Conferences, 21st Century Learning, And Using the Live Web

My school district held a very nice 21st Century Learning Summit yesterday. It was great to hear tools I'd been trying to use and navigate for a couple of years suddenly being openly discussed and introduced to my colleagues. I don't feel I learned anything "new," yet it thrilled me to be there anyway because I've been waiting and waiting for someone to discuss Web 2.0, etc.

For instance, we were given the article on Digital Natives v. Digital Immigrants by Mark Prensky, which was published in 2001 yet is still a good conversation-starter. We were shown Karl Fisch's Shift Happens* as well. I have to admit I had mixed feelings because these resources are great, exciting, and hopefully will start the fire in my locale but we are SO late to the party. Not that I'm complaining--I am so glad we've finally arrived and that perhaps my online professional learning network will finally connect with my offline professional learning network. And more importantly, perhaps the way school's done in my district will improve and change. We have a great district but so many of the things we do are antiquated. There is now suddenly a big push for 21st Century learning and I'm all for it!

Speaking of conferences, learning, and Live Web, I was sort of live-blogging the event (after all, the general in charge of the North American Space Command was the speaker) via Twitter. Let me share with you a comment I left on Ewan McIntosh's most recent column, "Please, turn your mobiles on." In the comment I discuss how quickly I got connected with another educator via mobile phone and how that allowed us to start sharing resources immediately.