I’m doing my last minute preparations for a trip out to LA to attend the 2006 Milken Institute Global Conference. Yes, along with Lance Armstrong and Leonard Nimoy , I’m one of many speakers who will be gracing the Beverly Hilton (Merv Griffin’s old stomping grounds).

Seriously, though, I was extremely fortunate to put together what I think will be a stellar round-table discussion entitled “Blogs, Wikis, MMORPGs, and YASNS: Shaking Up Traditional Education.” You can find the conference detail here, but I include the abstract and panel, comprised of David Weinberger, Liz Lawley, Will Richardson, George Siemens, Douglass Thomas, and Adrian Chan, behind the cut.

Blogs, Wikis, MMORPGs, and YASNS: Shaking Up Traditional Education

Speakers:

• Adrian Chan, Web and Social Interaction Designer, Gravity7
• Elizabeth Lawley, Director, Lab for Social Computing, Rochester Institute of Technology; Visiting Researcher, Microsoft Research Social Computing Group
• William Richardson, Author, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms; Supervisor, Instructional Technology and Communication, Hunterdon Central Regional High School
• George Siemens, Instructor, Red River College, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada; Author, Connectivism: A Learning Theory for the Digital Age
• Douglas Thomas, Associate Professor, Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California; Editor, Games & Culture
• David Weinberger, Author, Small Pieces Loosely Joined and The Cluetrain Manifesto; Fellow, Berkman Institute for Internet and Society, Harvard University

Moderator:

• John Kruper, Chief Learning Officer, Cardean Learning Group

Do you need a secret decoder ring to decipher this session’s title? The students and new young workers collectively called “digital natives” certainly don’t. For the millions of children and adults weaned on cell phones, video games and the World Wide Web, digital tools like weblogs (blogs), massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), community-authored websites (wikis) and social networking services (YASNS) are an integral part of their daily lives. The implications of this sea change in how users relate to technology go beyond the “technology as friend, not foe” level. These tools are providing fundamentally new ways for people to connect and learn. This roundtable session brings together a collection of leading researchers and opinion leaders to explain and discuss the new “web-2.0″ world that is shaking up the traditional education and corporate-training establishments. Copies of David Weinberger’s book, “The Cluetrain Manifesto: The End of Business as Usual,” will be provided to session attendees.

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