Next month, I have the honor of being a ‘Featured Speaker’ at the 2014 MassCUE/M.A.S.S. Tech conference. I’ll be doing one session each day. My session on Tuesday is titled Leading Online: Leading the Learning, Leading by Learning. Following a similar format to other presentations my co-author, Steve Valentine, and I have done, I’ll not only share some of the main ideas espoused in our book (of the same title) but also engage participants in a collaborative writing and book creation prototyping activity. It will be modeled after the same process we used to write the book. To learn more about our book and this session please visit www.leadingonline.net.

On Wednesday I’ll lead a session about using screencasting on mobile devices as a way to make the process of learning more visible and audible while giving students the opportunity to create meaningful products — or artifacts — of learning.

My research and teaching practices have centered around the idea of better types of assessment and new understandings of the meaning of assessment leveraging new technologies. Part of the foundation that my co-founders and partners, Bartosz Gonczarek and Piotr Śliwiński, and I have developed in the Explain Everything app has incorporated this idea. It is important to not let past conceptions of something as big as assessment (or learning for that matter) limit your imagination and creativity when it comes to incorporating technology towards learning goals. Having this frame of mind is one reason we think that Explain Everything has resonated with many teachers and students worldwide. Below are the official session descriptions. Hope to see you at one or both of them!

Leading Online: Leading the Learning, Leading by Learning (10/22/13) In this session you will build your professional network (i.e. other participants) while building a professionally networked resource (i.e. a crowd-sourced book). Leaders give and take from a range of networks, helping them to infuse their organizations with new ideas. Though your best solution may come from inside your school, why wouldn’t you want to increase your odds of solving that problem by having access to a group of educators and non-educators spanning the globe? This session will require you to think and reflect and to create and contribute. Participants will leave having contributed to the creation of a short book about the very conversations that happen in the session.

Explain Everything: Screencasting & Formative Assessment (10/23/14) My work as a teacher, researcher, and app developer has focused on providing students and their teachers flexible and powerful tools for sharing understanding in ways that traditional approaches often fall short of doing. The use of such tools fosters the creativity in both students and teachers while providing a lens on the process of learning which has previously been inaccessible or too complicated to utilize. This session will focus on the use of screencasting as a tool for capturing student understanding to inform instruction and the learning experience.
About the Author : Dr. Reshan Richards is the Director of Educational Technology at Montclair Kimberley Academy in NJ and the founder of Constructivist Toolkit, LLC. Reshan is one of the creators of the Explain Everything app and co-author of Leading Online: Leading the Learning, Leading by Learning. An Apple Distinguished Educator and member of Mensa, Reshan has an Ed.D. in Instructional Technology & Media from Teachers College, Columbia University where he also has co-taught a course on Design Thinking and Educational Technology. He has an Ed.M in Learning and Teaching from Harvard University and a B.A. in Music from Columbia University.