Bill Sheskey Blog » conference

2011 and Beyond!

Bill Sheskey — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 11:21:25 +0000

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.

June Digital Literacy Conference Announcement

Bill Sheskey — Mon, 15 Mar 2010 10:56:34 +0000

We are taking the Digital Literacy Conference experience to the next level. In partnership with Carolina TESOL and Curriculum Mapping expert Janet Hale, we are announcing the 2010 Digital Literacy Conference to be held at the College of Charleston in historic downtown Charleston, South Carolina on Friday and Saturday June 11 & 12, 2010. This has been the traditional date for Carolina TESOL’s annual June Mini Conference. With the addition of the Digital Literacy sessions I am facilitating and Janet Hale’s Curriculum Mapping sessions this conference has expanded the opportunities for educators from all over the southeast to come together for two days in a world class, 21st century learning environment.

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!

Conference Announcement, Videos, and a Cool Tool for School

Bill Sheskey — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 11:10:20 +0000

In the next 2 weeks you will receive an announcement for another Digital Literacy Conference at the College of Charleston in Charleston, South Carolina on June 11 & 12, 2010. There will be ESOL, digital literacy and curriculum mapping strands.

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!

2010 and Beyond

Bill Sheskey — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 11:27:47 +0000

I arrived home from a family holiday visit and there was FedEx package on my doorstep. It contained 2 copies of the the book Curriculum 21: Essential Education for a Changing World and sure enough Chapter 12 had my name on it. I can’t wait to read the rest of the book. Dr. Jacobs and our Curriculum 21 team are building various conferencing and online resources that are centered around the book. You will be receiving more information shortly. Those of you that are ASCD members will be receiving it in the mail as your next member book. ASCD tells me that there are over 100,000 members that will receive the book. All I can says is, wow…

Be looking for an announcement this month about a June ESOL and Digital Literacy Conference somewhere in the coastal region of South Carolina. The interest following the Digital Literacy Conference in Greenville in November has been great and we will let you know about the next one…

This weeks web based learning tool comes from NASA. Science, math and social studies instructional leaders will love this archive of NASA videos, images and audio recordings. It is the best archive of our space program that I have seen to date.

One last tidbit for those of you who have SmartBoards, if you like to use the calendars that are in the gallery you may have trouble finding 2010 and beyond there. Go to the search line in the gallery and type in “calendar generator” and there is a tool that will make a calendar for any month you want in the coming years.

Can you believe that it is 2010? What are the next 5 years going to be like in the classroom?

We move on to December…

Bill Sheskey — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:56:18 +0000

It is amazing how fast November went by and the “Holiday Season” is upon us. The November 14th Southeastern Conference for Literacy in the Digital Classroom was very successful. Ninety-six percent of the eighty-five educators attending rated their conference experience as either “excellent” or “good” on the evaluation. I thank all of the presenters for their high quality learning sessions. We have built a digital literacy conference resource page with all of the web based learning applications that were shared during the conference, add them to your resource lists. There will be announcements soon for similiar conferences in 2010.

This week I move on to the New Jersey CMI Conference with Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Ann Johnson, and Marie Alcock. We have three days of curriculum mapping, digital literacy, and Curriculum 21 integrated together. I will be blogging, and posting my presentations here on Wednesday and Thursday so check back in to see them.

I have updated this blog page and you can now access all of the post by calendar date and tag name on the right. As our topic areas expand I will be categorizing them for you so they are easier to access.

As always, I am sharing a valuable resource with you; the University of Utah has built a site called “Learning Genetics”. It is a visually rich, and relevant resource for all grade levels of science. I am sharing it with all my science friends and make sure that you add it to your resource list.

Conference Evaluation

Bill Sheskey — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 18:28:41 +0000

Thank you so much giving your students a Saturday! I hope that you have found tools that will be valuable in work with 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…

Welcome to the Digital Literacy Conference!

Bill Sheskey — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 11:35:10 +0000

We made it! When you check in, go ahead and open up your cameras and connect your laptops to the Internet. The wireless network is CFC.

We will play with our cameras for a few minutes? Who is the reading the directions and who isn’t? I always find that interesting.

Here is what happens at the opening session:

1. I ask you to reflect on why you are here.

2. The presassessment survey is reviewed.

3. Presenters are introduced.

4. Last minute announcements.

Oh by the way, Could you please answer a question for me…
Click here to read and answer the question…

Saturday is getting closer!

Bill Sheskey — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 18:50:01 +0000

We are finalizing Saturday’s conference schedule and there is an added general session presentation during our lunch hour that is a surprise! The opening session, lunch, and closing session room has added a high tech double screen audio-visual system that will make the keynote, lunch, and closing sessions a very visual experience for everyone.

Please see last weeks post below to have your laptops ready for the Carolina First Center. Here are the written driving directions to the CFC…

Please check in by 8:30am and you will receive your camera, memory chip, name tag, sessions program, and lunch information. There will be coffee provided in the morning. Lunch is a chicken salad wrap, pasta salad, and desert. The afternoon break will have cookies and coffee.

See you Saturday and be ready for a fun day of exploration and learning!