notes from the conference

Here are my notes and thoughts on the keynote presentation about the flat classroom by David Warlick. I am considering, once again, of joining the Second Life world. There is a education island apparently.
David talked about three converging conditions:
1) preparing our kids for an unpredictable future-the walls of the classroom are disappearing and it is in our best interest to let them disintegrate instead of trying to fight it in order to maintain any traditional authority that we might have as teachers.
2) we have information savvy students-I see my students engage in this in my classroom when they jump online to goggle an idea that comes up during discussion. I have seen myself fight against this (and fail miserably) when I try to monitor their computers during class or come down too hard when they go online during class. It is obvious when they are not engaged as opposed to when they are gathering info that is relevant, though it is not in the room with us.
3) we have a new information landscape-I try to incorporate web 2.0 tools. I want to do a better job at "baking in" instead of "adding on" as described by Gardner Campbell.