In a recent survey conducted with over 600 leading educators from around the world, Dr. Tyson asked two questions:

• To what extent do you truly believe in your heart that school age children have the capacity to make a significant and meaningful contribution to our world?
• About what percentage of children in your school (or school district) last year do you believe actually did something that you believe made a significant contribution to our world?

The disparity between what we believe is possible and what we believe is actually happening is inescapable. 76.4% of survey respondents stated that they truly believed that school age children have the capacity to make a significant and meaningful contribution to our world. Yet 68% of those same respondents stated that less than 25% of the children in their school actually did something that they believed made a significant contribution to our world with 42.4% stating the number to be less than 10% of their students.

This keynote explores some of the unprecedented changes that have taken place in the last 100 years, including the role of children and the nature of childhood, the transition from an agricultural society to an industrial society to the information age, and the impact of globalization on our lives. With the ever increasing scope and pace of change, how do schools prepare students not just to be competitive in the job market they will face, but to lead and shape the future? Dr. Tyson makes the case for creating an educational framework that strives to make learning irresistible within a context that reveres a culture of personal best and requires meaningful contribution as the highest level of learning.

Can today's children make our world a better place?

Dr. Tyson presented the last part of this keynote as the closing keynote at ISTE's Atlanta NECC, 2007. You may watch that portion of this keynote, which is presently hosted at this link on Apple, Inc.'s Learning Interchange website.

Too often in today’s discussions about educational technology we focus on the technology. This keynote, which extends from the keynote: Is It Time to Upgrade? Making the Case for Change, emphasizes leveraging meaningfulness, significance, and the gift of contribution with the tools we now have available to us. Peppered with a generous number of powerful, student-made examples, this presentation reframes our conversation. These students have designed their digital media to be deeply moving and to convey a substantive message in a compelling way that calls for thought and action from everyone who experiences their work. They beg us all to rethink a mindset that underestimates the capacity in our children to have an international voice that can make our world a better place!

Digital natives are living with podcasting, YouTube, TeacherTube, Flickr, Zoomr, RSS, the Social Web, mp3 players, FaceBook, My Space, Blogger, Twitter, Tweet, Skypecasting, Slideshare, photocasting, Second Life, online gaming, (the list could go on and on), and every other "new" and exciting Web 2.0 technology that was "just announced today." But the reality of school is that we work, teach, and learn in the Age of Accountability. This presentation reflects on the continuous partial attention of the students in what is now becoming a hyper connected classroom. What is the teacher to do?! Dr. Tyson will explore learning beyond minimum standards but within the grasp of limited resources.

How can school leadership maximize student engagement and academic achievement? How can leaders encourage teachers and students to collaborate with peers and professionals around the world? In this presentation and workgroup session, Dr. Tim Tyson, former principal of Mabry Middle School, who has been called "The Pied Piper of Educational Technology" by the School Library Journal, will share lessons learned and philosophical frameworks gleaned from that school's exploration of best practices and ways to leverage technology through school-wide blogging and school-wide student/teacher/administrator digital media creation in their efforts to make learning irresistible.

Under Dr. Tyson's leadership, Mabry received Scholastic and Intel Corporation's prestigious Schools of Distinction Award for Technology Innovation. He set up MabryOnline.org, a collection of over 100 blogs which served as the school web presence and features students', teachers' and administrators' digital media creations, serving up over 1.5 million files a month to users all over the world. Educators from around the country and several foreign countries visited Mabry to see firsthand the innovative ways technology is used to maximize student achievement. This session will outline a philosophical framework, plus provide participants with concrete examples of how to build community, and engage staff and students in meaningful and creative ways.

The session has primarily been offered to school principals and superintendents. It has been presented in as little as 1 hour (though at great sacrifice). But for participants to glean the greatest advantage, the session has been extended for up to 4 hours.

This presentation is an excellent first introduction to podcasting. And while the making of a podcast is shown at the end of the session, participants do not sit in front of a computer to actually make a podcast. Rather, this presentation provides a fairly comprehensive overview of what a podcast is, the types of podcasts, the tools that are available (for Windows, Macs, and online) to create podcasts, and the hardware that is typically used in the creation process. Dr. Tyson also presents information about syndicating the podcast series through RSS and how to leverage the iTunes Store (Windows and Macs) for your class or school's podcasts. (This portion of the presentation can be scaled to match the technical expertise of the attendees.) A generous number of short examples are shown to illustrate how effective this technology can be as a communication and a learning tool in the school environment. This is a must-see presentation for teachers and administrators.

The workshop, Making Your First Podcast, is an excellent follow-up session in which Dr. Tyson guides participants through the making of their first podcast in a hands-on class.

One of the most powerful features of the podcast is subscription: the ability for end users to subscribe to a podcast series and have new episodes automatically delivered to their machines as they are published by the podcast series' creator. The subscription process is made possible through RSS, an incredibly powerful and perhaps little-understood internet technology. All of the podcasts that appear on the iTunes Store do so by using the RSS file, which "sits" on the file server that is used by the creator of the podcast series.

In this presentation Dr. Tyson will show attendees how this technology works. He will then go through the process of creating the RSS file, commonly called the index.xml file. You will actually see what an index.xml file looks like in a text editor (One is pictured in this post.), learn how to code your own index.xml file from a sample you can use as a template, and learn about some very inexpensive tools that can write this file for you. Finally, he will show attendees the simple steps used to have your podcast series appear on the iTunes Store--which is completely free of charge. Yes, you and your students' work can go into immediate global distribution!

This session is by no means "rocket science," yet it does have a higher "geek factor." Dr. Tyson says, "If I can figure all of this out on my own, anyone can learn to do it with a little bit of guidance!" However, participants who have access to a file server, have a rudimentary understanding of ftp, and are already comfortable writing basic web page html will find this session easier to understand "on first blush." Even without that background, don't immediately assume you will not understand this! Most attendees will find this session helpful in adding to their understanding of this power-packed technology!

This session is designed to provide teachers who are considering using a blog with insight into extending the classroom into the home and even around the world. This session is not a step by step guide through setting up a blog, but such resources will be presented to attendees. Examples of the different ways teachers are using blogs will be shown, and issues surrounding the initial setup and use of blogging in the school setting will be explored. This presentation is an excellent first step for those who want to begin exploring blogging for the classes they teach.

The workshop, Setting Up Your First Blog in The BlogShop, is an excellent companion follow-up session in which Dr. Tyson guides participants through setting up their first blog in a hands-on class.

While not solely for administrators, this presentation is a must-see for principals and superintendents. Dr. Tyson will guide educators through the design and implementation of MabryOnline.org, a collection of about 100 staff members blogs (from the cafeteria, media center, guidance counselors, nurse, teachers, etc.), and the school's sole web presence from 2005 through June, 2007. He discuses the impact the site has had on the local school's learning community as well as the education profession on an international level. Dr. Tyson discusses the impact of web transparency and the sense of invitation this type of web presence affords. If you are not satisfied with your school's or district's web presence, you need to learn more about the impact of school-wide blogging as an infrastructure for the participatory school.

Dr. Tyson began the Mabry Film Festival in 2001 as a way to integrate technology into the instructional plan of the school. He has seen firsthand the power of media production in a middle school setting. Producing digital media content is not only well within the financial grasp of most schools, students have the capacity to create compelling and deeply moving content of the same quality you can find at your local video store. While in many ways this medium is the language of their generation, producing student work of exceptional quality does not just happen by "turning students loose" with a video camera and a computer. This session will provide ideas and insight into ways you can leverage the unprecedented excitement of a film festival in your own school community, making learning irresistible while building support for deeper use of technology tools. Few things excite students and parents more than a large audience's critical acclaim of student work. Dr. Tyson will explore ways to make the educational experience of your students more rigorous and demanding by bringing their meaningful contributions to life on the big screen.

According to recent survey data, 9% of online 5th grade boys have actually met a stranger from online! Cyber-bullying is on the rise. Online identity theft is among the most rapid growing crimes in the US. Thousands of pedophiles were identified on MySpace. What are some of the real versus the imagined issues surrounding online safety? How do we effectively teach students appropriate online behavior? What practical resources are available to parents and schools? This session will explore these issues and more.

Imagine having your team's, grade level's, or school's own Oscars! A film festival can electrify a learning environment with unprecedented excitement. However, just giving students a computer and a digital video camera does not a quality product make! In fact, in all probability, few people realize how focused a learning exercise making a movie is. Many who have tried to initiate a project of this type have met with frustration or perhaps ended up with products that did not meet their expectations. Don't dismay! You and your students can do this! Or perhaps you simply want to take the products your students are creating to a much higher level. This workshop is for you, because with projects this complex, systematic training is a must!

Dr. Tyson, who began the Mabry Film Festival in 2001, personally did most of the initial training each year for the students, and parent and teacher sponsors that participated in the annual school-wide festival. This workshop is the substance of that all-day training session. Numerous student-created examples are carefully studied (in several instances scrutinizing just a couple of seconds of a finished product) as examples of best practices. This workshop can be customized to meet a variety of needs, from the basics of movie-making in the educational setting (as a tool to empower learning and contribution), to designing and setting up a school-wide film festival project that spans several months. The most exciting workshops are those in which students, parents, and teachers all attend together. But this workshop can also be used for teacher-created products (hosted on your website or blog, DVDs or closed circuit TV system) as well as a new and enticing medium for student projects. Participants leave the session with many student-created examples to continue their own study of what works best.

Practical, flexible, and informative, this workshop is a must for project-based learning environments!

While at Mabry Middle School, Dr. Tyson was one of the very first principals in the United States to leverage podcasting as a significant vehicle for school-wide communication and classroom learning. Learn podcasting from one of the school podcasting pioneers. This workshop is an excellent first introduction to actually making a podcast episode. Dr. Tyson takes participants step-by-step through making their first podcast episode. Depending on the hardware available for this workshop in your school setting, participants will either make an audio-only mp3 podcast episode (Windows) or an enhanced podcast episode (Macs). Depending on the time available, online podcast creation tools will also be explored.

While not required, the presentation, All Things Podcasting, is an excellent session to have experienced prior to participating in this workshop as it provides scaffolding that will help participants in the workshop understand the process in a more meaningful and comprehensive context. As this is an introductory workshop, creating an RSS feed is not covered.

Minimum time required for this session: 90 minutes
This workshop has software and hardware requirements.

We learn best by doing. Perhaps one of the easiest and best ways to begin your journey learning about blogging is to set up your own personal blog and just get started. You can do this for free! If you are completely new to the whole blogging concept but want to dive right in and create your first blog, this workshop is a great place to start. In this hands-on workshop Dr. Tyson will take participants step-by-step through setting up a free blog at Blogger.com. He will then introduce workshop attendees to many of the various features of blogging at Blogger.com. Since these features are typical to most blogging systems, the knowledge you learn from this experience will easily transfer to most systems when you decide it's time to "move up." At the end of the workshop, attendees will be provided with additional resources made available for those educators who, at some point in the future, decide they really enjoy the ease of this technology, see the value of using it, and are interested in setting up a blog for their classes.

While not required, the presentation, Putting Your Classroom "On the Grid," is an excellent session to have experienced prior to participating in this workshop as it provides scaffolding that will help participants in the workshop understand blogging in a more meaningful and comprehensive context.