VAIS

VAIS Technology Retreat **// 21st Century Technology: //** Wyndham Virginia Crossing Resort
 * // How to Be Innovative, Creative and Economical //**
 * Sunday, March 29 – **** Monday, March 30, 2009 **



//Learner-centered, lifelong learning has been the cry of knowledge society visionaries for the last decade. Yet learning continues to be delivered with teacher-centric tools in a twelve week format. Society is changing. Learners needs are changing. The course, as a model for learning, is being challenged by communities and networks, which are better able to attend to the varied characteristics of the learning process by using multiple approaches, orchestrated within a learning ecology.// - **George Siemens**

//When we design curriculum that is build around inquiry-driven, project-based learning, where students and teachers work together to create new meaning and deep understandings, then we can use 21st Century tools to allow students to create meaningful, creative and authentic work, using the best available research, while collaborating with and presenting to people from all over the world.//  - **Chris Lehmann**

Shift in Learning-The Possibilities A passionate student is a learning student. Using digital media students are building their own learning experiences, constructing meaning, and collaborating in teams to solve authentic content-based problems. Teachers who use these empowering technologies are discovering we can have rigor without sacrificing excitement. The secret: Focus on student passion and interest. Come listen as Sheryl stirs a sense of urgency for shifting classroom practice toward more engaging approaches that unleash the passion that lies within each learner.

Creating Environments that Support Possibilities- The Role of Emerging Technologies in the Core Curriculum How do we promote the knowledge, skills and sense of urgency for 21st Century teaching and learning among all teachers in our schools? As the people of the world are becoming increasingly connected, the nature, use, ownership, and purpose of knowledge are changing in profound ways. Our goal as educators is to leverage these connections and changes as powerful means to improve teaching and learning in our schools. Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach focuses on real-world examples of learning environments that extend the walls of the traditional classroom, offering new possibilities and igniting a passion for learning. Evidence based on exemplary practices in education suggests that new models of teaching and learning have the power to improve educational outcomes dramatically.