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.

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!

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.

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.

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.