Purpose of School - David Warlick

I am planning on collecting a good share of video responses this week at ISTE11 to the question "What is the Purpose of School," reviving the ongoing project I started last fall. So far in this project I have answers to this question from the http://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.gifhttp://www.blogger.com/img/blank.giffollowing educators:

Wes Fryer
Sir Ken Robinson
Doug Johnson

Today I had just enough time to attend one session at ISTE since my plane didn't arrive until 2:30 pm this afternoon. I was able to add David Warlick's response to this question here:



I plan on spending a good portion of my morning tomorrow collecting video responses to this question. I will station myself, for the most part, in and near the Blogger's Cafe. If you are interested in contributing let me know.

Harnessing your Personal Learning Network(PLN)

Today I attended a conference and participated in a open forum discussion about Personal Learning Networks. This session was led by David Warlick and was held in North Carolina. The awesome thing is I attended and participated in this conference session from my desk in Goodhue, MN.

I first was made aware of this session by checking my Twitter account. David Warlick had just posted on Twitter that he was streaming his session on Ustream and invited other Twitterbugs to join. I clicked on the link and joined the session. In the session he placed an open invitation to all those attending the session virtually to Skype in their questions, comments, and feedback. A few of us did. Additionally, there is a backchannel on Ustream where virtual attendees can discuss the session with text.

Although there were issues with connectivity that I presume had to do with the bandwidth at the conference in NC causing my Skype conversation to be cut short and often caused the Ustream video to freeze at times this setup made me feel I was actually there. Can you imagine if this becomes standard practice for conference presenters? What would that mean for professional development? What would that mean for sharing ideas? If you could attend any session at any conference done by any person and could provide real time feedback, how valuable would that be?

On top of the cool tools this session used the content was engaging, relevant, and useful as well.