Keynote Address — HVWP Tech Conference

I have a pretty busy week ahead of me and I am scrambling to get caught up with everything (including a pile of adventure short stories from my students).

On Saturday, I am giving the keynote speech at the Hudson Valley Writing Project‘s technology conference. My good friend, Bonnie, asked me months ago to be the opening speaker and I still feel honored to even have been asked. I often follow in my Bloglines the work of Will Richardson, Wesley Fryer and others as they travel around the world, giving these conference speeches and trying to energize teachers. I am nowhere near that league but my aim is true — show some folks the ways that technology can support and enhance learning opportunities. After the speech, I am on tap to give a podcasting workshop at the conference, too. (Which will become part of the Day in a Sentence Feature — that call for action will come tomorrow).

Then next week, I travel into New York City for the National Writing Project‘s Annual Meeting and I have been asked to co-lead three different presentations on Thursday and Friday.

2007 Annual Meeting

The first one is called Writing in the Digital Age and four of us are trying to show off some projects that use some of the Web 2.0 for participatory media projects — signifying the shift of passive reader to active learner. I am the leader of that session but I am also showcasing the ABC Movie Project as a form of virtual professional learning community design.

The second presentation has to do with using technology to address issues of diversity and equity at our writing project sites and I am working with Lynn, of the UCLA Writing Project, on that session. We have some interesting questions to ponder, I think, about how teachers and students and program leaders can grapple with the Big Issues — race, sexual orientation, etc — and how technology might be harnessed to help develop those issues.

The third presentation is with some colleagues from my Western Massachusetts Writing Project and a friend from the Western Pennsylvania Writing Project around the theme of how to encourage and maintain leadership among the members of the writing project. Our presentations stem primarily from a Monograph-series book project that our sites have been working on for the past year.

It’s hectic!

Peace (with quiet times),
Kevin

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