Happy New Year to friends and colleagues! As we begin 2011 I wanted to share three things that we can look forward to in 2011.

1. What will happen with tablet devices in the classroom? Many ed-tech journalists referred to 2010 as the year of the iPad.  Competition for iPad apps in education is increasing from the Android market and the variety of devices that will host them. In education we love this kind of competition because it increases the value of the apps as learning tools and decreases the price of the devices.  Check out this NY Times article about iPad in the classroom…

2. How will the Common Core Standards movement integrate with the 21^st Century Skills movement? We all have the responsibility in the coming years for providing the leadership and vision to synergize both of these initiatives to guide teachers in creating effective learning environments. Visit the Common Core site…

3.  I encourage all of you to consider attending the Curriculum Mapping Institute 2011 in Saratoga Springs, New York, on July 12 -16, 2011.   This conference has continued to grow and serve as the flagship learning experience for educators in the area of Curriculum Mapping and 21^st Century learning. My collaboration with Dr. Heidi Hayes Jacobs and her Curriculum 21 team has been increasing over the last six months and you will be receiving information through the coming year as the Curriculum 21 realm goes global. The popularity of Dr. Jacob’s Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World has inspired her Curriculum 21 team to expand our services in the area of the Common Core, Curriculum Mapping, and 21st Century Learning. Don’t skip over Chapter 12…

Visit the CMI 2011 site…

As always, I enjoy sharing with you free web based tools to engage students in learning. Have you used Visual Thesaurus? If you see its value as a vocabulary application tool you will also enjoy Visuwords. It is free and quite simple to use. This tool will make exploring and expanding vocabulary fun for students.

The College of Charleston is providing housing for the conference at a very reasonable rate and we have worked hard to reduce your costs. The session rooms are wireless and we encourage you to bring a laptop.

Click here for the conference web site and we look forward to seeing you in June…

As always, there will be weekly updates and more conference information posted here as we move closer to June. See you Charleston!

Now here is what I have to share today. This article below about the present state of education in this country and how online learning environments are going to grow is worth your time to read. It is brief, to the point, and cited well.

 The Online Learning Imperative: A Solution to Three Looming Crises in Education Click to read it…

Take a look inside a recent Sheskey Learning Solutions keynote presentation and inside an actual workshop. The picture on left is linked to the keynote presentation. Click here to view the various digital literacy, student engagement and assessment activities.

The Sheskey Learning team of presenters will be in Greenwood School District 50 in Greenwood, South Carolina on Friday February 19, 2010 working and learning with the teacher on their professional development day.

As always, I am sharing with you a classroom learning tool that you will find effective with students. Today’s Meet is a safe and user friendly site that provides a web based student/audience response system that can engage learners in computer lab, laptop, or Internet phone setting. There are no advertisements or learning curve with this tool, just open it, ask your questions and let responses flow. It is a wonderful for creating authentic conversations.

Enjoy, and I look forward to seeing all of you soon!

We have organized many of the conference web based resources from last Saturday and linked them on to the conference site for you. Many of these sites were shared by the presenters and they have all been reviewed for instructional value by our team. Click here for the direct link and add them to your browser “favorites”…

These resources will be updated regularly for you. Enjoy and engage your students!

Please complete the conference evaluation below, it is valuable information for me to improve these types of professional development experiences for you.

Click here to complete the evaluation…

Here is the final time schedule:

8:30am  Check in and camera distribution. Arrive before 8:30am if possible.

9:00am – 9:40am  Opening Keynote- Why are we here? – Bill Sheskey

9:45am – 10:45am  Breakout Session One

10:50 – 11:50am  Breakout Session Two

12:00 – 1pm  Lunch and a “Vision of the Future” program- Bill Sheskey

1:00pm -2:00pm  Breakout Session Three

Cookie Break

2:10pm -3:10pm  Breakout Session Four

3:15pm 3:45pm  Closing general session “What am I going to do on Monday?” – Bill Sheskey

3:50pm – 4:30pm  Open round table with all presenters for questions and “how to’s” before you leave.

Check the posts below for more information…