Stephens Group Words for 2008

I recently added a cloud tag to my blog. It was interesting to reflect on which words I tagged most often in 2008.

21st Century Skills-- This year we added a new belief statements to our mission statement, "We believe all students need to graduate with 21st Century Skills". All of our professional development efforts have been aligned to support this belief statement.

MDMC2008- - MDMC stands for the Milwaukee Digital Media Conference. This year's conference was a huge success. We had 120 educators collaboratively work with us on real world digital media projects at the Milwaukee County Zoo. You can read more about the conference in an article published by The Milwaukee Journal.

One-to-One Computing- - This year The Stephens Group started a new division of our company on One-to-One Computing with four consultants who have experience working with one-to-one computing programs. We started a free social networking site around this topic and currently has 37 members from all over the country. One-to-one computing was also the topic of my comps paper and will be my dissertation topic too- so I'm sure it will be tagged a lot more in 2009.

PODetc-
PODetc is also a new division of our company. It stands for Professional Online Development for the Educational Technology Community. The online relationships that have been developed are truly amazing. We have had teachers and administrators from all over the world in K-12 and higher ed take our courses. On Monday we start our fourth session of graduate courses for educators. We currently have five courses aligned to the new ISTE NETS Standards for teachers.

Social Networking & Twitter- - As Tammy Lind, our director of professional development stated recently, "I have learned more from people on Twitter this past year than all of my professional development including my master's degree combined". Consultants need to be constantly learning. Social networking tools such as Twitter and CollectiveX have helped us reach out to our clients, share information with one another, get just-in-time support and brought us closer together. I'm sure we will be leveraging these tools even more in 2009 as we broaden our personal learning networks.

Ultraportable Devices- This year through an internship with CoSN I had the opportunity to work on a report on ultraportable devices. I have become really interested in this topic as it also related to my dissertation. In my consulting work, I have been surprised that school districts have been somewhat reluctant to go this route with their hardware purchases. If we are really serious about providing student centered learning experiences, I think these devices have huge potential for changing the teaching and learning process.

San Jose Digital Media Course- This year we held a course at the San Jose Museum of Art to create vodcasts (or video-podcasts) using a method of inquiry that can be used in any discipline. We will be holding the course again June 22nd-29th. More information is available on our course wiki.

Wiki- 2008 was definitely the year of the wiki for The Stephens Group. The Stephens Group has seven wikis. Some are internal for consultants to share information and collaborate. Others such as our Information Technology Planning Wiki are to share information with clients. We use this one a lot with our clients as a means of sharing research and best practices when developing strategic information technology plans. Our biggest wiki, however is the wiki we created for this year's digital media conference. Educators worked in teams to create multimedia wikis around exhibits at the zoo. We are very proud of their work! You can view their wikis at http://mdmc2008.wikispaces.com/Directory.

It comes as no surprise that the most tagged word in 2008 was Web 2.0. Many of the technologies we are using as a company have not changed from 2007. However, what is changing is how we use them. Our company has consultants and clients in multiple states. Web 2.0 tools has really allowed us to work more efficiently and seamlessly across multiple timezones.

I'm looking forward to seeing what new words get tagged in 2009!

Celebrate!

I truly believe we don't take enough time to celebrate our successes in education. Last week we had our second annual Milwaukee Digital Media Course. Participants made wikis around an exhibit at the Milwaukee County Zoo. We as instructors were blown away by what they produced. We are so proud at how much was accomplished through the power of us (meaning the participants collaborative efforts). You can view their wikis at http://mdmc2008.wikispaces.com/Directory

MDMC Article

The Milwaukee Journal had an article on the Milwaukee Digital Media Conference at http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=779634

What's New at The Stephens Group

Early registration for The Milwaukee Digital Media Conference is available at our conference web site at http://milwaukeedmc.com/ . If you register by May 1^st you can save $50 off the cost of the registration. This year’s conference will be held at the Milwaukee Public Zoo from July 28^th-31^st. This is a hands-on conference in which you will learn about wikis, digital mapping, digital photography, video-editing, and podcasting. We have also added a student strand for students grades 3-6. (Students in grade 7-12 are welcome to come with their teachers and participate in the adult strand).

Registration is also still open for The Stephens Group Using Digital Media in the Classroom Workshops on May 10^th. We are offering classes on Advanced Podcasting and Free Digital Media Tools. More information is available at our website at http://www.thestephensgroup.com/workshops.php .

Consultants will be presenting at the Wisconsin Educational Media Technology Association (WEMTA) April 6^th-8^th on Web 2.0 Tools for Information Technology Planning, Lessons Learned in the Digital Media Explosion, Video-conferencing, Data Driven Decision Making, & One-to-One Computing. Information on times and locations of sessions are available at http://www.thestephensgroup.com/conferences.php#WisconsinEducationalMediaampTechnologyAssociation

Feel free to pass this information on to others who might find this information of interest.

The Power of Us!

This year’s Milwaukee Digital Media conference theme is The Power of Us: Creating the Future Together.

“What and how we teach needs to change. The Internet is not a thing or a place but rather communication/information which is highly integrated, participative, co-owned, dynamic and across space and time”~ Productions of Space-time Common to Everyday Online Practices.

“Education is not merely about transferring information. It is about contextualizing that information in the real life experiences of the learners, and in relation with the experiences of other learners…It is the relationships among people and sharing contextualized experiences that create emergent knowledge that is the basis of education”~ Mark Federman.

We will be practicing these ideas at this year’s conference. The conference will be held at the Milwaukee County Zoo, July 28^th-31^st. It will be a hands-on collaborative conference in which we will learn about wikis, digital mapping, digital photography, video-editing, and podcasting. More information will be available in the new year on The Stephens Group website.