Social networks, web-based communication and collaboration tools, and “powered-up” student challenges are not only engaging, they teach 21st century skills while delivering core curriculum. Bring all your machines and mobiles to participate as this session becomes a giant classroom with challenges and resources reaching across boundaries --and time. Virtual environments, Web 2.0, and a network of contacts will be available and tapped for the challenges—and replicable in a classroom. Learn why bricks and mortar districts need to adopt these strategies quickly or risk the erosion of their enrollment base.
 

Mobile is the next wave in technology. Cellphones text faster than email, spread video faster than cameras, and webcast in real time. They take assignments, document work, translate and podcast. Mobile interfaces with Web 2.0. Best of all:  teachers and students carry them already! Learn what we can adapt to achieve educational goals.  Examples are in place. Mobile is the web all over again—be ready.
 

Projections show $180-billion in private capital heading toward formerly public spaces. Rupert Murdock sees K-12 as a "$500-billion sector."  When last year’s report from the Department of Education showed higher student achievement in online vs face-to-face classes, proprietary schools grew up in states across the country.  The precedent in post-secondary has been grim (a “race to the bottom”).  Schools must regain their technological initiative. Learn how “powered-up” classrooms engage students, deliver curriculum, and retain enrollment for bricks and mortar.
 

From the Pacific to the Atlantic, trailblazing states and districts have begun a serious conversion to digital—a move from trees to bits.  Moving classroom practice more deeply into digital resources provides major benefits for differentiation, extended learning, remediation, and accountability.  But how does it happen? What’s the immediate effect on test scores? Considering the threat of enrollment base erosion from propriety schools, adoption not an option but a necessity.  Explore these issues with examples across the country. And bring your mobiles and machines for an interactive BYOT exercise.
 

Projections show $180-billion in private capital heading toward formerly public spaces. Rupert Murdock sees K-12 as a "$500-billion sector." When last year’s report from the Department of Education showed higher student achievement in online vs face-to-face classes, proprietary schools grew up in states across the country.  The experience in post-secondary proprietary school was grim (a “race to the bottom”).  Schools must regain their technological initiative. Learn how “powered-up” classrooms engage students, deliver curriculum, and retain enrollment for bricks and mortar.
 

Digital textbooks will hold much more than pdf's: media, social links, avatars, community rooms, and more.  They will be part fixed, part live, part static, part wired.  We have the power to tap the fundamental engagement hotspots for students, Techbooks will do that for teaching and learning.  Participants in the room will be part of this dynamic, real time, curriculum resource. Become a co-author as we turn the page on the old way of thinking about digital resources.
 

The benefits of the digital world have arrived. State legislatures recognized dynamic teaching and assessment environments match 21st Century learning styles. As a result, laws changed in states across the country, enabling digital supplementary materials to replace traditional texts. Suddenly, differentiated instruction became more effective, along with accountability and sharing. Leaders can now build an education that lifts their students into the world where they succeed.
 

What veteran teachers suspected the research has proved: 21st Century students are different. With different attention spans, higher IQ test scores, and social networks, their sophistication comes earlier—with a different skill set. There is a silver lining: We can teach this “New Brain” more effectively, more efficiently, more engagingly. We have the technology! Media has evolved and education must evolve to match.
 

The “stand alone” method of teaching is fading and being replaced by a model that taps colleagues, content, and experts from around the world and across the hall.  The same holds true for administrators. The new model takes work but building 21st Century learners into 21st Century citizens makes it imperative. The inevitable arrival of the techbook makes it doable.  Bring your laptops and your mobiles and become a co-author as we turn the page on the old way of thinking.
 

The cameras in their cell phones make them citizen journalists. The web is their personal library and media center. Social networks give them enormous group expertise.  They communicate in real time with the ends of the earth. But can they convince their teachers to let them learn at school with help from such powerful tools? Beyond the "wow," technology provides nearly limitless potential for connectivity and education. See examples of how today's technologies can (and should) engage and teach a new generation of students.
 

One of the unforeseen consequences into technology’s integration in the social fabric is the creation of new knowledge, including new content and new strategies for teaching and learning. The challenges of content creation especially match 21st Century learners and the digital classroom. Jobs, global problems, and communication will be intertwined with the creation of both knowledge and content, and the ability to look at and analyze what is newly created will become a 21st Century skill. Originally created as a strategy for teachers of the gifted, this approach applies to all learners and gives a new perspective on what to do with all those digital tools.
 

For only a sliver of time in human culture has learning meant decoding the written word. Learning means assimilating information in a way that matches our wiring: responding to the terabits of information in motion and sound. Technology brings education access to the transformative visual tools of an image-based society--- a move closer to the way we truly learn. Follow with a veteran the 30-year path of projects from film to Internet2. Learn what this technology means for your school and what a commitment to simple truths can mean to education.