TUANZ Education Conference 2007
- International Keynote Presenters
Week One and Two
Keynote Address: Schooling for the 21st Century: Unleashing Student Passion
Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Adjunct Instructor of Educational Technology, College of William and Mary & Educational Consultant, Virginia Beach, Virginia, USA
A passionate student is a learning student. As the people of the world are becoming increasingly connected, the nature, use, ownership, and purpose of knowledge are changing in profound ways. Our goal as educators is to leverage these connections and changes as powerful means to improve teaching and learning in our schools. Using digital media and web-based tools, students are building their own learning experiences, constructing meaning, and collaborating in teams to solve authentic content-based problems. Many teachers who use these empowering technologies are now discovering we can have rigor without sacrificing excitement. The secret: Focus on student passion and interest, not the machines and software.
Come listen as Sheryl stirs a sense of urgency for shifting classroom practice toward more engaging approaches that unleash the passion that lies within each learner. Sheryl invites you to discuss this and (other 21st Century teaching and learning topics) on her blog: http://21stcenturylearning.typepad.com/blog/
Biography:
Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, a 23-year educator, has been a classroom teacher, school principal, district administrator, and digital learning consultant. She currently serves as an adjunct faculty member at The College of William and Mary (Virginia, USA), where she is also completing her doctorate in educational planning, policy and leadership.
Sheryl has published journal articles, book chapters and magazine pieces and is currently under contract to write a book about 21st Century teaching for U.S. publisher Eye on Education. Sheryl has spoken to audiences throughout the U.S., Europe, and Central America on topics of teacher leadership, virtual community building, 21st Century learning, and homelessness.
Currently, Sheryl is co-leading a statewide 21st Century Skills initiative in the state of Alabama, funded by a major grant from the Microsoft Partners in Learning program. She recently served as an organiser and convener of the inaugural 2006 K-12Online Conference, "Unleashing the Potential," which sought to help educators around the world contextualise and integrate emerging technologies into their schools and classrooms.
Sheryl lives near the Atlantic Ocean in Virginia Beach with her four children, all of whom are avid bloggers.
Week Three
Keynote Address: Our Future is Unwritten
Miguel Guhlin, Director of Instructional Technology,San Antonio ISD, San Antonio, Texas, USA
Disruptive technologies - exemplified by the ability to publish at will in text, audio, video formats or any combination of those - enhance our freedom of speech, freedom to assemble in virtual communities. Social networking tools like MySpace and YouTube grant freedom of speech and assembly to the masses in a way that past wars and social revolutions never could. For this reason, disruptive technologies that connect people to each other are the greatest threat to the powerful who have traditionally controlled the means of publication.Unfortunately, that includes our schools.
Miguel will explore the 3 challenges we face as educators, and invite us to create our own future through the strategic application of disruptive technologies. Like our students, with arms wide open, embrace the unwritten future. Our fate is intertwined with their's. Together, we must follow, lead, and learn in this unknown, but knowable, future.
Biography:
Transforming teaching, learning and leadership through the strategic application of technology has been Miguel Guhlin's motto. As a veteran educator comfortable with modelling the use of technology at the classroom, campus, and district level, he has a simple goal. That goal is to use powerful technologies to transform practice and enable learners to communicate and collaborate with each other.
As Director of Instructional Technology for a large urban district in Texas, President of the state-wide Technology Education Coordinators group in one of the largest United States technology educator organizations, he continues to model the use of emerging technologies in schools. You can read his published writing, engage him in conversation via his blogs at http://www.mguhlin.net
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