Registration is now open for Connected Community Learning: The Next Decade taking place Aug. 22 to 24 on 91��ɫ's Keele campus.

Over the past decade the Internet has affected society in many ways, including democratizing access to information, creating opportunities for individual voices to be heard, sharing ideas and knowledge, allowing instantaneous responses to questions, creating social networks that expand knowing and doing, developing new regulations and policies for information access, copyright and use, digital citizenship – and the list continues. ASI 2011 asks what will the next 10 years bring?

Conference delegates will investigate this question and the power of a connected community to effectively use technology for teaching and learning. This two-and-a-half-day professional learning event features speakers and information sessions.

Keynote speaker  will open ASI 2011, delivering a speech titled “The Flat World has Swung Open: How Web Technology is Revolutionizing Education”. Bonk is professor of Instructional Systems Technology at and president of .

Left: Curt Bonk

Bonk received the CyberStar Award from the Indiana Information Technology Association, the Most Outstanding Achievement Award from the US Distance Learning Association, and the Most Innovative Teaching in a Distance Education Program Award from the State of Indiana. A well-known authority on emerging technologies for learning, Bonk reflects on his speaking experiences around the world in his popular blog, . He has coauthored several technology books, including (2009), (2008), (2006) and Electronic Collaborators (1998).

On Aug. 23, Dean Shareski, a digital learning consultant for the Prairie South School Division in Saskatchewan, will be the spotlight speaker. Shareski works with teachers and students in understanding the power of "Read/Write Web" and is a strong advocate of design and storytelling and the power of sharing.

Right: Dean Shareski

Shareski has presented and led many workshops locally, nationally and internationally.  He's been modeling much of this on his own blog () for more than six years. The site is consistently ranked among the top 100 educational blogs. He also is an adjunct professor at the University of Regina, where he's developed innovative instructional practices for pre-service teachers.

To close ASI 2011 on Aug. 24, Norm Vaughan will discuss “Student Engagement and Web 2.0 in Blended Learning”. An educator and researcher with interests in blended learning, faculty development and kindergarten to Grade 12 schooling, Vaughan is an associate professor in the Department of Education, Faculty of Teaching & Learning at Mount Royal University in Calgary, Alberta.

Left:  Norm Vaughan

Vaughan recently co-authored the book Blended Learning in Higher Education (2008) and has published a series of articles on blended learning and faculty development. Vaughn is the co-founder of the Blended Online Design Network (BOLD), a member of the Community of Inquiry Research Group, the associate dditor of the International Journal of Mobile and Blended Learning. He serves on the editorial boards of the International Journal of Excellence in e-Learning, Canadian Journal of Learning and Technology, the Journal on Centres for Teaching & Learning, the Learning Communities Journal and the Journal of Information Fluency.

The ABEL Summer Institute is intended as both a guided and self-directed exploration of technologies as educational tools with learning engagement and knowledge building potential for all.

For more information on ASI 2011, including the agenda, click . Register early to avoid disappointment. To register online, click .

ABEL is a unit within the Office of the Vice-President, Research & Innovation. For more information about its event and programming, visit the website.

Republished courtesy of YFile – 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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A project led by 91��ɫ Faculty of Education Professors Heather Lotherington and Jennifer Jenson at Joyce Public School in North 91��ɫ, and funded by the (SSHRC), has received two awards.

The 91��ɫ-Joyce Public School Multiliteracies Project involves graduate students and researchers working with teachers at Joyce Public School to develop traditional and digital literacies. It was one of the winners of the . The awards highlight outstanding individuals, projects and programs in TDSB schools. The project's second award, the , went to the team of teachers from Joyce Public School who are working with Lotherington and Jenson.

Left: Heather Lotherington

Over the past seven years, this school-based initiative has been developed as a result of Lotherington’s SSHRC grants. The most recent grant for Lotherington, on which Jenson is co-researcher, has created a dynamic learning community to research a multiliteracies approach to learning that incorporates traditional literacy, culture and heritage literacies, language literacies and current digital technology literacies. The project has produced a wealth of teacher and student learning projects, such as the multilingual digital video game “Talk Time” designed to help parents teach critical thinking to young children; a series of multilingual creative narratives; video clips such as “Imagine a World”; and student-created public service clips that address issues of social justice.

“I am delighted with this recognition of our evolving work, which belongs to all participating teachers, staff members, research assistants, researchers and the kids, who have created beautiful stories! We have worked together for many years to develop our learning community,” said Lotherington. “Two regular SSHRC awards and several minor grants later, the 91��ɫ-Joyce Public School partnership has expanded and evolved into a feature of the school. Our learning community is a model for both in-service professional development through collaborative action research and theory-building by translating cutting-edge theoretical concepts into classroom practice.”

Right: Jennifer Jenson

Also honoured was the team of Joyce Public School teachers and support staff who have been working with Lotherington and Jenson. The group received the 2010 Premier’s Award for Teaching Excellence – Team of the Year, given to a team made up of two to 10 individuals who have worked together to achieve a common goal.

Sixty-five per cent of the children at the school speak English as a second language and 90 per cent of the parents are from outside Canada. The teachers working with Lotherington and Jenson received the Premier's Award for their work on the multiliteracy projects that use digital technology and feature students and parents using personal experiences and first languages to reimagine popular stories.

Lotherington’s project "Researching New Literacies in the Multicultural Classroom: Developing a Ludic Approach to Linguistic Challenges in Elementary Education" received $125,788 from SSHRC in the 2007 competition. The research team continues to explore how teachers can teach socially responsive, immersive literacies in the contemporary multicultural, multilingual classroom.

For more information, visit the  Web site.

Republished courtesy of YFile– 91��ɫ’s daily e-bulletin.

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