ISTE has announced the winner of their first crowdsourced keynote:

The ISTE 2010 Keynote Committee is delighted to announce the results of its first ever “Crowdsourced Keynote” project!

After nearly two weeks of voting and more than three months of input gathering, Hawaii-based educator Dr. Jeff Piontek has emerged as the people’s choice to headline one of ISTE 2010’s three keynote sessions.

The ISTE keynote team will work with Dr. Piontek to present a relevant and inspirational session focused on the overall conference theme, Exploring Excellence, with a specific focus on effective school leadership for the digital, global era.

Pionek is the author of “Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts…Oh My!” and many articles, including his latest, “Educating Jetson’s Children in Flintstone Schools.” Learn more about Dr. Piontek at http://jeff.piontek.googlepages.com/.

One fan commented, “Jeffrey Piontek is a dynamic, knowledgeable, and inspirational educator. His book has served as a guide for my staff and has helped to ensure that they successfully integrate technology into everyday instruction. Mr. Piontek presents his ideas in a very user-friendly manner, helping to facilitate the process of infusing technology into the classroom. His hands-on experiences provide teachers with practical suggestions that can be easily implemented. [He] translates the ‘theoretical’ into everyday classroom practice/s.”

We are pleased to welcome Dr. Piontek to our stage and thank all of our candidates and participants for their contributions!

~ ~ ~ ~     from ISTE email to members

I was (actually) fully expecting Chris Lehmann to be the people’s choice. Oh well . . .

Here is a blog post about the process and results, and here is a complete accounting of the results of the top nominees.

I have signed up for the ISTE webinar:

Make the Leader-Shift:  Strategies to Develop Transformational Leadership
Wednesday, January 20, 2010
1 pm Pacific / 2 pm Mountain / 3 pm Central / 4 pm Eastern

From the ISTE site:

Effective and sustainable leadership is essential to survive and thrive in our ever-changing world. Transformational leadership inspires organizations and their people towards the vision and goals while empowering and building the capacity of the people within. Yet in many cases, this type of leadership is still elusive. Join leadership expert and internationally certified coach, Valerie Woods, for this thought provoking discussion about transformational leadership and the strategies to move towards enhanced leadership effectiveness. This session is intended for all participants who want to learn more about shifting strategies to develop transformational leadership.

presenter: Valerie Woods, MA Leadership, CEC

The description certainly catches my attention and the facilitator has an interesting bio.

I would love to hear from any of you who have participated in any ISTE webinars. Was it high quality? Is it something you would recommend? Did you watch solo or did you get a group together and have discussions about it?

Tuesday at NECC 2009 I enjoyed the keynote address. It was in Oxford-style debate format, moderated by NPR’s Robert Siegel. The two sides argued the premise: Bricks and Mortar Schools are Detrimental to the Future of Education. For or against? The against side won (audience decision using response system) but they argued that education had to change substantially and that a hybrid of face to face and online was the key. Lots of fun.

See link below for more details:

http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2009/program/keynotes.php

The most memorable experience of the day was my participation in the Storm the Hill event. ISTE organized the event for hundreds of educators to meet key staff people from the offices of senators and congressional members. (See http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2009/glance/dc_hill_visits.php for details.)

I, along with about ten colleagues from Massachusetts, met with Bethany Little from Senator Kennedy’s office and with Nicholas Christiansen of Senator Kerry’s office. Then, we split into smaller groups to visit our region’s member of Congress.

Deb Donohue and I met with Lisa Salerno, a staffer in Jim McGovern’s office.

In every meeting, we talked about the following:

• the importance of funding the Enhancing Education Through Technology program (EETT)
• funding Preparing Teachers for Digital Age Learners, and
• simplifying Erate, fully funding erate, and supporting the bill to permanently exempt Erate from the Anti-Deficiency Act in order to prevent a repeat of the temporary shutdown that occurred.

Every staff person we met with was charming and welcoming, informed, and on board with our recommendations. I hope that this translates into some active support on the part of our senators and congressional members.

On a side note, it was so fun to walk through the halls of our government, armed with purpose, conviction, and appointments to make a difference. Thanks to ISTE for organizing!