Bridging the Gap 2009
The Future of Education Using Its Tools Today
19-21 November 2009
What does 21st century education look like? An 'unconference’s' audience become its presenters to explore the future of learning.
Bridging the Gap, our groundbreaking annual conference now in its eighth year, returns to its roots with a focus on 21st Century Education and a new toolset - unconferences and BarCamps. This year’s BTG will use collaborative and spontaneity-driven learning formats to engage the entire community in an open, participatory event.
The YIS community boasts a remarkable range of compelling members. From those in diplomatic and international business worlds to talented faculty who run workshops worldwide, we have many individuals who are considered experts in their field, people who can strike sparks and fire imaginations. This is the perfect mix for an event where the content and direction are driven by the participants.
Thursday, November 19 - BTG will kick-off with an evening welcome reception in the Cafeteria from 7:00 pm. Come meet Chris Toy, Kim Cofino and other discussion leaders and participants, learn more about the various BTG sessions, and get in the spirit for the stimulating interactive experience to follow on Friday and Saturday.
Friday, November 20 - Teachers, parents and other community members will be challenged with some of the latest ideas influencing education and its practice. Workshops will feature short presentation lead-ins followed by discussions on such themes as: schools of the future, information literacy, brain research, spaces for learning, collaboration, learning communities, and much more. Some discussions will be supported by a live blogger who will provide running summaries and access to resources for unfolding branches of the conversation. There will also be scheduled break-out sessions and unconferences following the workshops, where participants can follow up and take new steps: Did a conversation make you want to try video editing? Do it. Did you see a "tweet" about a compelling chat next door? Join it.
Saturday, November 21 - This will be a day to model 21st Century education. Join us for Yokohama BarCamp - an opportunity to participate in an open environment, to share and to learn, an "unconference" event that will become whatever the participants bring to it.
What's an Unconference?
"An unconference is a participant-guided experience that actually brings the unstructured conversations people usually have between conference sessions into the conference itself. Unlike most conferences where a group of leaders determine what will be discussed, the participants make those decisions at an unconference, usually either on the day of the unconference or shortly before. Unconferences usually aren't about big-name speakers, but are more about letting everyone attending take part in the conversation."
- American Library Association Annual Conference 2009
What's a BarCamp?
"BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences (or unconferences) - open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants. The first BarCamps focused on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. The format has also been used for a variety of other topics, including public transit, health care, and political organizing. The name "BarCamp" is a playful allusion to the event's origins, with reference to the hacker slang term, foobar: BarCamp arose as a spin-off of Foo Camp, an annual invitation-only participant driven conference hosted by open source publishing luminary Tim O'Reilly."
- Wikipedia
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