Getting to the Park Plaza early? Consider EduBloggerCon. This event is a “collaborative conference” where attendees help to build and create the experience. At the start of the day, attendees will work together to develop sessions based on the submissions that attendees have indicated they are willing to facilitate or would like to learn about.

This event is free, and you can attend even if you are not registering for the full BLC conference. More information is available at http://www.edubloggercon.com/ebcEast2011.

Learn how to tap Google’s free online toolset and knock down the walls of your classroom, engage students and make connections in new and exciting ways. During this pre-conference session you will build robust learning solutions that you can immediately apply in your classroom. Develop a custom search engine based on your particular subject area or unit of study. Create an interactive map for your literature, history, math or science class. With these and other open-ended tools, the options are endless. When you return to your classroom in the fall your students will be stunned at what you did on your summer vacation!

In a world of rapidly developing technology, are you having a difficult time finding a jumping off point? In this four-hour session you will take part in a hands-on learning adventure that models an immersion process you can use with your own students. You will interact with a powerful learning community as you explore a variety of Web-based tools and learn to integrate these same tools across the curriculum in meaningful and effective ways. The results will be expanded opportunities for developing a personal learning community, authentic work, global audiences and concrete ways that your students can make valuable contributions to their learning community.

Convene with a number of BLC veterans for a newbie survival session. We want you to get the most you can from your time at the conference, so let us show you the ropes. We will give you tips on choosing sessions, how to get around the hotel and how to find help. We will also highlight the various online tools used throughout the week to help us stay connected, and we let you in on the best places to charge your laptop. Finally, Boston is a great city and we will share some recreational recommendations!

The kick-off social event for BLC11. Join us for our opening reception at the Boston Park Plaza Hotel from 5:00 to 7:00 pm. Come pick up your registration package, meet and mingle with your new colleagues.

Convene with a number of BLC veterans for a newbie survival session. We want you to get the most you can from your time at the conference, so let us show you the ropes. We will give you tips on choosing sessions, how to get around the hotel and how to find help. We will also highlight the various online tools used throughout the week to help us stay connected, and we let you in on the best places to charge your laptop. Finally, Boston is a great city and we will share some recreational recommendations!

Public history, a movement involving collaboration and community activism, challenges communities to extend boundaries. Civic activism and digital storytelling collide in this powerful public history project linking urban and rural students in Louisiana.

Denise Altobello and Jenny Velasquez, teachers at Trinity Episcopal School in New Orleans join forces with Meredith Melancon of the public charter high school in Bunkie, Louisiana, to shed light on Solomon Northup, a New York free man of color, whose 1841 kidnapping led him through the slave exchange in New Orleans to 12 years as a slave.

Traveling between rural Bunkie and New Orleans’s Treme, America’s oldest African American neighborhood, students collaborate: 

• to create a digital museum highlighting Northup’s story in state-supported rest stops along Louisiana’s African American Heritage Trail
• to create digital stories for the New Orleans African American Museum of jazz history, cultural collaboration and civil rights activism

    Such public history opens the doors to museums whose walls can no longer contain their stories.

You may feel relatively satisfied with your current search offerings of Google, Yahoo, Bing and other search engines. What if you could search your friends’ thoughts, interests and activities? Would that be a better search experience? 

Social search makes it possible to find content in status updates, real-time search, generating, labeling and finding user-generated content, ‘long-tail’ events and interests, finding vs re-finding and trend identification. Social search done right can become your most valuable research and productivity tool saving you time, energy and effort.   

In this session we will explore the most promising new search offerings and discover which social search tool has the unique features that will make your search efforts more successful.

THINK Global School (TGS) is the world's first global, mobile high school. We have no building we can call home. Instead we take students and faculty from 12 countries to live, study and explore in three different international cities each year--Stockholm, Sydney and Beijing in year one, for example. In place of of bricks and mortar, we have iPhones, iPads and Macbook Pros--every  student and faculty member works with all three devices--and a custom-made ELGG-based web platform to hold them all together. After a year of running a 3:1 program we'd love to share our experience: More is less--making the technology ubiquitous paradoxically makes it less visible (pens and pencils are everywhere but we do not notice them) and the less visible the technology, the less disruptive it is; for similar reasons, ubiquitous connectivity is important; apps do not matter but the the idea "there's an app for that" does, which means users can choose apps based on personal preferences; finally while there is overlap in their capabilities, each device is best suited to different purposes (iPhones are superb data capturing tools, laptops better data processing and production tools) But if we could only have just one tool it would be the iPhone--not an iPad or Laptop.

In this session we will present a brief summary of the TGS 3:1 program and follow with a discussion. We will demonstrate workflow across all three devices so bring iPhones, iPads and laptops. 

A “DUCK” is an authentic, renovated World War II amphibious landing vehicle. On this narrated city tour you’ll cruise by all the places that make Boston the birthplace of freedom and a city of firsts, from the golden-domed State House to Bunker Hill to fashionable Newbury Street; from Quincy Market to the Prudential Tower, and more. Learn little known facts and interesting insights about our unique and wonderful city.

And this is not any ordinary street tour…. You will “splashdown” as your ConDUCKtor takes your DUCK right into the Charles River. Bring your camera, ipods and videos – share the ride with family members and colleagues. We’ve booked Ducks especially for BLC participants.

Price: $36 – The Duck Boat will pick you up outside of the hotel at the Valet entrance.

Building Learning Communities is invited to a Creativity Reception at FableVision Studios located on the top floor of the Boston Children’s Museum with gorgeous views of the city. Come to meet and be inspired by Peter H. Reynolds and his team in their creative workspace from 6 – 8 pm.

The Studio is about 1.1 miles away from the Park Plaza, which is about a 15 minute cab ride with traffic. The address is 308 Congress Street, (on the top floor of the Boston Children’s Museum). 

It is walk-able as well, however the walk would take about 25 minutes.  

Have you been on Twitter for a while? Do you feel like something is missing? There's a good chance that you are not maximizing your experience. Signing up for and learning the basics of using social tools are generally pretty easy. But to really gain value, you need to understand the more advanced features of what these tools have to offer. This workshop will provide you with several examples of how to tweak your usage to gain the most value out of your time online.

Rooms to be designated closer to the conference but they will be scattered on the 4th floor.

Calling all International BLC Colleagues: You are cordially invited to a special session to explore the potential of GTEC’s global classroom model, how it can revolutionize approaches to learning and how your students can become global classrooms students too! The session provides you with a unique opportunity to establish useful global classroom partnerships.

GTEC (Global Technology and Engineering Consortium)

This project is designed to produce a new 21st century global workforce, the community our students will be living and working. They will be effective working in and with other countries/cultures through global team-work training and collaboration with business and industry. This preparation is needed in order to solve the problems urgently confronting the world’s populations, an outcome which has some urgency.

We recently concluded a two pilots: at The Spirit of Knowledge Charter School in Worcester (US) and Haywood Engineering College (UK) ; and Newburyport High School, Newburyport, MA (US) and Olin College of Engineering, Needham, MA (US).

The presentation will be made by members of GTEC Leadership Team and students from one pilot school.

The social highlight of the conference week! Your registration includes the Annual BLC Bash that will be held in the magnificent ballroom of the Park Plaza Hotel.

In today's globally connected society, geography is more important thn ever. Google Maps is a free tool that is easy enough to use with all ages. Even elementary grade students can dive in. You will learn to build a tour within Google Maps - complete with descriptions, links and images. Great for ANY subject area.

Have you been on Twitter for a while? Do you feel like something is missing? There's a good chance that you are not maximizing your experience. Signing up for and learning the basics of using social tools are generally pretty easy. But to really gain value, you need to understand the more advanced features of what these tools have to offer. This workshop will provide you with several examples of how to tweak your usage to gain the most value out of your time online.