BLUE FLAG THE TEACHERS!

The theme at this conference is car racing and they have all of these road theme things around. Well, today I found out what the blue flag means. It's a courtesy flag. Here's the description I found on Wikipedia:

A light blue flag, sometimes with a diagonal yellow, orange, or red stripe, informs a driver that a faster car is approaching and that the driver should move aside to allow one or more faster cars to pass. Drivers get severely penalized for not yielding or interfering with the leaders, including getting sent to the pits for the rest of the race.

So, to all the teachers that are holding us back because they are scared of losing control, WE WAVE THE BLUE FLAG!! We respectfully ask you, as a courtesy, to move over so we can learn our way and on our time!

Here's what I learned....

Hi EVERYBODY!!! I got here yesterday and am having a BLAST talking to teachers about their ideas for helping students not be bored. Here's the best idea I heard yesterday:

Middle school students are creating 3-D places where you can go and learn about the explorers. The kids build the spaces and then meet people in them. It's on something called QWAQ which is kind of like Second Life. HUGELY COOL! I can't wait to get to middle school! I took a screen shot and put it here so you can see what it looks like.

I don't want to go home! The people here are AMAZING!

EDY IN DA HOUSE!

I made it y'all! Edy is in the house of knowledge! No, not a classroom, but a conference where teachers from all over the state of North Carolina are hanging out and learning!

The happy lady in the picture to the right is Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach who gave me a few minutes of her presentation time to explain to ALL THESE TEACHERS why I am here and why we are starting the LEARNING CONDITIONS MOVEMENT! She was so cool because she wasn't just talking ABOUT digital students, she was talking WITH digital students! Now, that's a role model!

Sheryl GETS IT! She talked about education being stength-based instead of deficit-based - you use the strength of each student rather than aiming at what they don't know. If my old school had done that, I might not have dropped out. (Of course, then I wouldn't have found my virtual school, my house of learning!)

Sheryl asked me: "Why are you here?"
Beacuse every student in this state deserves to have a voice in their own learning. It's personal. If we can start having conversations with teachers who get us, then we maybe we can have conversations with all teachers.

(I feel badly because I accidentally cropped the picture I took of us together so you can't see me so that's why they are two different pictures. Hey, Maria... could you photoshop that for me so it looks like we are standing together?

My Visit to a middle school

So, I decided that while I was visiting a new community, I would go to a middle school and see if I could talk to some students about what learning is like for them at their school. I also asked for ideas about how to make the number of students dropping out in the state go down next year rather than up. At the end of my visit, I did a quick video of my thoughts. Check it out!

I'm at the conference!! I can't believe we are actually doing this! When I got here everyone was eating lunch and a couple people didn't want to talk to me but then I found a table where they did and they even let me eat some of the food!!

Then, I went walking around and met Gary (the guy in the picture). He teaches AutoCAD and thinks that teachers need technology AND relationships. He gets us!!

I found blogging teachers!

I went into one of the conference rooms and you won't believe this but the teachers were talking about blogs!! This dude, David Warlick, he was asking me questions and even said had a special "expertise!"

They were talking about blogs for teachers but I told them they should do it with students too!

Poaching the Conference!

Hey! I'm poaching the North Carolina teachers conference - NCaect - they don't know students are coming into talk to them! Look at me passing through registration! Nobody even asks me where I'm going... I just walk in!