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Saturday, February 23, 2008

Thiwalls, A Colorado conversation, and MeBeam

Learning 2.0 A Colorado Conversation, a one day conference took place today at Arapahoe High School. I listened in to a few of the sessions through ustream and Clarence and I did podcasts for the opening session and participated in a live round table in the afternoon. One of the things that stood out was the fact that this conference was truly about conversation. In the words of the conference organizers… “Education is conversation. Conversation creates change. The future of education does not exist in the isolated world of theory and abstract conference sessions. Instead, it exists in conversations. It exists in creating a robust learning network that is ever-expanding and just-in-time. Learning 2.0 is not the beginning of this conversation. It is merely a stopping point, a time to talk about the visible difference that we all seek.” (You can access a great deal of the material from their wiki so use it to continue the conversation.)


For the afternoon round table we used and interesting little application called mebeam. It was very simple to use and while it worked pretty well for our round table discussion it is probably best suited to conversation where everyone has a headset. It certainly started me thinking about the classroom possibilities for collaborations like our Thinwalls classroom. It would allow groups of students to work together real time with face to face style communication. IM and skype our great but there is also something to be said for seeing each other while you talk. With mebeam you can have several people together in one room. I think this is a tool worth exploring!

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thank you for your participation in the conversations! I'm so inspired by the work that you do!

Anonymous said...

Barbara, thank you for contributing to the Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation today. 'Twas a very interesting conversation with you and Clarence. I enjoyed it very much. The session was both informative and inspirational. I definitely want to develop a "thin walls" partnership with another class for my students--what an amazing opportunity.

Barbara Barreda K-8 Administrator, Tech integration advocate, Going 1:1 with netbooks said...

Matthew and Nancy,
Thanks for stopping by...I am glad what we had to say helped in someway to move the conversation along. Lets keep the conversation going! We need each other for ideas, support and encouragement and just in time learning.

Unknown said...

mebeam review on ajaxprojects.com