High Techpectations

Expanding Your NECC 2009 Experience

 

Cross Posted at the Infinite Thinking Machine

View and edit NECC 2009 Washington, DC in a larger map. Please add your recommendations!

It's that time of year again... The International Society for Technology in Education will celebrate its 30th birthday in a few weeks by hosting the National Educational Computing Conference in Washington, D.C. For me, it's a particularly exciting time to be visiting our nation's capital in light of our new president and a renewed focus on improving education.

NECC 2009 promises to be professionally rejuvenating event for anyone interested in educational technology. It is a potentially overwhelming conference with nearly 13,000 attendees and approximately 500 vendors presenting their wares. For the record, educational technology has never been about the tools for me (although I do revel in the cool factor of many technologies), but about leveraging learning for kids. That said, I hope that educators from a wide variety of backgrounds and interests will attend for similar reasons. I would actually like to see the excitement about educational technology filter down more to those who aren't necessarily techie geeks like myself.

For the past few years, I've posted a blog entry highlighting a few tips and tricks for making the most of your NECC experience. Review my ideas for 2007 and for 2008; I still stand by that general advice. Pick an area of focus, spend time planning before you get to Washington with that theme in mind, and give yourself plenty of time to digest everything. Bring your laptop for taking notes and accessing additional content; I suspect more people will be using iPhones for this purpose, however. Finally, get connected with other educators through the plethora of events that are scheduled. For the second year, ISTE has an online community for conference conversation. Networking isn't just for job seekers or administrators anymore!

If you are not able to attend in person, you should be able to participate virtually as well. Some presenters may elect to post their materials online and to stream video feeds of their presentations. At Edubloggercon, an informal "unconference" to be held Saturday, June 27 as a precursor to NECC, many sessions will also be broadcast via tools such as Ustream. Finally, similar sessions called NECC Unplugged will be taking place in the Blogger's Café during the actual conference at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center.

In addition to all this, people will be blogging, posting pictures, and twittering away about conference happenings. You can find this stuff by searching various sources using tags (keyword labels) such as NECC, NECC2009, and NECC09. For instance, search Twitter using #NECC and you'll find a steady microblogging stream. I recommend searching Technorati for blog posts and Flickr for photos in a similar manner.

Finally, I like to make the most of any travel experience by doing a little research ahead of time. I usually do a cursory search in iTunes for content related to my destination that I can put on my iPod or iPhone. For instance, I purchased the audiobook of A Cricket in Times Square for my daughter when we traveled to New York City prior to NECC 2005. In 2006, I traveled to Europe with other Apple Distinguished Educators on a project and I brought along a Passport to Europe episode on Berlin and a No Reservations episode on Paris (this show isn't necessarily for kids, by the way). In addition to these items, there are tons of free podcasts available in iTunes if you do a search for your particular destination.

I've taken the liberty of putting together a few Washington DC related resources. I have not reviewed all of these; I just explored and plucked ones that look potentially interesting. If you have any additional recommendations, please add them to the comments. Enjoy and see you in DC. I'll be in the Google booth from time to time and presenting as part of Larry Anderson's Podcasting and Podcatching for the Absolute Beginner panel. Stop by and say hello!

Washington DC and NECC Resources

Lucy's NECC Calendar - Each year, I use the NECC conference planner to plot any sessions interesting to me. I'm focusing on math, science and interactive whiteboards this year.

Lucy's NECC '09 Map - Join this Google Map and add your info and recommendations.

NECC Ning - NECC's online community; attendees and virtual attendees are welcome to join.

GovFresh - one stop shopping for multimedia produced by the U.S. governent. Everything is aggregated in one place; web 2.0 at its finest!

Apps for your iPhone:

• iTransDC Metro - (99 cents)
• iMetroMap DC (99 cents)
• Dubbele.com (99 cents)
• Washington DC Public (free)
• Washington Post's Going Out Guide (free)
• Washington DC Travel Guide (99 cents)
• Washington DC - GPS Tour (99 cents)
• U.S Historical Documents (99 cents)
• iCongress (99 cents)
• politicoTrack ($9.99)
• Presidents Match Game (99 cents)
• USA Presidents (free)

Podcasts:

• Cityscapes - Washington DC
• Tourcaster - Washington DC City Guide
• Mobile Tours
• Cultural Tourism DC: Audio Journeys
• Hirschhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden Podcasts
• ARTSEDGE: The Kennedy Center's Jazz in DC
• The International Spy Museum SpyCast
• US Holocaust Memorial Museum iTunes U Page
• Smithsonian Podcasts
• LearnOutLoud's US Presidents Podcast
• The Washington Post Video Podcast
• Washington Week Video Podcast
• President Obama's Weekly Address

TV Shows and Movies:

• Smithsonian Channel ($1.99 per episode to purchase)
• Anthony Bourdrain's No Reservations - Washington DC ($1.99 per episode to purchase)
• All the President's Men ($9.99 to purchase, $2.99 to rent)
• Mr. Smith Goes to Washington ($14.99 to purchase only)

YouTube Channels:

• Smithsonian Channel
• United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Newseum
• Library of Congress
• C-SPAN
• The White House

Midwest Tech Forum 2009 Handout

Check out the handout for my portion of the Web 2.0 panel at Tech Forum Midwest tomorrow! This is intended to be a short overview of Web 2.0 and its implications for education. I've also included some web sites and readings for further exploration. Lucy Gray • Tech Forum - Midwest 2009

Publish at Scribd or explore others: How-to-Guides & Manu web2.0 tech

WEMTA PLN Materials

WEMTA - PLN Workshop - Lucy Gray

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Education Presentations & Slid workshop 2009

WEMTA - PLN Presentation - Lucy Gray

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Education Presentations & Slid 2009 k12

WEMTA - PLN Handout - Lucy Gray

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Education Presentations & Slid social media

Download PLN_Workshop_Lucy_Gray Download Lucy_Gray_PLNDownload PLN_Preso_Lucy_Gray

WEMTA Handouts

WEMTA - Going Global - Lucy Gray

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Education Presentations & Slid world global

WEMTA - PLN Handout - Lucy Gray

Publish at Scribd or explore others: Education Presentations & Slid social media

2009 Illinois Computing Educators Conference

Link: Illinois Computing Educators - ICE.

You'd think I would have noticed this as I serve on the conference committee for ICE, but fyi, I just noticed that we're accepting proposals for our 2009 conference. The workshop proposal deadline is particularly looming large! Make sure to get your proposals in as this year's conference promises to be better than ever. Our keynote and spotlight speaker line up is looking good and I expect that it will be announced in the next month or two.

Full Day Workshop Proposal Deadline: August 25, 2008

Half Day Workshop Proposal Deadline: August 25, 2008

Breakout Session Proposal Deadline: October 1, 2008

Poster Session Proposal Deadline: November 1, 2008

Exhibitor Session Proposal Deadline: November 1, 2008

iSummit 2009 - Nashville

I'm in Nashville through Saturday at iSummit, a conference for private and charter school educators at schools with 1 to 1 laptop deployments. I'm really excited to be here as it's my first time visiting Tennessee!

Below are my presos which I've posted in Slideshare. Please feel free to contribute to my Google Maps/Earth teacher meme project and to join our group in Diigo where I will be bookmarking relevant links. Also, consider joining the Google in Education group as well.

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New Ning for NECC 2008

Steve Hargadon, the one man ed tech machine, has created a new ning online community for people interested in the National Educational Computing Conference. Check it out and join today! You do not need to be an ISTE member or even attending the conference to be a member, and this should be a useful tool for following the conference wherever you are.

Steve also has a new post up on his blog and cross-posted at the Infinite Thinking Machine on his Classroom 2.0 unconference series. He just hosted a second informal ed tech get together in Phoenix and reports that it went very well. One is being organized for Chicago this fall, and hopefully Steve will have more details to post about this shortly!

NECC 2008 via kwout

2008 ICE COLD Mini-Conference

Here are my slides for today's presentation. I've given this preso a few times, and each time I tweak it a bit for the particular audience.

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IL-TCE Global Education Presentation

The 2008  Illinois Technology Conference for Educators was held last week, and in my general conference session, I gave an update on my global education explorations. Here are the slides!

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NICE Mini-Conference 2008: Google in Education

NICE Mini-Conference 2008: Google in Education

PDF OF PRESENTATION:

Download NICEGoogle.pdf

From: elemenous, 5 hours ago

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A slightly modified version of the Kean preso.There are many links to resources within this doc; make sure you click on things to visit them.

SlideShare Link

NICE Mini-Conference 2008: Global Awareness

NICE Mini-Conference 2008: Global Awareness

DOWNLOAD PDF :

Download NICE2008.pdf

From: elemenous, 5 hours ago

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An update of last year's preso

SlideShare Link

lucygrayworkshops » Macworld

Link: lucygrayworkshops » Macworld.

Here's the link to my Macworld workshop wiki pages. Feel free to join the wiki and contribute! More to come regarding my experiences here, including more photos.

Edublogging @ Macworld: Question for My Personal Learning Network: How has blogging impacted your professional development?

Link: Edublogging @ Macworld: Question for My Personal Learning Network: How has blogging impacted your professional development?.

I'd love it if readers who blog could take a few minutes to respond to a few questions over at my Macworld Educator Academy blog. The objective is to give newbie bloggers some insight on the potential power of blogging.

Thanks in advance!

Coming Soon....Macworld Educator Academy

I'm getting pumped to present two workshops at Macworld Expo in a couple of weeks. Sponsored by IDG and CUE, the Macworld Educator Academy promises to be a great mini-conference within the Expo. The academy itself is held over two days and features speakers John Couch, Carol Anne Maguire, and Marco Torres. Hands-on workshops related to best practices in educational technology will take place the entire week, too. I'll be posting links to materials related to my blog and wiki workshops here when I feel they are ready for prime time, and in the meantime, feel free to follow the action at the Twitter account I'm using for the Expo: mwedubloggers. This is my first Macworld experience and I'm thrilled to be a part of the action!

Kean Conference

Google Preso

Download Google.pdf

NCSEA Preso

Download NCSEA.pdf

Here's a PDF of today's presentation. I had so much fun facilitating this session with NEA leaders and executives! If any of the group is reading this, let's keep the conversation going somehow!

 

NCTI: National Center for Technology Innovation: Annual Technology Innovators Conference

Here's the PDF for my portion of our panel discussion today. For info, on this conference, check out their web site. Hopefully, I'll be blogging about today's events as well!

Download NCTI.pdf

Illinois Technology Conference For Educators Ning

Link: Illinois Technology Conference For Educators.

I've gone NIng happy, I think. I really like this tool for community building, and I've started one for our upcoming Illinois Technology Conference for Educators. In the past, we've had individual blogs for each conference that had mixed participation. It seemed that the blogs lent themselves to one-way communication, and I'm hoping a ning community will be a little more dynamic. I think one factor will be that people can participate at various levels by simply posting a profile, tagging a resource iltce in del.icio.us, adding photos or video, or by writing a forum post. I am also hoping to draw more outside participation, similar to the international audience that was apparent with the Learning 2.0 conference in Shanghai, China.

If you can't join us in person for this event, join us online. Keynote speakers will include Dan Buettner and Mitch Resnick; spotlights include Vicki Davis, Tim Tyson, Steve Hargadon, Jenny Levine, and Dave Edyburn. Karen Thompson, Vinnie Vrotny, Katie Kirsch, Erin Wyatt, and a panel of Second LIfe experts will serve as local spotlight speakers.

5 (gum) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Link: 5 (gum) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

I keep forgetting to blog about this, but I had an enjoyable flight back to Chicago from Atlanta. The gentleman next to me noticed that I was chewing gum, and offered that he worked for Wrigley. He then treated me a pack of Wrigley's latest product, 5, in the "cobalt" flavor. It's named 5 because it's supposed to appeal to the five senses, and it's marketed towards the club hopping market (sadly I clearly don't fit THAT demographic anymore). The 5 graphic is supposed to glow in the dark or something, so I suppose that's a helpful feature if you're into that scene.

What was most interesting was the work of this gentleman, an engineer for Wrigley. He travels the world, visiting Wrigley's plants for one reason or another. Another passenger overheard us talking specifically about Singapore, and mentioned that she used to live there when she worked for DHL. This era of travel and working with other countries is not new to people in the business world, I suspect, but to most teachers, this concept is really extraordinary. We haven't been called on, for the most part, to collaborate and communicate in our workplace and that's got to change. Also interestingly, the process and detail involving producing this 5 gum was amazing, considering that the idea was started only 2 years ago.

As far as taste goes, 5 gets two thumbs up... the flavor does really last quite awhile and I'm glad to make this engineer's acquaintance. He promised to take me on a tour of Wrigley's facility in Chicago's Goose Island area... it's in a building, I think, that Mayor Daley, has tried to support as a bastion of technology and innovation.

Friday 5: Getting Ready for NECC 2007

Hi All -

Sorry for the dearth of activity on this listserv, but it's been a busy few weeks. I'm heading across the Midway Plaisance to a new job at the University of Chicago Center for Urban School Improvement, and it's been a stressful time making the decision to leave my current school. I'll be the Lead Technology Coach for the Center, working two days a week at one of four charter schools which are operated under the umbrella of the University. The rest of my time will be devoted to designing and implementing a technology professional development plan for all four charters run by USI. I am going to miss Lab very much, but I'll stay connected as my children will still attend school there. I am really grateful for the opportunity to have taught at Lab. My students and colleagues have been amazing, and I am appreciative of all that I have learned.

Anyway, I'm in the midst of preparing for the National Educational Computing Conference, which starts a week from tomorrow in Atlanta, Georgia. I'll be running a workshop for Apple with Julene Reed of St. George's Schools in Memphis, Tennessee, as well as participating in two panel presentations. I should also be floating around the Apple booth at various times, so stop by and say hello if you are attending the conference.

If you are not able to attend NECC, check out the following resources for following the conference virtually. I'll be publishing the Friday 5 on a more regular basis once life slows down a bit!

Take care,

Lucy Gray

1) NECC 2007 Flickr Group

Check out this link in the next week or so to see images taken by conference attendees. Flickr groups also allow for discussions, so you might catch some comments as well.

2) HitchHikr: NECC 2007

David Warlick has set up a service for aggregating conference information. Visit this page, and you'll see everything related to NECC that's been tagged with the keywords necc, neccprep, and necc2007.

3) NECC Podcasts and Web Casts
http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2007/program/podcasting.php
http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2007/program/video_on_demand.php

Several sessions have been selected to be podcasted or webcasted. I'm not sure how quickly these files will be published, though. I'm guessing Apple will also publish podcasts in the Conference Connections section of the Apple Learning Interchange, too.

4) NECC Bloggers

Many people have signed up to have links to their blogs posted on the NECC web site. These people, myself included, will be posting thoughts and reactions to the conference.

5) Lucy's Global Stuff
I'll be conducting a workshop on collaborative tools used to foster global awareness. I've created several resources that we will demonstrate. Feel free to jump in and add content, or just follow our progress as we add information.

The Global Education Collaborative Ning Group

The Global Education Collaborative Discussion Group | Google Groups

Flickr: The Global Education Collaborative

The Global Education Collaborative Wiki

NECC 2007 Workshop Resources

Excuse multiple crossposts -

Julene Reed and I are teaching a workshop at NECC on global collaboration, and I've set up a series of resources to demonstrate during this class. I hope that these resources will live on as people become interested in sharing resources used to teach global awareness concepts. Please consider jumping in and joining any of these groups. Some of them are already seeded with material, but others are just getting started. Feel free to pass this info on to anyone you know that also might be interested.

If you are presenting on a simliar topic at NECC, please think about "crosspollinating" material in these spaces as well.

1) Global Education Ning group
http://globaleducation.ning.com/

2) Global Education Flickr group
http://flickr.com/groups/globaleducation/

3) Global Ed Google Group
http://groups.google.com/group/globaleducation

4) Global Education Collaborative Wikispace
http://globaleducationcollaborative.wikispaces.com/

5) I'm tagging any resources I bookmark with the tag globalawareness in Furl and in del.icio.us.

6) Google Calendar for Global Education - enter your NECC global awareness events here, for instance.

If you think of other similar resources we should include, please send me suggestions.  Thanks!!!

NECC 2007 Birds-of-a-feather Sessions Wiki

Link: birdsnecc2007 » home.

Browsing the NECC 2007 web site this evening, I came across a wiki for groups who plan on meeting at the conference. There's something for everyone, although I don't see a session for 1 to 1 people. I added a comment to the Creating Global Projects space and will try to make it to that reception!

The Global Education Collaborative

Link: The Global Education Collaborative.

Excuse the multiple cross-postings on various listservs etc....

Please consider joining a Ning community on global education: http://globaleducation.ning.com/

At the National Educational Computing Conference to be held in Atlanta, Georgia this June, fellow Apple Distinguished Educator Julene Reed and I will be hosting a workshop on global collaboration. I plan on utilizing a variety of tools and resources throughout this hands-on class, including Ning, a service that allows one to establish a custom social networking site. I am hoping to seed this site with people and content in preparation for this workshop, and I would like to invite anyone to jump in and participate.

I've made a few prior attempts at creating an online meeting space for those interested in global collaboration which included the establishment of a .Mac group and a blog. While I still plan on posting to these resources, I think this environment might be more inviting because it allows for the posting of photos, videos, and RSS feeds. Users can make their own custom personal pages, contribute to discussion forums, network with other like-minded individuals, and comment on these features. I've been inspired by the success of Steve Hargadon's Classroom 2.0 and School 2.0 Ning communities, particularly by the forum conversations in the Classroom 2.0 one.

I also hope that this will also serve as a hub for anyone who will be presenting at conferences on various global education topics. Please consider uploading any relevant files including presentation slides. You can upload slides to sites such as SlideShare and Scribd, which I think, will give you the html code to embed videos in a Ning community. If you need help with any of this, just let me know.. it's pretty easy. Of course, you can probably also save slideshows as Quicktime files and upload them directly, too.

Please let me know if you have any questions...

ICE COLD mini-conference

I'm presenting two session on Google tools at the Illinois Computing Educators' west suburban chapter's mini-conference on Saturday, April 21. Here is a .pdf of my presentation: 

Download lisle.pdf

AERA Podcasting Session Links

Link: podcastinglinks - Google Docs & Spreadsheets.

Last week, along with Karen Percak and Bruce Ahlborn, I helped with a session at the American Educational Research Association's annual conference. Here is the link to some of the resources we cited. The document may have particular appeal if you are looking for some higher education podcasting resources.

AERA was unlike any other conference I attended, and it was a bit overwhelming. The program was the size of a small telephone book, and the conference was spread over at least 4 locations in downtown Chicago. After visiting the exhibit hall and a couple of additional sessions, a few questions popped into mind. Where do educational researchers and K12 practitioners converge to learn from each other? When do K12 teachers have time to actually put reseach findings into practice? I am so rooted in the day to day experience of teaching in a school that I found myself more interested in practical ideas rather than the minutiae of research. All in all, it was an interesting experience, though, and I'm glad I had the opportunity to experience another facet of my field.

Friday 5: Summer Professional Development

Hi All -

This info is crossposted at the Infinite Thinking Machine blog. Thanks to Laurie Bartels who gave me a good portion of the technology and brain based learning links. If you'd like to contribute to this list, email me and I'll add you as a contributor to the Google Doc version of this list. You'll be able to find any additions if you bookmark this link.
Thanks,

Lucy Gray
elemenous@gmail.com

-----

Summer Professional Development Opportunities

THE BRAIN AND LEARNING

Learning and the Brain (takes place every November and April)
http://www.edupr.com/
April 28-30, Cambridge, MA

CAST conference - Universal Design for Learning (applicable to both
technology and the brain)
http://www.cast.org/pd/institute/index.html
July 23-26, near Boston, MA

The Brain, Learning & Applications Summer Institute (same as below)
http://www.carrawaycenter.com/brainlearninginstitute/
August 2-3, Nashville, TN

The Brain, Learning & Applications Summer Institute
http://www.nysais.org/page.cfm?p=4&verbose=228&month=3&start=01/01/07
August 21-22, Avon, CT

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain
http://www.drawright.com/
multiple dates and types of drawing, painting and sketching sessions so
check the site

Schools Attuned - http://www.allkindsofminds.org
See this press release: http://www.unc.edu/news/archives/jan00/minds012000.htm

CURRICULUM

Authentic Education Summer Institutes
http://www.authenticeducation.org/si2007/

ASCD Summer Conference on Differentiated Instruction
http://www.ascd.org/portal/site/ascd/menuitem.094e328178c0162abfb3ffdb62108a0c/
June 30 - July 2  Salt Lake City, Utah

HUMANITIES/SOCIAL STUDIES

The Library of Congress | The Learning Page | Self-Serve Workshops
http://memory.loc.gov/learn/educators/workshop/ssindex.html

Professional Development Listings at the National Council for the Social Studies web site
http://www.ncss.org/profdev/

National Gallery of Art - Teacher Institute 2007
http://www.nga.gov/education/teacinst.shtm

National Geographic School Publishing and Literacy Achievement Research Center's Literacy Institute
http://www.literacyinstitute.org/

MATH

Texas Instruments Professional Development
http://education.ti.com/educationportal/sites/US/sectionHome/pd.html

Key Curriculum Press Workshops
http://www.keypress.com/x2142.xml

Math Forum - Math Education Conferences
http://mathforum.org/mathed/mathed.confs.html

MISC.

Stanford Summer Programs for Teachers
http://oso.stanford.edu/spt/index.html
For Bay Area teachers only

International Studies Summer Institute 2007
http://www.indiana.edu/~global/teacherprogram.php

NCTE - Literacies for All Summer Institute
http://www.ncte.org/profdev/conv/wlu
July 12 - 15 Louisville, KY

Responsive Classroom Institutes
http://www.responsiveclassroom.org/prodevelop/weeklonginst.html

Summer Institute for the Gifted
http://www.giftedstudy.com/

Phillips Exeter Academy Summer Programs
http://www.exeter.edu/summer_programs/88.aspx

Chicago Foundation for Education's Fund for Teachers Grant
http://www.chicagofoundationforeducation.org/pages/fund_for_teachers/99.php

The application deadline for this has passed, and it's only for Chicago Public School teachers. Keep it in mind for next year!

SCIENCE

Pasco Professional Development
http://www.pasco.com/training/home.html

Teachers as Investigators
http://www.scied.science.doe.gov/scied/LSTPD/programs/PPPL_TAI.html

The Keystone Center's Bringing Environmental Issues to the Classroom Program
http://www.keystone.org/pel/key_issues.html

Teton Science Schools - Teacher Learning Center Programs
http://www.tetonscience.org/tlc_programs.shtml#outreach

Exploratorium: Teacher Institute
http://www.exploratorium.edu/ti/classic.html

Earthwatch Institute
http://www.earthwatch.org/site/pp.asp?c=dsJSK6PFJnH&b=393763

TECHNOLOGY

Summercore - "A Unique Five Day Marathon in Hardware, Software and
Humanware"
http://www.teachingcompany.com/
dates and locations vary so check the site

CAIS 11th Annual Summer Technology Conference
http://www.caisct.org/cais/Quickforms/viewform.aspx?PostingID=82
June 18-22, Farmington, CT

Lausanne Collegiate School Laptop Institute
http://www.laptopinstitute.com/
July 15-17, Memphis, TN

Building Learning Communities
http://www.novemberlearning.com/Default.aspx?tabid=29
pre-conf: July 16-17;  main conf: July 16-17, Boston (Newton, actually), MA

CAST conference - Universal Design for Learning (applicable to both
technology and the brain)
http://www.cast.org/pd/institute/index.html
July 23-26, just north of Boston, MA

Teach the Teachers Collaborative
http://www.teachtheteachers.org/home.html

National Educational Computing Conference
http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2007/
June 24-27 Atlanta, Georgia

Logo Summer Institute
http://el.media.mit.edu/Logo-foundation/workshops/summer.html
July 30 - August 3 New York, New York

The Stonington Retreat
http://www.visioneducation.com/stonington.html
July 31 - August 3 New York, New York

Photography Workshops and Digital Lab Workshops in Santa Fe, New Mexico
http://www.santafeworkshops.com/

Friday 5: Best of IL-TCE

Friday 5: Best of IL-TCE

Hi Everyone –

Last week’s list is compiled from various presentations that I attended at the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators.

Stay tuned for this Friday’s list which should feature another special mystery guest…

Take care,

Lucy Gray
elemenous@gmail.com

1)    OhmyNews International

This citizen journalism site was highlighted in ADE Tim Wilson’s Web 2.0 presentation.

2)    My Friend Flickr

ADE Charlene Chausis presented on all the things one can do with the photo sharing site known as Flickr.

3)    Photofiddle

Cited by NYT columnist David Pogue during his digital photography workshop, Photofiddle lets you create interesting items from your own photos.

4)    Breaking the Myth of Megapixels – New York Times

According to Pogue, four or five megapixel cameras are sufficient for most users.

5)    The River City Project

My ADE friend, Steve Wagenseller, instant messaged me during my workshop with David Pogue and during our virtual conversation, he mentioned this site. It’s an online simulation described as “a multi-user virtual environment for learning scientific inquiry and 21st Century Skills”.

NAIS & IL-TCE Presos

Here are PDFs of the presentations I gave at the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators and the National Association of Independent Schools conference. The links should be live, but the videos will not work. I plan on podcasting these videos as soon as I have time to fully edit them.

Thanks to all who attended these sessions and to my interview victims. I enjoyed chatting with various people in various locales, and I had fun at these events!

IL-TCE preso (tweaked a bit from NICE version) : 

Download globalawareness2.pdf

NAIS preso:

Download NAIS.pdf

Along with my co-presenters, I developed an online handout for NAIS. Please note that this is a work in progress. If you'd like to join the actual document to add information, send me an email and I'll send you an email with instructions on how to add to the Google doc.

Lucy's NICE Mini-Conference Resources

NICE Homepage

PDFs of My Two Presos:

Apple Global Awareness:

Download global_awareness.pdf

Google:

Download google.pdf

Essential Links:

Google For Educators
Rethink.Global Awareness

Document containing most links mentioned in both presentations: 

Download NICElinks.doc

Please email me if you have any questions!

Friday 5: Flickr Groups

Happy Friday!

I’ve been stewing all week, trying to decide on a theme for this week’s edition. While browsing the Edublogs Awards blog, I discovered a great entry in the Best Audio and/or Visual Blog category called Classroom Displays. The author, Linda Hartley, also runs an accompanying wiki  and Flickr group . 

This Flickr group inspired me to search for other education related ones, and these groups make up this week’s Friday 5. While I have used Flickr for a year or two to manage photos, I haven't explored it as much as I probably should. It dawned on me while viewing Linda’s group that this is a superb way for people, and teachers in particular, to share their experiences and ideas visually. Take a look and I think you will agree. I would have appreciated seeing examples of other teachers' work when I was new to the profession!

If you are unclear on the Flickr concept, check out these links for a little background info. Also, keep in mind that Flickr membership is free, although I recommend the Pro memberships for added benefits which is a reasonble $25 per year.

Flickr – Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flickr

MediaMazine: Flickr Tutorial Series http://www.indezine.com/mediamazine/2006/05/flickr-tutorials-series.html

5 Steps to Getting that Flickr Group off the Ground – PaulStamatiou.com
http://paulstamatiou.com/2006/02/24/5-steps-to-getting-that-flickr-group-off-the-ground/

Also, browse the aforementioned Edublogs Award site and you will notice that the Infinite Thinking Machine is nominated for the best group blog category. Consider voting for the ITM as it’s a new project with which I am involved!

Take care,

Lucy Gray
elemenous@gmail.com

1)    Montessori Education Flickr Group
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flickr

This group is not particularly active nor large in terms of membership, but there are a fair amount of pictures to view.

2)    e-Artcasting Flickr Group
http://www.flickr.com/groups/e-artcasting

This project is not directly related to education, but the idea here is document museum visitor’s experiences. I think I am going to add some of my Louvre pictures from last summer to this collection.

3)    Educational Bloggers Flickr Group
http://www.flickr.com/groups/35034348234@N01/

This group is larger in size with about 160 members, and there seems to be a fair amount of discussion on the group Flickr site.

4)    Flickr For Education Group
http://www.flickr.com/groups/33384223@N00/

5)    Elementary Art Flickr Group
http://www.flickr.com/groups/78198665@N00/

6)    NECC 2006
http://www.flickr.com/groups/necc2006/

7)    Illinois Technology Conference for Educators Flickr Group
http://www.flickr.com/groups/il-tce/

I’m on the organizing committee for this conference, so please excuse another shameless plug. There should be many more photos in this pool in March!

Friday 5: Found @ Closing the Gap

I’m home after a busy week attending an assistive technology conference called Closing the Gap in Minneapolis. The Friday 5 sites this week are gleaned from various sessions and conversations with colleagues during this interesting event.

 

Enjoy,

Lucy Gray
elemenous@gmail.com

 

1)    Closing the Gap
http://www.closingthegap.com/

This is the main page for this organization started in 1983 by parents of a deaf child. It is considered one of the premier assistive tech conferences in the U.S .

2)    Apple – Accessibility
http://www.apple.com/accessibility/

Did you know that there are many features built into the Mac operating system that make it easier for
students to use computers? This site will help you learn about these features, including VoiceOver which is designed to help those with vision issues. I am very proud that I learned a bit about how to use this spoken interface! Also check out Apple’s Accessibility in Education page at http://www.apple.com/education/accessibility/.

3)    Assistive Technology Blog and Assistive Technology Yahoo Group
http://assistivetek.blogspot.com/
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/attechnology/

These two resources are maintained by fellow ADE colleague and assistive technology expert Brian Friedlander.

4)    Blogs, Wikis, Webcasts, Etc.: New Tools for Students with Disabilities
http://closingthegap.wikispaces.com/

This wiki was used for a presentation on how the popular technologies known as blogs, wikis, and webcasts can help kids. There are lots of great resources listed in this online document that would be helpful to special ed and regular ed teachers.

5)    Marratech: Video Collaboration, E-meeting, and Web Conferencing on the Internet
http://www.marratech.com/

I have not tried this yet, but it was recommended to me by another ADE, Kris Hill, who presented with me this week at Closing the Gap. Apparently, you can video conference with others and share documents.

 

Bringing Reading and Writing to Life

Link: Bringing Reading and Writing to Life.

Kris Hill and I are presenting at the Closing the Gap conference today. Here is a web site that will contain info from our preso. More on this conference later... this is whole new territory for me!

tags technorati : Closing the Gap

Call for Proposals

Hi All -

I serve on Illinois Computing Educators' conference committee which organizes the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators. This event will be held February 27 - March 2, 2007 and it is promising to be our best one yet. We are currently seeking proposals for general sessions. If you are interested, please visit this site for more information: http://www.il-tce.org/proposals/. The deadline is October 1.

Please pass this on to any interested parties!

tags technorati : iltce, iltce2007

SqueakFest'06

Link: SqueakFest'06.

I think David Thornburg mentioned Squeak yesterday in his latter session of the day and I thought I'd post this link in case anyone is interested. This conference will take place in Chicago in a week or so and Seymour Papert himself is the keynote!

Squeak is something I should know more about.. our lower school computer science teacher has been working with classroom teachers on integrating Squeak into their curriculum and they've been very pleased with the results. I am going to try and attend this conference, but it takes place right before I leave for Europe.

tags technorati : necc necc2006 squeak

NECC Photocast

I've had luck uploading pictures to the NECC Flickr Group and I've published a photocast, too. I'll be adding pictures as I take them. They aren't the world's greatest photos and I haven't done much editing, but they might be fun to look at!

http://photocast.mac.com/lucygray1/iPhoto/necc-photocast/index.rss

tags technorati : necc necc2006

NECC 2006: Show Me The Tools

I'm in a workshop right now that is conducted by the founders og GlobalSchoolNet.Yvonne Marie Andrés, Erica Rogers, and Al Rogers will be giving a spotlight session later today on their internet projects registry. This registry has search capabilities that are really useful. You can search by curriculum fit, use of technology, types of collaboration, keywords, project dates. Additionally, you can look at current, future and archived projects.

There are two types of membership. Contributing Membership helps keep their services free and provides some added benefits such as a newsletter. There is also a free membership because the founders believe their content should be free. This looks like a fabulous service, and of course people have to make a living, but I appreciate that they make membership reasonable and give access to all. It reminds me of some of the issues Bernie Dodge has supporting QuestGarden.

I'm wondering if I can incorporate Global SchoolNet into the project I did with Chapin School this year. During the third quarter, Steve Bergen and I partnered our students to research 21st century vocabulary and build collaborative web pages. Our students exchanged written communications, audio files, and digital pictures during the course of this project. The Chapin Kids built their web pages using HTML (no WYSIWYG editor) and my kids gave them feedback and created some banners in Photoshop.

We are trying to look at some cool online tools, but unfortunately, the network is not cooperating!

tags technorati : necc necc2006

Frustration!?@*!?!

The wireless service at the San Diego Convention Center worked beautifully for me this morning as I sat listening to Bernie Dodge's presentation. Later in the morning, the connection seemed intermittent, but I had other things to do, and didn't try to get online until afternoon. Much to my disappointment I couldn't connect to the wireless network, and it appeared that I was the only one having this problem. I stopped by the tech help desk, and coincidentally, another person with a Mac also had the same problem... we couldn't get an IP address. I eventually found out that the powers that be are working on whatever networking problem is involved, so hopefully I will be to connect tomorrow. It was just a highly frustrating experience, and I wasted a good hour of my time trying to find a solution because the help desk didn't have any contact with the networking side of things at NECC.

Back in my hotel room, the Embassy Suites connection isn't much of an improvement, but at least I can access email and post to this blog. I unfortunately can't upload anything.. I wanted to photocast my NECC pictures and upload some to Flickr. These tasks will have to wait until I can get a decent internet connection, I suppose.

A secondary problem I am having is that my posts are not showing up in Technorati. I've included tags generated with a Technorati Dashboard widget and I don't see them anywhere. This has been happening for a few days now. I've added a NECC category to my blog, so perhaps that will help. I'm at a loss as to why this is happening.

At any rate, something to look forward to is the Apple Education Leadership reception in a few minutes. I need some R and R with my fellow ADEs. Speaking of ADEs, it was so nice to see and get hugs from the brethren before and after my panel preso today!

tags technorati : NECC

tags technorati : necc2006

Bernie Dodge's QuestGarden PowerPoint Presentation - Overcoming Obstacles to Quicker WebQuestCreation

Link: PowerPoint Presentation - Overcoming Obstacles to Quicker WebQuest
Creation.

Bernie is giving an overview of the rationale behind QuestGarden, a tool he has developed to improve the WebQuest creation process. Problems related to time, teacher technical and design skills, pedagogical skills, and environmental support prevented great teachers from creating great content via webquests.

QuestGarden is a solution to some of these problems. Bernie has developed this site without any grant funding or staff, and he essentially spent last summer getting ready to launch QuestGarden. The best browser for using QuestGarden is Firefox. There have been problems for developers and IE6 for Windos; QuestGarden does not work with Safari. You can upload pictures and supplementary files (Lucy's note: I wonder how much space a user receives for a project).

This online tool completely guides a user through WebQuest creation. Examples are provided and there is a What You See is What You Get editor for changing the appearance of a project. This is particularly helpful to people who have limited resources at their schools; no longer do you need web editing software or a server to store your WebQuests on. QuestGarden does this for you.

Someone behind me just commented that QuestGarden has really improved since last year when it was originally unveiled.

Bernie is now showing some examples and constructivist theory is behind all of them. It is essential that teachers continue to working on incorporating this philosophy into their teaching. It is the antidote to the NCLB way of teaching, which I don't think produces students who are prepared to meet the many challenges of the 21st century. A lot of these examples are "action oriented" and do not necessarily revolve around using technology for the entire project; Bernie cites one on how to conduct a beach cleanup. WebQuests are being created to examine various issues and outcomes and primary source materials are also evident. Bernie says that Web 2.0 technologies are begining to work their way into WebQuests, and he gives an example of a wiki created to serve as a guide to the Great Gatsby. A WebQuest can be used as a structure for these new technologies... so WebQuests aren't dead as declared by another teacher from Illinois recently!

Bernie is hoping that kids will create WebQuests that are thoughtful and fleshed out. So far, this hasn't happened and the few that kids have attempted have been lacking. Bernie cites GenYES (yay!) as a model that would support WebQuest creation by students. He is rethinking how to structure the process to make kids more succesful at this. It's not a huge priority right now, but will happen eventually.

I'm off now as I need to prepare for my preso, but I hope that this gives you a picture of Bernie's presentation. I took one of his workshops at NECC in San Antonio a few years ago, and he was extremely nice and approachable. I like his generosity of spirit that drives his QuestGarden project and I hope more teachers take the plunge into developing some meaning WebQuests.

tags technorati : necc necc2006 webquest

NECC 2006: Game Plan for Wednesday

I've been busy doing the tourist thing, and now it's time to get down to work! Every year, I try to pick one or two themes to focus on when using NECC's online conference planner. One year it was blogs, another year it was ipods and podcasting, and this year I'm planning on investigating three themes. I'm interested in laptop programs, computer science curriculum, and anything related to global awareness. The first two themes relate to my work at the Lab Schools as we are pondering the possibilities of 1 to 1 and my department is currently realigning our cs curriculum. Global awareness is pertinent to my work with Apple's Distinguished Educator program as we are traveling to Europe in two weeks to write a global awareness curriculum. My summer is not exciting enough!

I also thought that this year I would simply enjoy the confernece and not subject myself to presenting, but I was lured into participating in a panel organized by my fellow ADE, Larry Anderson. For more on this spotlight presentation entitled Podcasting for the Absolute Beginner, check out the wiki created by David Warlick for this spotlight session. Feel free to contribute to this living document!

So my game plan for Wednesday is just to get through this presentation. We are scheduled to present in a room that holds 1100 people, and my fellow panelists are quite respected and experienced with podcasting. I have to admit that I am a bit intimidated, but I think it will be a really great experience.

Other sessions I am interested in are the One Year of Questgardening, the one by the AFI Screen Education Center, the keynote by Dewitt Jones, a couple of afternoon sessions on laptops, and a session on videogaming in the computer science curriculum. It looks like I will have to make some tough decisions tomorrow on what I actually take in!

Happy conference everyone... have a great time!

tags technorati : necc necc2006

Flickr: NECC 2006

Link: Flickr: NECC 2006.

Glenn Malone has started a Flickr group for NECC. Join up if you haven't already!

tags technorati : NECC NECC2006

Illinois Technology Conference for Educators 2007

Link: Illinois Technology Conference for Educators.

A new blog has been set up for the 2007 Illinois Technology Conference for Educators. I'm continuing to coordinate volunteers for this and am serving on the program committee this year. The theme will be Thinking Outside the Box and Wires.

2 Cents Worth : First Few Days of Hitchhikr

Link: 2 Cents Worth : First Few Days of Hitchhikr.

David Warlick has add enhancements to his conference news aggregator, Hitchhikr, including a helpful tag generator. I just want to add that there's a nice Technorati tag generator widget available for Mac OS X users here.

tags technorati : NECC NECC2006 edtechconferences

Experience Mobility: Educators First to Test Negroponte's $100 Laptop Prototype

Link: Experience Mobility: Educators First to Test Negroponte's $100 Laptop Prototype .

Okay, I am the one living under a rock now. While I realized the significance of Nicholas Negroponte's NECC keynote, I had NO idea that prototypes would be available at the conference. This is amazing!

I'm interested in how these machines will be mass produced and distributed to far long parts of the world. Will there be any training of people on how to make the most of these machines? I also wonder if this machine will be available to our students in the U.S who are still behind the digital divide. I'm beginning to think some schools here are just as behind in terms of technology deployment as those in countries where you might expect it. I just don't know enough about this project and I'm looking forward to learning more at NECC. I'm also interested in learning more about how Negroponte has been able to bring his vision to fruition. People who think outside of the box fascinate me.

tags technorati : NECC NECC2006

Another NECC Suggestion

I think most bloggers are aware of the concept of tagging. You can label a post or "tag" it with a keyword. If everyone tags their posts about NECC, for example, with the tag necc or necc2006 as suggested by David Warlick, all of the posts from various authors will be collected in the blog search engine Technorati. Click here to see the results of all blogs tagged necc. This list should be growing and changing as the National Educational Computing Conference draws near.

I'm sure this has been mentioned elsewhere, but blogs are not the only things that can be tagged. You can also upload photos at Flickr and tag them as well. Here are some photos I took, for instance, at the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators posted under the tag iltce. If you search Flickr using the tag iltce, you will also find pictures taken by Tim Lauer and David Warlick. So once again, you can have multiple perspectives... this time via photos.... collected in one place. Flickr pictures will also show up in Technorati.

It doesn't stop there! If you use the social bookmarking tool Furl, you can create a category for your bookmarks that serves as a tag. If I bookmark web sites and put them into categories I created in my account (necc and necc2006), these web sites will also appear in the Technorati aggregate of everything tagged necc. Scroll down to the bottom of this page and you will see links submitted by under my username elemenous. I plan to bookmark interesting web sites mentioned during the conference in Furl. Conferences are great providers of resources and I'll be passing them on via my Furl account. If you want to see all of my Furled bookmarks, click here. If you want just to see only bookmarks I have in my NECC category, click here. Remember that as the weeks go by, these lists will be changing. Furl is also handy in that you can rate sites and add notes, which I rarely do. Maybe I'll start doing this at NECC!

By the way, I am sure you can do virtually the same thing with another popular social bookmarking service called del.icio.us. I just happen to prefer Furl. If you are a fan of both Furl and del.icio.us, try this bookmarklet creation tool. A bookmarklet is a little doodad that you install in the bookmarks bar of your browser. Every time you visit a web page and you want to record its url in a social bookmarking service like Furl or del.icio.us, you just click on this tool. It's bookmarking on the fly and on the web! So, if you'd like to use BOTH Furl or del.icio.us, you can create a bookmarklet that will allow to bookmark to both places with one click. Give yourself a pat on the back if you fully comprehend what I just wrote, but try it playing around with this stuff. It's really, really powerful.

tags technorati : NECC NECC2006 furl del.icio.us

School's Out

School's out and I am ready for some adventure! I am pinching myself because the summer of a lifetime awaits me. In two weeks, my family and I will be traveling to San Diego so that I can attend NECC 2006 and so that we all can do the Southern California tourist thing... Sea World, San Diego Zoo, Disneyland etc.

And, I had this all planned before I knew about the Apple Distinguished Educator Institute for this summer which promises to be another amazing experience. We're traveling to Europe July 21 -31 to collaborate on a digital global awareness curriculum in conjunction with EF Tours. We will be addressing an essential question via four themes, and this curriculum will hopefully be published on Apple's web site in the fall.

At any rate, I plan to be blogging on a more regular basis now that I have some time. As instructed by David Warlick in a recent post regarding tags for NECC, I'm adding mine here:

tags technorati : NECC NECC2006

Here's to a fabulous summer ! Yay!

NSBA Annual Conference Weblog

Link: NSBA Annual Conference Weblog.

Here are the podcasts from NSBA's TLN Executive Briefing. My students' session is not published at this time, but reflections on the day offer some insight into their presentation.

NSBA TLN Executive Briefing

This is my favorite picture from Friday's event held at the Sheraton Towers.

A few months ago, our friends at GenerationYES passed on our school's name when Ann Flynn of NSBA sought participants for a student panel. So, on Friday, I took 7 kids from my after school program down to the Sheraton Towers to listen to several speakers and to respond to participants' question on kids and technology. We put together a last minute PowerPoint presentation and off we went!

We were treated to a fabulous presentation entitled Redefining Literacy for the 21st Century from David Warlick, and his message was especially intriguing to my students. We haven't completely debriefed yet, but I think they liked the myriad of examples and videos he showed throughout his engaging presentation. Warlick redefines traditional content areas, "There are four elements to contemporary literacy that correspond loosely with the three-Rs. Reading expands into Exposing Truth. Arithmetic expands into Employing Information, and writing expands into Expressing Ideas Compellingly. " His arthimetic example showed a great way to use Excel. He took earthquake data from December 2004, put it into a spreadsheet, and made a line graph. The resulting graph clearly showed familiar geographic delineations, and a huge amount of activity in the Indian Ocean... the earthquakes that called the catastrophic tsunamis of a year or so ago. It was a simple, compelling way to have students interpret real data. Davd also gave the famous example of a web site that deceives people into thinking it's a legitimate site dedicated to information about a civil rights leader. I've seen this example a zillion times before, but my students hadn't and I think they were aghast.

David spoke for nearly two hours and I thought my students would not have been able to handle sitting through a day of lectures, but they completely amazed me. They were doing what many kids do in this day and age: multitasking. They were busy writing notes to each other, composing one minute mysteries, and designing suduko puzzles while listening to about four hours of adult oriented presentations. They also devoured the complimentary candy placed at our table. Simultaneously, they were truly listening to the speakers and they had very distinct opinions on the subject matter. Which leads me to another point....

Lab school kids are encouraged to speak their minds and this is one of the first things I noticed when I began working there. It's a mixed blessing. Of course, we want young people to be articulate and to stand up for what they believe in... however, it's important to keep in mind that kids don't always have the clear judgement that is important when exercising one's right to free speech! During our panel for instance, an audience member asked the kids if other kids they knew outside of Lab would do well in such an environment. And just about every kid on the panel said no.... and they added that it was not a brain thing, but a behavioral thing. Looking back at the 21st Century skills as defined by the second speaker, Ken Kay, Lab school students have self-direction. I'm not sure exactly where this ability comes from, but it is essential to success in our school environment. I think my students were trying to say was that a certain mindset is necessary at our school and it's not necessarily for everyone. I do believe that many of underpinings of our philosophy would work with most other schools... focusing on the emotional and social aspects of a kid's life as well as academics....developing kids' interests in books and literature....hands-on learning experiences...a dedication to exposing kids to many cultures...tuning curriculum to suit students' interests...smaller class size....more support staff. I could go on and on.

At any rate, I just wanted to clarify where I think my kids are coming from in case people thought they were a little over the top. In general, I was floored by their ability to take a microphone and answer questions. Some of the questions involved what their ideal computer of the future would look like and where they began the process for finding information for reports (libraries or online). The session ended and kids fanned out to participants' tables where they engaged in additional discussion. Tim Wilson milled about the room recording some of the comments for a future podcast, and I'm very curious to see how this went.

I'll write more later when I have a chance to really discuss the event with my students! I am so glad to know these kids.... it's been a joy to work with them.

tags technorati : nsba2006 davidwarlick kenkay

Illinois Technology Conference for Educators

Link: Illinois Technology Conference for Educators.

Join the IL-TCE blog today! Send me an email at lgray@ucls.uchicago.edu to join. You can also subscribe to our feed using Google Reader, Netnewswire, Bloglines or other news aggregator.

Presenting at Education Conferences

I'm fairly new to the world of presenting in front of groups, and could clearly benefit from tips and tricks of the trade. I saw the following post referenced in a blog on presentation skills. I remember first hearing about Guy Kawasaki the ADE institute last summer. Anyway, I think his 10/20/30 rule is interesting but not necessarily applicable to educational conference presentations. So... here are my questions: How would you adapt his ideas to the world of education? Are there 10 topics an educator cares about instead of a venture capitalist? What is the best presentation advice you've received or resource you've used? And... the question that's particularly on mind after presenting to a small group yesterday, how do you manage material so that you do not overwhelm your audience? With all our knowledge about stuff that is not necessarily cutting edge to us... but probably is to other educators.... how do you break it down and keep it simple?

By the way, check out the nice comment about people in the business world using Windows laptops. :)

http://blog.guykawasaki.com/2005/12/the_102030_rule.html

NICE Mini-Conference

Download ipodinfo.doc

Here's the handout originally created for my Lab colleagues and adapted for the NICE Mini-Conference. Basic information on iPods and podcasting is included in this handout along with many resource links and commentary from a fellow ADE on how video iPods can transform education. By the way,  Karen Percak and I will conducting an all day, hands-on workshop at IL-TCE on February 27 on using iPods in the classroom.

Any feedback or questions regarding yesterday's NICE session would be greatly appreciated. Email me or Karen Percak!