My seatmate lives in China: The Imperative for Global Collaborative Projects Abstract

By Vicki Davis and Julie Lindsay

In days when the media polarizes nations, this high school teacher has seen greater cultural understanding and technical proficiency through Global Collaborative Projects such as the Horizon Project ( http://horizonproject.wikispaces.com) and the Flat Classroom Project (http://flatclassroomproject.wikispaces.com). Find out how its done, why its beneficial, and where she predicts such projects need to go in the future.

Technology and Higher Education — Pedagogy for self organised learning systems

By Sugata Mitra

The Future of Teacher Professional Development: Re-Connecting People and Practice

By Chris Sessums

Snowclones, Clichés and Memes

By Dave Cormier

This presentation will try to present an educational encounter from the future. While I've done my best to choose a topic that might be a little out of the mainstream, it inevitably will be familiar to some... image it being how communities are run in ten years time. The premise is that this is the sixth session in a series of live meetings in a community of practice that hopes to improve their understanding of using communities/networks for learning. I am the leader of today's discussion. Take it as given that most of us have met before, that there is a record of the first five meetings, and that we have been using a variety of interactive tools to support and keep our learning, that we are all contributing funds to keeping our educational network supported, and that five different people have led the first five meetings.

Complexity and balance in education

By Dave Snowden

How do we balance the power of distributed learning and the "ever online" culture with the cognitive development needs of human systems? What is the role of community in education? How can use narrative as a knowledge management tool within on line learning? This session will apply learning from the cognitive sciences and complex adaptive systems theory to the field.

TBA

By Stephen Heppell

Cancelled

The Future of Teacher Education: Herding Cats and Chasing Targets

By Cheri Toledo

Teacher preparation will have a decisive impact on the future of education. Knowing this, numerous questions arise: What do prospective teachers need to know? How can teacher education programs prepare teachers to meet the needs of 21st and even 22nd Century learners? These and more questions will focus our discussion on an important aspect of the future of education.

Homo Contextus: connected human and the future of education

By Teemu Arina

Contextus is Latin and it means "connected or weaved together". In english we use the word context to describe the circumstances or setting in which an event occurs. I use Homo Contextus to describe a human who is growing, living, learning and breathing meaning through human or non-human contextual connections fueled by social technologies and driven by shared objects. Other words starting with "homo" have been used in recent times to describe humans living in the spirit of the age, or "Zeitgeist". Homo ludens (the playing human), homo faber (instrument and engineering oriented human), homo aestheticus-informaticus (knowledge-intensive but experience-oriented human), homo creativus (the creative human), homo cyber (human of the technological future) and homo symbolicus (the symbol processing human) have all been used to grasp the changing nature of what it means to be human in modern times. In my talk I will weave together Homo Contextus the connected human with the future of higher education. Where are we going, what patterns do we see emerging and what needs to go?

The City as Classroom

By Derrick de Kerkhove

"If the medium is the message, then the user is the content". This oft repeated but less heard aphorism of McLuhan may help us to understand the "user" of today’s networked environment. Much in the way McLuhan suggested that the TV medium from the earliest age transformed the children into tribes of information gatherers in the global jungle, I would like to explore the possibility that networks create their own kind of sensibility in their users. Indeed the whole cognitive environment is changing and accelerating. The question is what/who is the content of FaceBook, Youtube or Wikipedia ?

Another quip favoured by McLuhan is: "Why should I go to school to interrupt my education?" The core idea was that people in need of instruction could find outside the walls of the institution much more than within. Is this still true today?

This lecture is an attempt, inspired by Marshall McLuhan’s many fine observations on education, to probe the technological and cognitive conditions attending pedagogical initiatives today.

Openness and the Future of Education

By David Wiley

This talk will discuss learning objects as representative of the current state of the art in educational technology, and then discuss how and why the idea of "openness" is the only viable future for this particular educational technology and for education generally.

Computerized, networked, free, open and oppressive education?

By Teemu Leinonen

This talk will discuss about use of computers and networks in the light of oppression in education. There is a growing demand to have free and open educational resources, as well as computers and personal learning environments for each child in the world. Most production and delivery of free and open educational resource is not taking place in a two-way network. The content is emphasizing the superiority of rational-scientific-white-man living in a consumer culture. Are these universal goods or virtues what we all need? Researchers, designers and developers of education technology should ask: Who is educating whom? What is the education about? Why they (or we) are doing it?

Open Educational Resources and Practices

By Leigh Blackall

In this talk I take a look at what constitutes an open educational resource and consider the issues and benefits to an educational institution. An institution which is moving to participate in open educational resource development and adopt more open educational practices. There is a description of the initial steps being made by the Educational Development Centre at Otago Polytechnic - a tertiary education and vocational training institution in Southern New Zealand.

Cultural Mutations

By René Barsalo

The Society for Arts and Technology in Montreal is one of the main technological art center in Canada and the world. Since 1996, it is in direct contact with the future of culture. In this presentation, Mr Barsalo will present the impact of communication technology on our cultural DNA and on the models of cultural distribution and show some of the main research projects at SAT that will prepare the next wave of connectivity and culture.

The Transformation of Learning in Universities through Online Education?

By MaryFriend Shepard

The role of online learning in universities is transforming the way adult learners are gaining access to educational experiences, whether through complete programs offered by online universities, or through individual courses and programs in F2F universities. Online education has become big business as a part of the technological revolution. This session will explore some of the strategies and best practices for successful online teaching and learning at the university level, as well as the challenges that are faced in this arena.

Participatory Education

By Jay Cross

Education is empowered as never before. Web 2.0 connects people the world over and encourages active participation. Incoming students have no fear of technology and are self-reliant "entrepeneurial learners." Let's blend these elements and brainstorm the possibilities. What will globally interconnected education look like? David Snowden's remarks on brain plasticity in children made me want to get every six-year old a phone pal with whom to speak another language. Each one teach one. Reflect on this, and come prepared to share your ideas.

Knowledge beyond Authority

By David Weinberger

We have long settle protocols for determining who and what to believe, that is, for determining authority. In the age of the Internet, those protocols are being overturned, or at least surrounded by new types and means of authority. Looked at from the traditional perspective, the Internet is a threat to knowledge. Yet it also clearly is knowledge's future. What will knowledge and authority look like in the age of the Net?

The Biggest Picture

By Mark Oehlert

We need to think BIG about the future of education. Really BIG. Back in 2005, Bill Gates spoke to the National Governor's Association. He said in part: "America's high schools are obsolete. By obsolete, I don't just mean that our high schools are broken, flawed, and under-funded — though a case could be made for every one of those points. By obsolete, I mean that our high schools — even when they're working exactly as designed — cannot teach our kids what they need to know today."

His argument, that the basic design on K-12 education is wrong for our current reality, is a powerful statement. It also represents one of the most important levels at which this discussion should take place - design. We stand in a moment unique not for the type of changes that are taking place, the telegraph, the printing press and even TV all represented sea changes but the uniqueness of our time is the speed with which change can propagate at a global scale. This makes the need for a deep consideration of the basic design of education centrally important. This session will explore some lessons from the past on considering educational design and will also focus not on answering the question but on how best to form the teams, organizations and focal points that we will need to consciously design the future of education.

DIY Educators Gone Wild: Where are the Instructional Mash-Ups?

By Brian Lamb

What are mash-ups? Where did they come from? Are mash-ups changing how we work the web? Is narrative disintegrating before our eyes? Can educators learn to let go and love the remix? Can universities open up their API's? Are mashups the future of the web, or just a hyped-up angle of the Web 2.0 bubble?