The opening discussion of this event was presented before an audience and was also broadcast on the Web so that educators from around the world could take part in the dialogue. The recordings of this live broadcast our now on the Web and available to all.

IdeaJam: Education Live Stream – Alan November’s Introduction
IdeaJam: Education Live Stream – Q&A Part 1
IdeaJam: Education Live Stream – Eric Marcos’ Class
IdeaJam: Education Live Stream – Skype Sessions
IdeaJam: Education Live Stream – Q&A Part 2

Within these videos are discussions with several educators from across the country who are helping their students to engage and excel through the use of critical thinking skills and tools available to them on the Web. Some of these educators, including Eric Marcos, Garth Holman, Michael Pennington, Aaron Sams and Jonathan Bergmann, will also be presenters at BLC11, this July in Boston. We encourage you to watch the videos, then come out and meet these fantastic educators. Register now!

After viewing the videos above, you might also be interested in these additional resources.

Alan November’s Article – The Digital Learning Farm
Talking Student Tutorials (Part 1): A Podcast with Eric Marcos
Talking Student Tutorials (Part 2): A Podcast with Eric Marcos
Building Legacy Within a Textbook: A Podcast with Garth Holman and Michael Pennington
Flipped Model of Learning: A Podcast with Jonathan Bergmann and Aaron Sams

On May 2nd, educators, experts, parents, teachers and students from a variety of backgrounds and points of view will come together in Los Angeles to flex their creative muscles on teaching and learning solutions. The IdeaJam, moderated by Alan November, sponsored by Intel and Google/YouTube and produced by Katalyst, will ask participants to problem-solve and create new ideas for classroom design that integrate technology and help boost creativity. Many of the ideas that will be discussed directly relate to Alan’s article, The Digital Learning Farm.

The IdeaJam program is a truly interactive experience. Technology will help elevate the discussion to a higher level, creating a conversation around creativity and education, and will allow for a robust dialogue that happens both in the room and live, online. You can join in the conversation on Twitter @IntelEdge or check out the livestream on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9YULZJwJuI. The stream will begin at 9:30am PT on May 2nd.

Learn more about the background of this event here.

We hope you will join the fun!

And don’t forget, to continue these important discussions, come join us and our friends from around the world at BLC11 this summer in Boston. Click here to learn more and to register.

I am very interested in what others have to say. Please respond to any of my questions and add your own.

• What are the opportunities for authentic work for students within the current structure of school?
• Can we really expect all students to make a contribution to the learning community?
• How do we help teachers manage the shift of control to the students making much more of a contribution to their own learning and to the community?

The resource is available on Diigo at http://www.diigo.com/user/novemberlearning. Below, I’ve included a short video overview of how this tool works. If you have any comments or questions, please let us know.

After discussing this for a while, our team has decided to invite a group of guest bloggers to post here year round. We’ve organized a dynamic group of individuals whom we believe will offer fantastic perspective in a variety of different areas.

We welcome all of these individuals as they get started, and we look forward to continue developing an insightful learning community with them and with you.

Stay tuned.

Alan will be leading one of these seminars on Wednesday, September 22nd, 2010 at 10:00 AM Pacific Time.

Creating a New Culture of Teaching and Learning
A powerful new culture of empowered teaching and fearless learning is emerging. Access to more timely information and communication tools can empower educators to focus on the individual learning needs of their students. These same tools can lead to more collegiality, build stronger community relationships and empower students to be more self-directed. This webinar presents clear examples of how this new culture has been achieved.

Register online today for a live webinar, or watch a webcast of a previously recorded webinars.

For more background on Scratch and the “creative thinking spiral,” click here.

You will learn about a young student and her new online team who are developing their entrepreneurial skills as they develop and share new characters within the Scratch interface.

Finally, Mitch will emphasize how teachers must feel free to be creative, be open to losing a bit of control and help students reflect and make sense of what they are learning.

For more background on Scratch and the “creative thinking spiral,” click here.

• Learn more about BLC10 keynoter Rahaf Harfoush.
• Contribute to Alan’s upcoming book, Students as Contributors: The Digital Learning Farm.
• Learn more about and schedule an NL Mini-Conference at your school or in your district.
• Contribute to Haiti relief efforts.

In this book, World-renowned curriculum designer Heidi Hayes Jacobs leads an all-star cast of education thought leaders who explain:

• Why K–12 curriculum has to change to reflect new technologies and a globalized world.
• What to keep, what to cut, and what to create to reflect 21st century learning skills.
• Where portfolios and new kinds of assessments fit into accountability mandates.
• How to improve your use of time and space and groupings of students and staff.
• What steps to take to help students gain a global perspective and develop the habits of mind they need to succeed in school, work, and life.
• How to re-engineer schools and teaching to engage and improve students’ media literacy.

Watch the video below to learn more about this book. Additionally, information is available at http://www.novemberlearning.com/jacobs.

According to the American Red Cross:

Countless requests have come from people wanting to help.  The best way to do that is to make a donation to the American Red Cross International Response Fund at redcross.org or by calling 1-800-RED-CROSS. Donors can designate their gifts to Haiti relief.  Donations to the International Response Fund allows the American Red Cross to respond to global emergencies and disasters.

In addition, several hundred thousand people have chosen to make a mobile donation.  Donors can text “Haiti” to 90999 on their cell phone to send a $10 donation to support Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti.  The mobile giving effort raised more than $3 million by Thursday morning, and all money raised goes to support Red Cross relief efforts in Haiti.

Learn more about the American Red Cross relief effort.

Many of you who follow us or have been to BLC are quite familiar with the work of Marco Torres and Alas Media. This holiday season, they are heading up an exciting and worthwhile endeavor.

This weekend, they are hosting a day of family portraits, and their goal is to photograph families who might not necessarily have the means to take a portrait. The families that participate will walk away with a portrait to share with their families during the holiday completely FREE.

The Alas Media team is looking for financial assistance in purchasing frames for these photos. If you are interested in helping out, please visit http://alasmedia.chipin.com/help-portrait.

Rahaf Harfoush has accepted our invitation to travel from Geneva to share her insights as a key member of President Barack Obama’s campaign media team. Her extensive knowledge of building social networks provides critical insight into building empowering learning environments. She is also the author of the book, Yes We Did.

Dubbed “the explainer” by Wired magazine, Dr. Michael Wesch is a cultural anthropologist exploring effects of social media and digital technology on global society.

Mitch Resnick from the MIT Lifelong Kindergarten is back to share his knowledge about building a global community with young children engaged with creative inventions.

Learn more at http://novemberlearning.com/blc/keynote-speakers/.

Follow this link to read Alan’s suggestions.

Go out the main hotel door on St. James Ave. Walk one block and take a right on Berkley St. Cross the street to get to the Arlington T-stop. Take the Heath St. train to the Symphony T-stop (3 stops). Come out of the station and turn right. Walk one block (Burger King will be on your right) and turn left onto Gainsborough St. Jordan Hall is right there. Currently, construction is taking place on the Hall, so look for the building covered in black mesh.

The train costs $2.00 for a one way trip.

If you would like to lead a session or facilitate a discussion, please click the following link and fill out the provided form. We will take the information you provide and schedule your session in a room. Once we have several sessions in place, we will publish the locations of these sessions within the BLC09 group on NL Connect, and we will post them at BLC. If you are not a part of the BLC09 group on NL Connect, please join us now.

We hope that you find these sessions to be a beneficial part of your experience.

Click here to go to the form.

In preparation for BLC and for those who are waiting to register, we have an important deadline approaching that we will remind you of below. In this month’s newsletter, we will discuss:

• the release of our BLC09 conference program
• BLC09 goes mobile
• the deadline for BLC09 discounted hotel rates
• BLC09 daily rates
• two interesting search tools

BLC09 Conference Program has been Released
Our BLC09 conference program has been released and is available from our conference page. As always, the program highlights need to know information, conference schedule, special events and of course all session descriptions.

In recent weeks, we have made several program additions that we are particularly excited about. A few of these additions include:

David Kirkpatrick, current Chairman and Executive Managing Officer of Plymouth Rock Studios and former President of Paramount Pictures, will be delivering a special keynote on Thursday afternoon entitled The Future of Story in a Snack Culture World.

Learn more about David.

Jeff Utecht, Elementary Technology and Learning Coordinator for the International School, Bangkok, Thailand and author of the blog The Thinking Stick will be delivering sessions entitled Beyond E-mail: Communication with your Web Community and Moving from Consumers to Producers of Knowledge: What the Web is Really About.

Learn more about Jeff.

Carrie Kotcho, Education Technologist, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, Washington, DC. Carrie will be delivering sessions entitled Snapshots in Time and OurStory: American History Stories and Activities You Can Do Together.

Learn more about Carrie

To learn more about these presenters and more, we invite you to preview our BLC09 program.

Click here to view the entire program.

BLC09 Goes Mobile
Along with the release of our conference program, we are also excited to share the iPhone friendly version as well. This mobile BLC09 program gives you all of the same information as our regular format program, but in an easy pocket-sized format.

While the mobile version was designed with the iPhone in mind, it is a Web page, so it should be readable on other Web enabled phones as well (we have gotten a report that the site looks great on a Blackberry). Hopefully G1 users, Palm Pre users and others will enjoy the same experience.

To access the program, visit http://www.novemberlearning.com/blc09mobile on your phone. When you get there, if you have an iPhone, tap the plus sign at the bottom of the screen and select Add to Home Screen. From then on, the program will be only a click away. We hope you enjoy this tool.

Deadline on BLC09 Hotel Rates
Last reminder. If you have not yet reserved your room for BLC09, please do so before July 8th. After that date, room pricing will increase significantly. Information about the hotel and a link to the hotel registration site can be found on our Web site.

Click here to view hotel information and to register.

Announcing BLC09 Daily Rates
We have recently been asked about the possibility of offering daily rates for individuals who might only be able to make one or two days of the conference. Our answer, “of course.” If you choose to use this option, simply visit our regular registration page. You will find an area where you can select one or two days. Each day will cost $250.

Of course, we would love to have you all three days as well.

Click here to register.

Two Interesting Search Tools to Explore
We have recently been introduced to two interesting search tools. We encourage you to give them a try.

Twoogle was originally a search tool that allowed users to search Twitter and Google simultaneously. Now, it allows users to search Google, Twitter and more from one location. You can often find some interesting connections within the results.

Click here to try Twoogle.

Yolink is a Firefox add on that allows a user to get a peek into the links of a given site based on a keyword. You can use this tool in a variety of ways. For example, after installing this tool, run a normal Google search for “climate change.” When you get your results, click the search links button in the yolink toolbar to get a preview of the results. Or, visit novemberlearning.com and then once the page is displayed, type books into the yolink search bar. Yolink will scour the site in search of mentions of our books. Yolink has other options as well. Take a look.

Click here to download the Yolink add on for Firefox.

Stay Up-to-Date with November Learning
Be sure not to miss the latest announcements and podcasts from the November Learning team. Below are links that you can use to subscribe to NL Connect, our Web site’s RSS feed, November Learning Twitter account and our November Learning Podcast series.

Join us on NL Connect
Subscribe to our Web site
Subscribe to our podcast series in iTunes
Follow us on Twitter

For more information about BLC09 and to register, visit novemberlearning.com/blc.

To kick off the series, Alan November sits down with Sonny Magana to discuss student-centered learning, dynamic learning communities and 21st century learning environments.

The discussion will be divided into three parts (only the first has been released thus far) that include:

Part 1: Empowering Students with Technology: Emerging Trends and Tools
In part one of this series, Alan explores new and emerging trends in technology integration and discusses the kinds of information and social tools that support student-centered learning.

Part 2: Reinventing Schools
In the second episode of this series, Alan November will discuss the need to transform today’s classrooms from institutions of passive information absorption to dynamic learning communities where students not only take ownership of their own learning, but contribute to the learning of others.

Part 3: A New Literacy
In the final installment of this series, Alan November will share key ideas from his recently published book, Web Literacy for Educators and provide guideposts for educators on their journey towards 21st century learning communities.

To listen to the first installment now, visit the Innovation in Education site.

You can visit and join this community from any page on our Web site or directly at http://nlconnect.novemberlearning.com/.

Through this professional learning network, you will have the opportunity to share useful resources and reflect on your teaching and learning experiences through the use of a personal blog. Additionally, through our forum you can share ideas, ask questions, find project partners and learn what tools other educators find valuable.

It will take some time for this community to develop. Don’t let that discourage you regarding the usefulness of this network. As members of the November Learning team present workshops across the country and around the world, we will be regularly introducing teachers to this network. This means that there will be a constant stream of new users and ideas. Please do the same within your schools. Everyone has something to contribute.

Should you have any questions about how to navigate this new site, post a message in the forum, or let us know. We have many experts, already a part of this community, who are there to lend a hand.

We are not there yet, but we are beginning  the process of matching those loans. We are tallying up the amounts that each individual has loaned so far, and we are sending each a Kiva gift certificate matching that amount that can be used to make future loans. It is our hope that each lender will lend again either in their own name or through an account created for a school. We believe that experiences like this are important for all students.

We still have a little ways to go before reaching our opening goal. If you would like to help us in this effort and receive a matching gift, please join us on Kiva.

In addition, if you would like to learn more about Kiva and witness the life cycle of a Kiva loan, watch this video created by Kieran Ball, Kiva Fellow for AMK Cambodia.

A Fistful Of Dollars: The Story of a Kiva.org Loan from Kieran Ball on Vimeo.