Presentations and services

Workshops- Most requested hands-on workshops

Passion, humor, intelligence
...and a quarter century of experience

Jason is well known for the passion, humor and intelligence he brings to his workshops, seminars and consulting. Combining twenty-five years of experience in the educational technology field with an eye for the future, he connects with the audience where they are, and helps them see their importance in the future development of living, learning, working and having fun in the Digital Age. He clearly loves what he does, and loves sharing what he knows with others. For audience and client evaluations, see testimonials.

Described below are his most popular workshops and seminars. These typically accompany a keynote. Following the workshop descriptions is a list of areas that he is often asked to address, each of which can become a workshop or seminar with that particular focus.

How to create and tell an effective story regardless of the media you use

Telling your story

How to tell an effective story, regardless of medium

Storytelling is enjoying a resurgence of popularity in the modern age:

  Teachers are using it as a powerful teaching and learning tool.

  Businesses and organizations are using it to improve communication with employees, clients and the public.

  Artists are using the technology of the day to tell digital stories.

  Traditional storytellers are finding their trade more popular than ever.

This workshop shows you how to create a story that works, regardless of whether you are a traditional or digital storyteller; regardless of whether you are in business, education, art or simply enjoy telling stories for friends and family.

You will learn how to plan, write and tell stories. You will learn how to develop the aspects of successful stories that are found in books, movies, public presentations and even advertisements: flow, character, meaning, conflict resolution, audience engagement and transformation. You will leave with very practical tools to use with others to help them tell their story. The workshop can be applied to literacy and content learning for students, business presentations, public speaking and personal development and expression.

See the storytelling workshop site for more details about this workshop.

New Media Narrative and Digital Storytelling

Using digital technology to tell your story

Learn how to plan and create digital stories and other new media narrative using common, inexpensive hardware and software. Also covered: classroom applications, using new media in content areas, and assessment.

You will need at least one day, preferrably two, and the equipment on-site to make this happen.

See the storytelling web resource for more details.

Beyond Essays

Assessing New Media & Digital Stories

You require your students to create essays and reports, but instead they want to create movies, digital stories and other kind of new media projects. You hesitate. Why? Because like most teachers, you don't feel comfortable assessing them. This workshop will help you understand how to assess new media projects without being a techie yourself. It will also show you how new media helps promote traditional literacy as well as emerging digital literacies. The focus is on "media grammar" and developing rubrics that focus on clear communication and compelling stories so that you can provide helpful feedback to students.

This is suitable for grades 3 and up, appropriate for all content areas, and is for any teacher regardless of technical skill level, from novice to geek. This is "minds on" rather than hands on. You can bring a laptop, but pencil and paper will do fine as well. Teachers will leave with real tools to use in this area.

The Web 2.0 Portfolio

Using free tools to store, publish and assess student work

Using tools like Blogger, YouTube, SlideShare, Jing and other free tools to create educational portfolios. Also addressed: using visually differentiated text for web writing, assessing student work, using web 2.0 portfolios in distance learning for e-portfolios.

This is suitable for grades 3 and up, appropriate for all content areas, and is for any teacher regardless of technical skill level, from novice to geek. This is "minds on" and hands on. Best if you bring a laptop.

Seeing Technology: Evaluating Technology's Impacts Beforehand

How to understand technology's impacts, before they happen

Learn how to see technology's impacts before they occur. This requires "seeing technology" as something with behaviors, bias, eccentricities and personalities. Join the fictitious Science and Technology Administration (STA), whose job it is to figure out what impacts new technologies will have personally, socially, culturally and environmentally before they are allowed into the consumer market.

Responsibility in the Digital Age

Ethics, Copyright and Helping Students See the Big Picture

Are you worried that your students are enamored of technology's power without understanding the responsibility required in using it? Are you concerned that they don't see some of their behaviors as "questionable" just because they happen online or using technology? This workshop features a number of classroom "minds on" activities that will help teachers address this very important area of technology use.

Similar to the workshop described above, but with more of a student responsibility focus.

Topics addressed: ISTE Standard VI, when to go hi tech, low tech and no tech; copyright issues, seeing and understanding technology's impacts; ethics and media literacy.

This is suitable for grades 3 and up, appropriate for all content areas, and is for any teacher regardless of technical skill level, from novice to geek.

Creating an e-Learning Program

Education is now a buyer's rather than a seller's market

Learn how to plan for, design, administer an e-learning or distance education program. Hear lessons learned in two decades of “going the distance” - creating courses, degrees & programs at a distance. This workshop takes you from the big picture down to all those pesky details. Also covered in detail: Creating Online Community, which can be the topic of its own workshop.

Creating Online Community

Peer interaction is the hallmark of good online education

Learn how to design the development of online community into your e-learning courses. What is the role of the teacher? Students? Student interaction? How can you optimize peer interaction so that students get the most out of their online education? These issues and more are addressed.

Turning Teachies and Techies into Talkies

Improving your organization's communication helps everyone

Teachie: Lend me your ears!

Techie: Boot up your aural input devices!

It's hard to find an organization that is not in some way an information organization. Schools, businesses, government departments, everyone has incorporated information management into their lives. Yet the digital divide between those who speak geek and those who don't is growing wider by the day, threatening to undo the progress that information technology can deliver.

In schools, teachies and techies need to work together but they speak different languages. That's why the real communication issues within information organizations are between people, not machines. Learn how to bridge the gap between the teachies and the techies and create a better working environment for everyone within your educational organization. This workshop works well for any kind of organization.

Effective as a keynote and/or workshop.

GarageBand and the New Linguistics

Using and understanding what GarageBand offers your students

This is a how-to and why-for workshop about how a new generation of software has brought "musical intelligence" within everyone's reach. It features Apple's amazing program "GarageBand," which is widely celebrated for allowing students of any musical ability to "speak music." Equally useful to the musically trained and untrained alike, GarageBand allows students to create quality, copyright-free music for video and other school projects, cheaply and easily. It can also be used for creating or capturing audio performances, like poetry readings, storytelling and rapping projects. We look at not only how GarageBand works and how it is being used, but also at what it adds to "the linguistics of speaking music," and how it has made "speaking music" a possibility for everyone.

Topic Areas - Presentation areas that can be adapted to client needs

General presentation areas

Future Perspectives

• Then What!? – What’s Been, What’s Here, What’s Next (based on Jason’s novel “Then What? Everyone’s Guide to Living, Learning and Having Fun in the Digital Age”)
• Wisdom is Turning Hindsight Into Foresight – Planning for Technology’s Impacts Before They Happen (based on Jason’s book “Taming the Beast – Choice and Control in the Electronic Jungle”)
• The Digital Age in a Sentence: Everyone Gets to Tell Their Own Story in Their Own Way on the Great Stage of the Internet
• Web 2.0, 3.0 and Beyond – Reshaping the Future of Being Here and Being Human

Storytelling, Digital and Traditional, for Education, Business and Personal Expression

• Digital Storytelling in the Classroom: New Media Pathways to Literacy, Learning and Creativity (based on Jason’s book of the same name)
• Creating a Digital Storytelling Program on Little to No Budget
• Telling Your Story – Practical Steps for Giving Voice to the Storyteller Within, With or Without Technology
• Beyond the Slide Show – PowerPoint Presentations that Engage Through Story
• Teachies are from Venus, Techies Are From Mars - Getting Teachers and Techies to Build a Common Story
• We Forget Lectures, We Remember Stories – Using Storytelling to Promote Literacy, Meet Standards, Engage Learners, as Well as Market Yourself and Your Ideas

New Times, New Literaces

• Digital storytelling and the DAOW of literacy – Combining Traditional and Emerging Literacies in an Integrated Approach to Learning
• Getting in Touch with the Digital Age Teacher Within
• Art the 4th R and New Media in and Beyond the Classroom
• Media Literacy 101 – Helping Kids, Teachers and Concerned Citizens Understand How Media Engages, Influences and Persuades
• Assessing New Media – Helping Teachers Assess the Amazing Digital Projects Our Kids Create
• GarageBand - Musical Literacy for Everyone

Web 2.0 and eLearning

• Online Community – the Key to eLearning success
• How to Create eLearning Programs that Work
• Life in the tEcosystem – Web 2.0, 3.0 and Beyond

For fun

• Teachies are from Venus, Techies Are From Mars - Getting Teachers and Techies to Communicate
• Finding the Musician Within Using GarageBand