This is the perfect time to look back at 2010. Several events stand-out in 2010. Here’s a quick walk down memory lane.

Shawn’s post Using Facebook to Improve School Communication continued to be of great interest. The great reception of this article led to several opportunities. One of the more interesting of these being chosen as guest contributors to Clara Shih’s revision of The Facebook Era (2nd Edition). Our collaborative rewrite of this article provides a streamlined guide to leveraging the communication power of Facebook for schools. The Facebook Era (2nd Edition) continues elaborating on the phenomenon of Facebook and its implication in all areas of life (business, education, and leisure) and is a great read that we recommend (Note: We have no financial interest in your purchase, we just like it!).

In March EDBuzz.org delivered a very well received conference session at the 17th annual California Charter Schools Conference Web 2.0 for Teachers. In this session we highlighted several current Web 2.0 tools and illustrated their benefits for both teachers and schools. In addition, teacher’s and administrator’s were excited by our examples of their successful implementations.

In June, teachers were urged to look at the 2009-2010 school year and reflect on their craft. The popular article End of School Reflections provided a process for teachers to assess their performance. Identify opportunities for change, and create a growth plan.

2010 has truly been a great year here at EDBuzz and we look forward to the next year. The shear amount of  innovations and entrepreneurial spirit directed at education is incredible. Implementing this knowledge and the opportunities provided will continue to be a great challenge for education as a whole.

At EDBuzz.org, we realize that our current projects have a great impact on our future direction. We would like to share the areas that have attracted our attention and energy. Both currently and moving into 2011, we are focused on a variety of projects, the largest of which include creating a new hybrid school (online and traditional classroom learning) and creating a open high school Economics course that demonstrates Layered Instruction (personalized learning path).

The hybrid school project is a joint-venture between a San Diego based education foundation and the Pollinate group. Its focus has been to deliver twice the education at half the current average price. Our focus of this project has been to identify key areas that can be transformed to achieve these goals. Among these are the teacher’s role, the way students spend their time on a topic, and Web 2.0 tools, as well as other technology tools, to better accomplish these goals. This project will provide numerous posts and opportunities for community discussion.

The Economics project focuses on three key concepts. The first is the implementation of differentiated learning and options for students. The second is to incorporate current Web 2.0 technologies to improve collaboration. The third is to provide an example of how an Open Course (available for all to be used) can be constructed and implemented. This project is ongoing and should be available to all in the second quarter of 2011.

Now it’s your turn. Where have you been? What are your reflections of 2010? In what project are you engaged? What trends do you see? Are there any goals that you would like to share? Where do you want to go in 2011? Take a minute today to join our community and share where you’ve been and where you’re  going. You can post here or reach out to us on Twitter at @darylljohnson or @sroner. We look forward to hearing from you…

As with any new technology, there are challenges (legal and technical) to its implementation. Additionally, some are more apt to embrace its use while others are more cautious or even try to block them. We will discuss this in depth in future posts. For now, I’ve posted our presentations below. Feel free to use them, we only ask that you attribute them to us.