Preparing for ASI2010

After a warm, restful summer it’s time to get my head in gear for another great ABEL Summer Institute.  Time for me to kick off the 2010/2011 school year with great professional learning, networking and an opportunity to reconnect with like minded, energetic educators.

This year I find myself prepping for three professional learning sessions!  As always, I look forward to the input I will receive for those who will join me in my sessions.  Additionally, I am really looking forwards to meeting up with our keynote speaker Dr. Alec Couros.  I am looking forward to discussing open networked learning with him and engaging our ASI delegates in this discussion.

ASI runs August 23, 24, 25th at York University in Toronto.  I will be tweeting comments along with the rest of the delegates, as well as blogging each day.  I look forward to sharing the discussions both here in my blog and on

Twitter!  #ASI2010  Join me!

LC Champions Conference

Thursday and Friday were very busy days as I was hosting our spring champions conference for Learning Connections at York University.  We had 20 delegates at dinner on Thursday evening at the Schulich Executive Dining Room, from six school districts across Ontario.  It was a great evening.

On Friday, we had another 15 delegates join us as we began our day in the TEL building.  About half of the group had not yet used Twitter so we began by having people set up accounts.  Thanks to Kent Manning and Andrew Forgrave who shared their professional learning experiences through the use of twitter….it’s always a challenge to get people past the skeptical stage.  I used a twitter visualizer tool I found on the web to share the tweets to #lngconn throughout the day.  I think we really engaged some folks in the discussion!

Following the initial ice-breaker activities, the various Champion Districts spent time sharing the work they have been doing in their districts with each other.  It was such amazing professional dialogue and sharing of expertise!  Everyone was so engaged in their sharing and learning and there was just so much learning.  The delegates really took charge of their learning as we progressed through the day.  They identified their learning needs, next steps and made some wonderful connections.

Rodd Lucier came down from London to speak to our group about Creative Commons licensing and the various sites where we can direct our students and colleagues for media to share and remix.  Rodd’s talk really got folks thinking about this challenging topic.

I would have to say that overall the day was a great success.  It was great to meet folks with whom I have only ever communicated via Twitter and could now finally put a face to their Twitter handle.  I was so impressed by the learning and sharing withing our community of LC Champions and really felt that we were delivering exactly the right mix of face to face and online learning for this dedicated group of educators.