Building Learning Communities: A Conference

Last week I attended a three-day conference in my hometown away from home: Boston, Massachusetts. Well, it was in Newton, Massachusetts, but I got to go into Boston a couple of times and that made me happy. Building Learning Communities 06 was held at Regis College, an all girls college in a shady suburb of Boston. It was quite a lovely setting and it was fun going to sessions in college classrooms instead of in conference center meeting rooms.

This conference focused on using technology to create a sense of community with the world for students. By using the internet and, well, iPods, kids can be connected to an authentic audience: their peers throughout the world. Many of the presentations gave helpful advice for guiding students through the internets. Others discussed what the Schools of the Future should look like. Frankly, my head is still spinning from last week and it's taken me this long to sit down and try to examine what I heard.

I plan on blogging session by session and hopefully, by the time I'm done, I'll have some idea about what I can use, what I think about everything I've heard and what to do next. I realize this is hardly whimsical subject matter, but I promise to make it entertaining. I will at least need to learn how to load streaming video so you can enjoy the cheese that was the on-board entertainment on the dinner cruise we took on the Spirit of Boston.