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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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!

• 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?