Learning in Sync

I'm a firm believer that conversations are one of the richest forms of professional development that teachers can engage in, and if the first hours of the new year are any indication, there will be many opportunities to participate in synchronous learning adventures with teachers both locally and globally.



A Few Examples in the last 24 Hours

Yesterday, Will Richardson invited the Twittersphere to expand a conversation that had its origin in Twitter. Visit the archived Illuminate session to see how the back-channel discussion was easily as rich and compelling as the audio commentary! It was one example of how an interactive web meeting might well trump any other form of P.D.

At exactly the same time, Steve Hargadon was hosting a Classroom 2.0 2008 Wrap-up and New Year's Party to highlight the new ideas, techniques, tools, books, and conversations around educational technology that made 2008 special. It serves as another rich example of how other educators were harnessing interactive, synchronous tools to share their learning with other interested educators.

Expanding the Audience

While many conferences and live presentations have been publicized via Twitter, the potential audience for these events goes far beyond the micro-blogging community. The Classroom 2.0 Calendar has a fairly rich menu of live online events, and I'm wondering if we might all leverage such a space to encourage others to join the discussion.

Do you know of other opportunities for teachers to 'learn in sync'?


Image Credit: Thanks to Wesley Fryer and Alec Couros for licensing their images for remixing. The resulting image that I created is similarly licensed with a Canadian 2.5 Noncommercial-Share Alike Creative Commons License

Why Network?

Will Richardson laments that many conference speakers don't effectively leverage read/write tools in their presentations. Maybe they don't understand 'WHY' the network is so important?

It might help if the people chosen to ’speak’ at conferences were chosen because of their online presence rather than by virtue of their paper-based publishing exploits. Those most effectively leveraging the read/write tools of the web, are the ones with the ability to model engaging uses of evolving tools; but many/most of us are ‘unpublished’ in the traditional sense.

One of those who is really demonstrating the power of the network for two way communication, is Clay Burell, who this past weekend, invited his network to experience his wedding via ustream!

That would be cool enough, but the network broadcasted back to Clay! People like Chris Betcher in Sydney, Australia, have leveraged tools in order to send greetings back to Seoul, South Korea. Check out Chris' Voicetread.



But what if you aren't getting married?Wesley Fryer, shared: WHY do teens use social networking sites?, a YouTube video by Vanessa Van Petten. Her answer is intended for parents, but I suspect educators and educational keynote speakers, would do well to consider the message:



Why network?

Until you begin to using the evolving tools of the read/write web, you will never know the answer!