Sunday, February 15, 2009

Meeting Sheryl

More than 3 years of connecting, collaborating, and acting on various projects--
K12Online, academic research, Powerful Learning Practice
Sharing family moments, celebrating, commiserating—
And on my part growing and learning and growing and learning some more—

Constantly appreciative
of Sheryl’s generosity in sharing all she knows-
of her brilliance in creating sustainable models for professional learning-
of her expertise in 21st century learning and building communities of practice-
of her gift for sharing her passions-
of her love for children-
Never meeting, a virtual relationship, a friendship, as real as any possible—

And then an opportunity
to watch her in action urging a group of educators to move to 21st century learning and to collective action-
to actually talk and share in the same space, the same time—
to look into her eyes-
And in that instance as her eyes radiated with the depth of her passion, with her desire to make the world a far better place -- something fine and spiritual passed between two friends—a true moment worth living— one for which I’ll always be grateful--

Photo Credit

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Learning as Conversation

What a treat to participate in Chagrin Falls professional development day entitled 21st Century learning and Student Achievement at Abby’s (of SmartSolutions) invitation. Thank you Abby; it was grand to meet you!

I seized on the opportunity to share my passion for learning through conversation on blogs by facilitating a session on that topic. The small group with whom I interacted examined professional conversations, the shift to transparency that occurs in dialogue on blogs, strategies for deepening learning and conversations with students using the comment feature, and along the way engaged in a few conversations with their own comments. We began first with professional conversations for their own learning, believing that with that immersion then educators will develop a better understanding of the potential of conversational learning with students. Too much to consider deeply in just over one hour, I developed a wiki and blog with varied and numerous resources to which they and anyone else with interest might return. My thanks to each of them for considering the concepts and ideas!

We started here:


As pleased as I was with this opportunity to share – I was really excited to meet PLP community members from Bedford, Felice and Alison!

And meeting Sheryl is a post unto itself!

Virtually Co Presenting

Connecting, learning, planning, collaborating and co presenting—yet never meeting-
Northeastern Ohio -- Southwestern Ohio
At home and working-- Busy at HCESC --(scroll down to Lynn Ochs)
Humbled and honored by Lynn’s invitation to co present at the eTech Ohio Conference on February 4.

Planning and collaborating on skype, google docs—

Co developing content and a wiki for a session for administrators “Web 2.0 and You: A Leadership Perspective" with thanks to Karl Fisch for the concept to frame the session (he generously gave permission)--

Skyping into the session to help administrators develop an understanding of how they might begin to develop a personal learning network—

Waiting to find the session on iTunesU before posting- not there yet, not patient—

Sharing the wiki and slides--

So thankful, Lynn, for the opportunity to learn, grow and work with you—