My Reflection on BLC09

It was a great opportunity for me to attend Building Learning Communities Conference last week in Boston. There was a lot of good and innovative ideas about creating more learning communities in schools. To me, I believe that technology is the vehicle to make learning more fun and interesting to students. Students like to use technology. In fact, students are more abreast of new technological gadgets than teachers and most adults in their life. I asked students after I came back from the conference about how often they use Twitter or Face book. To my surprise, they were more familiar with these things more than me. Now, the task is on educators to use this in their advantage by creating learning communities in their schools through the use of technology.

Part of my plan is to start a Twitter network in my school for teachers and all staff members to connect socially. Even better, my principal is planning to start a Twitter group with other principals in her network so they all can share best practice ideas. It was very interesting to see the former Superintendent of Illinois school districts talking about how he started a social network with central staff in his office through Twitter. Principals then followed along and started same project in their own schools. This is an example of how technology can be a great tool to create venues of communication in professional settings.