"The ISTE Nets (tech standards) are approximately a decade old. They've produced endless meetings, clich\u00e9-laden documents and breathless rhetoric, but no perceptible increase in student computer fluency or teacher competence. Rather than standardizing, it\u2019s time to amplify human potential with computers. A new diet of computing is required for learners.","Description":"There are a lot of computers in schools, but not a lot of computing. The ISTE Nets and their state and local spawn offer an imagination-free vision of school technology use that hardly justifies the investment let alone realizes the potential of computers as intellectual laboratories or vehicles for self-expression. The current crop of technology standards form the basis, at best, for a form of \u201ccomputer appreciation\u201d being taught in school. \r\n\r\nIf school leaders demand them, we should offer tech standards worthy of our students based on powerful ideas and a commitment to teacher renewal. We must move beyond the trivial and use computers in a fashion consistent with modern knowledge construction. These new \u201cstandards\u201d elevate school computing and challenge traditional notions of top-down schooling.\r\n\r\nLet\u2019s call them N.I.T.S. \u2013 New Intergalactic Technology Standards.\r\n\r\nGary and his virtual friends, Brian Smith in Hong Kong and Martin Levins in Australia, will share their recommendations for raising our standards to the level kids deserve. Educon participants can argue the merits of these goals and add their own. You should have a lot fewer meetings to attend when your superiors are afraid of our new standards. Standards, up yours! Everybody wins!","Link":["http:\/\/constructingmodernknowledge.com"],"Audience":["Elementary School","All School Levels"],"Practice":"Presentation of new standards, the rationale for them and then the attendees will debate, improve and extend the standards.\r\n\r\nOne or two of the co-presenters will participate via videoconference.","Presenter":["Gary S. Stager Ph.D.","Martin Levins","Brian Smith"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Constructing Modern Knowledge","The Armidale School - NSW Australia","Hong Kong International School"],"PresenterEmail":["gary@stager.org","martin@levins.net","brian@briancsmith.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":6,"ScheduleLocationID":10,"SubmitterID":62,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":2},{"ID":159,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1349037163,"CreatorID":62,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Making Connections Between Space, Time, and Learning","Handle":"Making_Connections_Between_Space-Time-and_Learning","ShortDescription":"It\u2019s time educators to break down classroom walls, promote mindful disorder, leverage ALL of the environment for learning, and guarantee our young people access to contemporary materials.  This conversation will cause you to question all that you have come to believe schooling is as we collectively imagine what learning can become.","Description":"For so long, teachers have attempted to teach students within four walls, in rows of desks designed to maintain order, with all eyes on the teaching wall or out-of-date textbooks, for 45 to 90 minutes at a time.  It\u2019s time educators break down the walls, promote mindful disorder, leverage ALL of the environment for learning, and guarantee our young people access to contemporary materials for learning and creating new knowledge.  This session will cause you to question all that you have come to believe schooling is as we collectively imagine what learning can become.","Link":["http:\/\/www.k12albemarle.org"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"This is basically a \"what? so what?  what next?\" plan.  We will begin with a reflective activity that is grounded in Bill Glasser's work with Choice Theory.  The purpose of this is to set the stage for participants to recognize and own the choices they do make with respect to space, time, and learning.  We will use Today's Meet for this activity to ensure everyone is \"heard\" and has a voice in the conversation.  \r\n\r\nWe will then share some of the stories and images that have emerged through our work on designing and implementing \"contemporary learning spaces\" - from new construction projects to School Board priorities to teacher-driven \"HGTV\"-like changes in individual classrooms.  \r\n\r\nFinally, we will revisit the text generated in the initial activity and use a Google form to make a personal commitment to make a change in the service of student learning.  The form entries will be used to construct a GoogleDoc that will be shared openly so that others can see what happens when a teacher commits \"I will let more natural light in to my classroom by opening the blinds,\" or, \"I will downsize the 'teacher corner' to make sure kids have more space to spread out in the classroom.\"","Presenter":["Pam Moran","Paula White","Becky Fisher"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Albemarle County Public Schools"],"PresenterEmail":["bfisher@k12albemarle.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":8,"ScheduleLocationID":10,"SubmitterID":62,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":2},{"ID":254,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1351828543,"CreatorID":62,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"The Utopian School: If you build it, will they come?","Handle":"The_Utopian_School:If_you_build_it-will_they_come","ShortDescription":"I've oft wondered what \"school\" would look like if I were able to gather my PLN all in one spot and build from scratch. What would change and how would it affect all involved parties? There are no sacred cows here. Join me in this opportunity to design out loud.","Description":"We decry the misrepresentation of our education system by the politicians every year. Our hard work is generally turned into a few failing statistics on the national stage with no opportunity to refute them with how we feel reform should really look. Instead, we keep our heads low and pray for the election to come and go so that much of the negative press passes us by and gives us a little breathing room to move on with the important work: educating students. \r\n\r\nLet's pretend for a minute that government is going to keep its nose out of our school. What will we do then? \r\n\r\nThis session will offer attendees the opportunity to put all of their grandiose ideas for the learning system of their dreams into the middle of a much larger conversation. The discussion will center around a blank canvas creating the \"utopian\" school that participants long for.","Link":["http:\/\/utopiaschool.wikispaces.com\/"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"Centered on a modified Best Ever Constructivist Protocol. \r\n\r\nA Driving Question will be shared to generate the direction and categories for needed changes. These major categories will be decided by the group. Then, the larger group will be asked to break into smaller, more concentrated groups to build out the categories with details needed to create direction for that area. Participants select the area of their interest and strength. Each of the smaller groups will be asked to decide a Driving Question for its topic. They will spend their work time negotiating possible ways to answer that driving question while documenting their work in a wiki. Virtual participants will also be invited to collaborate. \r\n\r\nWhile 90 minutes will not even come close to reforming the entire system, the hope is that it will create a starting point for discussions and a resource that educators everywhere can utilize in making decisions locally to improve their own education systems. \r\n\r\nGroups will be creating within a blank wiki so that it is truly a unique and collaborative piece created by educators that can continue to be built upon and referred back to.","Presenter":["Scott S. Floyd"],"PresenterAffiliation":["White Oak Independent School District"],"PresenterEmail":["floyds@woisd.net"],"ScheduleSlotID":9,"ScheduleLocationID":10,"SubmitterID":62,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":2},{"ID":204,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1351685612,"CreatorID":62,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"If the school library has a future, what will it be?","Handle":"If_the_school_library_has_a_future-what_will_it_be","ShortDescription":"No aspect of schooling is changing as fast as the school library. The disruption is still going on. Where do we want it to go, what do we want it to be able to do, and what will it look like?","Description":"No part of schooling has changed as much as the school library and the disruptions are likely to continue for some time. The look, feel, purpose and practices of the school library are all in flux. Technology has made a big difference at the same time budget cuts have altered staffing and challenged the continued existence of the library in many schools.\r\n\r\nDewey may be done, e-books are starting to emerge, filters are fading and reference books are rarely used for research, so what is the library\u2019s role in the school, the librarians role in the library, and how do teachers take advantage of the emerging new school media center, if that is what it has become.\r\n\r\nAdministrators, teachers, students and librarians are all affected by and have an effect on the form, features, functions and financing of the library and all those voices need to be part of the conversation. \r\n\r\nThe presenters are a rural school district administrator who has invested heavily in renovating the district\u2019s libraries to make them more student friendly, a scholar and consultant who was instrumental in the planning for those renovations, and an inner-city middle school librarian who is in the process of planning a renovation of his library. We bring a variety of perspectives to the conversation and are all experienced facilitators of constructive engagement.","Link":[],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"A modified What? So\tWhat?\tNow\tWhat? protocol using a whole-group approach. Slides will be used to highlight conversational foci.","Presenter":["Pam Moran","Deven Black"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Superintendent","Albemarle","VA schools; Chief Provocateur","Educology Partners; Librarian","Castle Hill Middle School 127","NYC"],"PresenterEmail":["pmpmoran@gmail.com","deven.black@gmail.com"],"ScheduleSlotID":14,"ScheduleLocationID":10,"SubmitterID":62,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":2},{"ID":190,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1351526626,"CreatorID":62,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Performance Task Assessment & the CWRA: Better Goal-Posts for Student Learning","Handle":"Performance_Task_Assessment-the_CWRA:Better_Goal-Posts_for_Student_Learning","ShortDescription":"Many schools are adopting visionary goals for student learning, including higher order thinking skills and creative problem-solving, and are seeking to evaluate student learning in more engaging and authentic ways.    Performance Task Assessments and the exemplary CWRA offer a potentially subversive way to change the way we assess, which we will explore and discuss in this session.","Description":"Performance Task assessment, whereby students are posed a challenging, real-world situated problem and presented associated documents for critical review and analysis and required to respond with a thoughtful, creative essay answer, is a different and better way to evaluate student learning. Performance task assessment is coming to public education in CCSS participating states in the new assessments being developed by PARCC and Smarter Balanced.  The College Work Readiness Assessment is used by about 100 US high schools, public and private, and its analogue the Collegiate Learning Assessment, is used by a about 300 colleges and universities.  Jonathan Martin has used CWRA for three years at his independent school; Pam Moran is beginning use of CWRA and is deploying Performance Task Assessments K-12 in her district,  using it to assess contemporary learning growth w students, as tool for assessing professional learning needs among staff, and to assess curricular applications w\/in across discipline: together they will host and facilitate this conversation.","Link":[],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"We have a number of ideas and intentions for making this more of a conversation than a presentation: we intend to share sample performance task assessments and invite groups to spend a short time discussing how they'd approach and answer the challenge, what skills and learning will need to have been learned to succeed, and how these tasks can evolve toward becoming more authentic and more rigorous.   We'll ask groups to consider how and where performance task assessments can be embedded in their schools, and ask groups to conduct a gallery walk of sorts on large post-its writing to us and each other their sense of the pros, cons, questions, and improvements that we can make to make performance task assessment more meaningful for students and educators.","Presenter":["Pam Moran","Jonathan Martin"],"PresenterAffiliation":["Albemarle County Public School"],"PresenterEmail":["pmpmoran@gmail.com","jonathanemartin@gmail.com"],"ScheduleSlotID":16,"ScheduleLocationID":10,"SubmitterID":62,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":2},{"ID":257,"Class":"Conversation","Created":1351888495,"CreatorID":62,"RevisionID":null,"Status":"Accepted","Title":"Honoring Our Learning Philosophy Through Our Learning Reports: Is it about learning and progress or is it about grades?","Handle":"Honoring_Our_Learning_Philosophy_Through_Our_Learning_Reports:Is_it_about_learning_and_progress_or_is_it_about_grades","ShortDescription":"In 2013, how do schools report learning and growth? Is it through test scores, a \u201creport card,\u201d a \u201cprogress report,\u201d a portfolio, or  __________? Are we modeling 21st century communication and collaboration as we offer formal feedback and document student growth and progress?","Description":"We want this conversation to be active \u2013 reflecting and dreaming big while also taking small (or not-so-small) steps to plan on how to move a classroom or a school to dynamically describe, document, report, and celebrate learning. How might we honor and leverage current cultural buzzwords and eduspeak \u2013 risk-taking, failure, personalizing learning, design-thinking, grit \u2013 and authentically make these concepts part of our learning report for each child?","Link":["http:\/\/bit.ly\/LearningReports"],"Audience":["All School Levels"],"Practice":"We will ask participants to bring a current report card and have a \u201cgallery walk\u201d of the reports for the first 20 minutes of the session. Using post-it notes, participants will comment on things they like and things they wonder about. Seeing various types of reports will serve as our jumping off point for conversation. \r\nWe will lead participants in discussion about how to best honor our learning philosophies through our learning reports with guiding questions and with a lively backchannel. We are in the process of prototyping a report card of the future and will bring mock-ups to stir conversation and discussion.\r\nParticipants will drive the conversation as we brainstorm how to make learning reports about learning\/growth and not just about grades.","Presenter":["Megan Howard","Jill Gough"],"PresenterAffiliation":["The Walker School","Trinity School (Atlanta","GA)"],"PresenterEmail":["marymeganhoward@gmail.com","jgough@trinityatl.org"],"ScheduleSlotID":17,"ScheduleLocationID":10,"SubmitterID":62,"AdditionalComments":null,"LiveChannel":null,"Hashtag":null,"VokleID":null,"RecordingURL":null,"ConferenceID":2}],"conditions":{"Status":"Accepted","ConferenceID":2,"ScheduleLocationID":10},"total":6,"limit":false,"offset":false}