So we all know the 4 Cs: Critical Thinking Skills, Creation of Content, Collaboration, and Connections to develop a Personal Learning Community.  (PLC)  But I don't think that's all of them.  I'd like to advocate for another, Curation.  Once students have collected relevant, reliable information, made connections and used them to collaborate on the creation of some project, they need a way to categorize, classify, and store all of this information for later retrieval and sharing of content as needed.  All of the information sources, contacts, and products shouldn't just disappear after the unit, project, or lesson is finished.  All of this information can be used at later dates for reflection, springboards for further learning, or for sharing with others looking for reliable information.  So I officially nominate Collaboration to be included.  Who will second the motion?  Shall we put it to a vote?

Woo Hoo!  It's that time of year again when those of us who want to use technology in education pack our computers, iPads, and dorky teacher t-shirts and head off to a place where we are among our own kind.  Yes, it's time to revel in our dorkiness and flaunt our geekitude.  It's a place to share ideas with others; I'll be presenting about creating content with iPads and lessons learned from our school iPad pilot last year.  But more importantly... there will be scads of others there who have terrific and wonderful ideas about how to integrate technology for enhanced instruction and learning.  So, it is my goal is to gather, co-opt, collect, and steal as many of those ideas as possible, bring them back to school, and implement them in innovative ways.  I'm not sure who is more excited about my attendance, my students or me.  We all stand to gain from my experience.  Now you may have noticed that the conference takes place in Palm Springs in the California desert, which has a forecast of mid 80s and sunny skies.  But the bathing suit won't get much use I'm afraid because there is so much learning to be done, I don't want to miss out.  Fellow nerds, I'm on my way!