So a quick day two update.  As I mentioned last post, I was excited to attend a session by Ian Jukes.  Ian is always on the bleeding edge of the educational technology world.  As a former professional football player, Ian attacks every speech as if he is playing in the Super Bowl.  His mantra: Kids today are digital, and unless we’re fluent in digital mediums, our kids will simply unplug us.  To be clear though, Ian doesn’t want to throw traditional literacies out the window.  He correctly notes that schools are important social agencies for the transmission of culture.  What’s different today though, is that students aren’t simply receiving culture—they’re producing it.

After that, I stuck around for a session by Will Richardson of the role of social networking in teacher learning communities.  As Chris Marchetti quickly picked up, Web 2.0 tools could have a tremendously powerful affect on the PLC work in LPS and other places.  The key though, according to Will, is that purpose precedes protocol.  In other words, until teachers understand why they are participating in an online community (to refine practice to aid their students) they will not buy into the concept of connecting asynchronously. 

For Wed a.m.,  I have a couple of sessions lined up on elementary literacies (digital storytelling) and one on cyber-safety.