Materials for today's conference include a copy of my slides that can be accessed via Slideshare or the actual files can be downloaded from Box.net. Also, additional materials that I've compiled for a workshop in case attendees would like to take a deeper dive.
Enjoy and I hope you all will join us over at the Global Education Collaborative and Conference!
Summer is quickly approaching and it looks like it's going to be a busy one. I'll be presenting at a slew of conferences that may be of High Techpectations readers . Read on for more details!
June 18-20 The Connections Conference at Sidwell Friends, Washington DC
Visit one of the nation's leading independent schools and engage with colleagues during three days of breakout sessions and full day workshops. I'm excited to be presenting at this conference along with colleagues from Educational Collaborators!
June 25 - 27 ISTE 2012, San Diego, CA
Stay tuned about a possible Global Education Conference in person summit! I'll be also conducting a presentation during the conference on Exploring Instructional Uses of YouTube and Podcasting and Mobile Media Learning and Teaching along with Julene Reed and Larry Anderson.
June 28 - July 1 The Asia Society's Partnership for Global Learning Conference, Brooklyn, NY
The Asia Society has been on the forefront of global learning for many years, and I'm thrilled to be presenting at PGL12 along with my Global Education Conference co-conspirator, Steve Hargadon. Anne Mirtschin, an Australian educator who has been very active in our online conference, will also be traveling to NYC and I can't wait to meet her in person!
July 10 -12, iSummit, Atlanta, GA
I'm thrilled to be returning to the Coalition for Lighthouse Schools' annual conference. This is a fabulous event for independent and international schools with 1:1 Apple deployments. C0-chaired by my fellow Apple Distinguished Educator and friend, Julene Reed, this conference is a sure hit!
July 21, SDE Midwest Conference on Differentiated Instruction, Chicago, IL
SDE is one of the nation's premier providers of professional development, and I'll be presenting several sessions that be of interest to educators at their Midwest event.
August 2-5, Blackfoot ETC, Missoula, MT
After a two week sojourn with my family in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, I'll be keynoting this conference for Montana educators. I'll be focusing on mobile learning and can't wait to travel to the West to spread the word about best practices in educational technology.
Hope to connect and learning with many of you at these events!
Inspired by the ISE Wiki (http://goo.gl/kWks) which I've always admired as a great resource, I'm developing a guide to mobile learning for administrators as part of my work as the project director for the Consortium for School Networking's Leadership for Mobile Learning initiative. My plan is to use this Google Form (http://goo.gl/jydO4) to document any initiatives that I've come across, culled mostly from various news items that I have bookmarked here: http://groups.diigo.com/group/leadership-for-mobile-learning-initiative. This informal directory will help school leaders identify pioneering schools and learning from their efforts. I'm also hoping at some point to turn this into a Google Map.
Find slides for my four ISACS presentations here!
Very excited to be in Maine today, home of the famed Maine Laptop Initiative. Every educator at this conference will most likely have some sort of device as this state has been pioneering 1 to 1 computing and I'm excited to see how this has amplified technology fluency with educators.
My workshops today are two standard ones that I've been teaching and tweaking this year. I've completely re-tooled them for this event:
Exploring Instructional Uses of YouTube
Going Global: Preparing Students to be Citizens of the World
Let me know what you think and feel free to use any of these resources!
For the upcoming Chicago Tech Forum, this week I developed a handout and a Google Custom Search engine devoted to finding iOS resources. I culled my collections of links related to iPods, iPhones, and iPads to identify the best resources and moving forward, I plan to keep adding to this. The search engine is designed to search most of the web sites listed in the handout, and I'll be adding to this as well. If you're looking for a particular topic related to using these devices in schools, this engine might help you refine your search and higher quality results.
Additionally, I updated my High Techpectations Google Custom Search Engine and created a handout of education starting points. It only searches web sites that I consider to be of high quality.
With both of these search engines feel free either link to their start pages, add them to your iGoogle pages, or embed their codes in your own web sites.
I've spent a great deal of time recently pouring over existing materials for using SMART Boards and many of what I consider the best options are listed in the hand out and slidedecks below.
During the development of these materials, it's become quite clear to me that there are scads of mediocre Notebook files published on the web and, that most of these Notebook lessons, at least for my target audience of second grade teachers, really do not require a lot of deep thinking on the part of students. We seem to have amazingly low expectations of what second graders can do and the topics they are interested in. I was particularly surprised at the dearth of quality social studies lessons for this age group.
There definitely is an art to lesson planning without involving technology in the first place, and I think the challenge is even greater when you add technology to the mix. As I mention in my slides, technology ironically doesn't hide poor teaching; it illuminates it. I will state for the record that I am a fan of interactive white boards.... when used properly. I've seen teachers design interesting center activities for kids that encourages independent learning and lead great discussions involving multimedia on interactive whiteboards while using the plethora of tools in various ways. Kids have been generally engaged and attentive in these various scenarios, and I think their enthusiasm can't be discounted. If teachers aren't actively trying to use these boards to their fullest potential, I can see why some might question their value.
The other item that needs to be addressed more fully in this department is copyright. There is a lot of copying of images going on and then these files are re-published to the web. It's one thing to obtain multimedia under fair use guidelines, but then I think it's a questionable practice to re-publish that content. I'm not perfect in this area, but I just wish there was more awareness in general by fellow educators.
Anyway, hope you find the following useful... hopefully I'll refine this stuff in the future.
Below are my slidedecks from District 219's (Niles North and Niles West High Schools in Skokie, IL) technology conference. These topics have been a staple of my repertoire lately, but every time I present, I tweak the slides just a bit. Most of the things I mention are hyperlinked and will lead you directly to the resources. For instance, in the Google preso, the bullets are linked, but I didn't underline them all for esthetic purposes.
Thanks to Guy Ballard and team for a wonderful day. Great to catch up with fellow Illinois educators and to catch David Warlick's fabulous keynote. He paints a picture of current shifts in learning and as always, I'm impressed with his talent for telling the compelling story. I wish every educator and parent in the country had the opportunity to hear him, so that perhaps we all would be more on the same page.
To those who attended my sessions, thanks for your comments and input. Please stay in touch and join the Global Education Collaborative!
Here are my slides from today's presentation... I've included the notes, which served as a guide for my talk. I didn't read them verbatim or memorize them, and the notes may help to explain my talk a bit better. Also, I neglected to go into detail about one part of presentation. I had planned to describe some of the neat #globaled10 presentations that are now archived on the conference web site, and I completely skipped over this. If you are interested in diving into some recorded sessions of the Global Education Conference, make sure you take a look at some of the screenshots I provided as potential starting points.
Thank you, TEDxNYED organizers and attendees... can't wait to review other sessions and reflect on this day!
Materials for my last session at ITSC!
My many, many slides for my Beyond Search presentation tomorrow. I swear this is a hand-on session! Download the presentation from Slideshare or the PDF from Scribd and follow along. Links in these documents should be live.
We also will be creating a search scavenger hunt on this Google Doc. Feel free to add your own items for this.
On behalf of my Global Education Conference co-chair, Steve Hargadon of Classroom 2.0, and myself, I want to extend our deep felt thanks to all who participated in last week's online conference. We are particularly grateful for our amazing volunteers, partner organizations, and presenters who gave shared their expertise during the course of the week. Professional generosity really made this unique conference happen!
This free event took place entirely online using the videoconferencing tool, Elluminate. Everything went relatively smoothly with 15,028 unique logins, 8,372 hours of presentations attended, and 32,681 web site visits just this week. Sessions were recorded and can be viewed at your leisure on the conference web site.
We are really pleased with the success of our inaugural event and are thinking of how we can best carry the spirit of the conference forward. Join the official social network of the conference to stay in contact and keep developing the feeling of community that many of us experienced, particularly during the closing session. Please continue to use the Global Education Collaborative to share your work, to point out great resources, and to nurture global friendships!
If you were able to attend any live sessions, we'd love your feedback, so please take time to reply to this post in the GEC. Leave comments or post a link to your blog if you've already reflected on what you've learned. Please also visit the conference wiki, and consider joining this space to add to our growing collection of global education materials.
Stay tuned for more developments! The conference is only the beginning!
Conference Quick Links
Wiki - search for resources or add your own
http://www.globaleducationwiki.com/
Mentor Program - become a mentor or find partners for collaborative projects
http://www.globaleducationconference.com/mentor-program.html
Social Network - keep the conversations going
http://globaleducation.ning.com
Facebook - become a fan
http://www.facebook.com/#%21/pages/Global-Education-Conference/125602090788788
Flickr - share photos; participate in simple collaborative conference activities
http://www.flickr.com/groups/globaledcon/
Slideshare - presenters, post your slides here
http://www.slideshare.net/event/the-global-education-conference
Twitter - follow conference announcements
http://twitter.com/#%21/globaledcon
Twitter Search - check out what others are saying about the conference
http://twitter.com/#%21/search/globaledcon
Map - add your location to this Google Map
http://tinyurl.com/globaledconmap
Networking Directory -find and quickly connect to other conference attendees
http://tinyurl.com/gecdirectory
On Monday, November 15, 2010, Steve Hargadon and I are bringing together real superheroes. We've joined forces via our respective education social networks, Classroom 2.0 and the Global Education Collaborative, to showcase best practices in global education using the videoconferencing platform, Elluminate. With more than 350 general sessions and 60 keynote sessions, our colleagues in our personal learning networks will ponder the future of education globally in this completely free and virtual conference.
We've chosen to organize an event that we believe will re-inspire educators in this age of school reform. Never before has it been easier to connect classrooms around the world using technology, and we believe that the cornerstone of our success as a global community lies in students and teachers learning how to connect, communicate and collaborate. The next generation faces increasingly complex problems with world-wide implications, and in order to tackle these challenges, students today must learn to work effectively in our knowledge-based, global economy. These are not simply concerns for education in the United States, but global issues that require open and collaborative engagement that reaches beyond borders.
But what is global education exactly? The term seems to have varying connotations for people. For some, global education relates to the United Nations Millennium Development Goal of universal primary education for the world's children. To others, it might mean educating about global social justice issues such as human trafficking and disease prevention. In schools, global education generally has been addressed by providing multicultural experiences to students so that they develop a better understanding of geography and cultures.
The other day I came across some well articulated thoughts on the subject that broaden traditional interpretations of global education. In 2004, Fairleigh Dickinson University President J. Michael Adams reflected on his attempt to define global education in his inaugural address:
Global education can be summarized by connections and perspectives. It's about understanding the nature of the connections that link people from all corners of the globe, and it's about expanding those connections for the betterment of all. It means considering the world as a whole, with a rich (and sometimes unpleasant) interplay of nations and cultures. And it's about introducing ourselves and our students to multiple viewpoints, so we might develop the ability to understand the world through the eyes of others and to work alongside others from different backgrounds.
During the 2010 Global Education Conference, we'll be encouraging our colleagues to ponder their own definitions of global education and to think about how to practically weave global awareness into their teaching as recommended by the Partnership for 21st Century Skills' Framework for 21st Learning. According to the Partnership, academic content is still important in today's classrooms, but teachers need to artfully integrate content with 21st-century themes of global awareness, civic literacy, environmental literacy, health literacy, and financial literacy.
Thought leaders from innovative education-related organizations such as iEARN, ePals, and the Asia Society Partnership for Global Learning will be joining us to generously share their work, in addition to more than 300 classroom practitioners and students. This conference offers something for everyone, and it is our hope that participants will be empowered by discovering and exploring a multitude of resources. Technology makes this global online gathering possible, and it's time to start leveraging its power to improve education.
For more information and the full schedule of sessions and keynotes, visit globaleducationconference.com
The Global Education Conference Flickr Group
In order to show people how social media can be used to facilitate collaboration, I thought I'd develop a few activities in Flickr to take place in conjunction with the Global Education Conference. This event will take place entirely online using the video conferencing platform called Elluminate during the week of November 15-19. For further details, visit globaleducationconference.com. Also, consider joining our social network at http//globaleducation.ning.com.
I am going to post an activity for each day of the conference, but feel free to jump and post photos to these activities at any time. Also, feel free to list your own idea for an activity in the Flickr group's discussion area. Let's see how we can use this group to get to know each other and to explore the features of Flickr!
Let me know if you have any questions!
Steve Hargadon of Classroom 2.0 and I are co-chairs of a free, online conference scheduled to take place during the week of November 15-19. The focus is on global collaboration and bringing interested parties together to explore best practices in helping students and educators develop global competencies. General sessions are starting to be posted at http://globaleducationconference.com and we have over 50 partners including NAIS, the Joan Ganz Cooney Center, the Asia Society, ePals, iEARN, CoSN and the Discovery Educator network.
Live blogging for #tep10 will appear here staring in about 6 hours. Send me an email at elemenous at gmail.com or a DM via Twitter (@elemenous) if you'd like to participate. Joining me will be Kevin Brookhouser and Julene Reed!
Please help me spread the word by posting to your blog, Facebook page, or retweeting. Also, consider getting involved with any of these efforts. Let me know if you have questions!
Here are my presentations from the 2010 ICE conference. Also, check out various links on Bag the Web here, here and here.
Using Technology to Foster Exploration and Reflection in Science
View more presentations from elemenous.
State of Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century
View more presentations from elemenous.
Google Web Search: Classroom Lessons and Resources
View more presentations from elemenous.
Get a taste of the Breakthrough Learning education summit that was held at Google at the end of October. I had the great privilege of attending this historic event and I'm glad to see that the ideas discussed are shared this way with the general public. As a friend noted afterwards, this stuff needs to go viral in the way TEDTalks have.
I've been involved peripherally with Google's education efforts since 2006 as a blogger for the Infinite Thinking Machine and as a Google Certified Teacher. It's been exciting to watch their education initiatives develop, and this event was significant as it indicates that Google plans to continue its role in conversations about education at a national level. The fact that both CEO Eric Schmidt and co-founder Sergey Brin addressed this audience was not lost on me, and I can't wait to see what develops as a result of this two day convening of people influential in the world of education.
I love education conferences in general, and could soak up the ideas of others forever, so I enjoyed 99% of the speakers at Breakthrough Learning. I was particularly struck by Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, who apparently really knows education through his involvement with the California State Board of Education and KIPP. He's clearly a brilliant guy who understands that there aren't quick fixes to our nation's educational woes. I also loved NYC principal Jason Levy's story of turning around his school with computers and Google Apps. As one of the few practitioners represented in the speaker line up, his presentation was truly compelling.
Here's the official Google video from day 1. More to come!
Also, check out Esther Wojcicki and Jason Levy in these videos:
Imagine a learning community for educators, a place where teachers can connect to the world. Teachers can pose questions and receive just in time help and advice from virtual colleagues. Links to interesting web sites are exchanged. Practitioners connect with researchers at universities. Up to the minute news is disseminated and absorbed. Multimedia is viewed and critiqued by audiences beyond the walls of a single school.
Such a community isn't that far fetched. In fact, many do exist on the Internet today, thanks to the powerful digital technologies of the information age. Educators are also creating their own customized personalized learning networks using a variety of tools. To the detriment of their students, millions of educators worldwide are missing out because they don't embrace new media, haven't realized its potential, or are simply denied access to the Internet's riches for various reasons. How can we help teachers foster breakthrough learning? How do we guide teachers through a process that empowers them to take ownership of their own professional development and deepen their impact on their classrooms? Encouraging teachers to develop their own personal learning networks can be one part of the solution.
I can pinpoint two pivotal experiences that mark the start of my own personal learning network journey. The first came in 2005 when a fellow Apple Distinguished Educator introduced a term completely foreign to me: RSS or Real Simple Syndication. Because of RSS, I started following news sources and weblogs of experts, even venturing into blogging myself as a method of recording my professional ideas and resources. Information efficiently arrived in my newsreader; no longer did I have to chase it down by visiting individual sites.A second defining moment happened a year later while on vacation. I was sitting in a Paris hotel room, uploading photos from my laptop computer to Flickr, a photo sharing site. I unexpectedly received an instant message from Portland, Oregon principal Tim Lauer. I had met Tim two years prior at a workshop he led at the National Educational Computing Conference . Tim indicated in his IM that he had noticed that I was in Paris as he saw my very recently uploaded photos on Flickr. In fact, he had just visited Paris himself and had wanted to visit a historic paint store, but had missed the opportunity. He sent me a link to an NPR piece on the Sennelier shop, and asked me to find it and take pictures if I had the chance. Fortuitously, the shop was only two blocks away from my hotel. I trotted over took a few pictures and emailed them to Tim. Thus, began our collegial friendship which continues on. Not only did I glean a bit about the rich history of this paint shop that day, but perhaps more importantly, I realized that communication, resource sharing and collegiality could extend way beyond my classroom walls in Chicago. I was no longer limited by traditional means.
Since then, I've continued to explore both informal and formal networked professional development opportunities. I've always been curious about getting ideas from those with different experiences and perspectives. My arsenal of learning tools has grown to include Web 2.0 applications such as Delicious and Diigo for sharing bookmarks, Google Docs for sharing and storing documents online, and Twitter for connecting to people from many education related fields.
Social networks also have supported my professional development. Facebook keeps me current with the work of organizations such as Edutopia, PBS Teachers, and Curriki . I often refer to Classroom 2.0, a web site developed using the Ning platform, when looking for concrete examples of technology infused projects, and for when I have questions related to educational technology. Inspired by the success of this site, I even created my own Ning on the topic of global education, bringing together educators interested in global projects.
Online meeting spaces are currently intriguing me. One network that has proven to be invaluable is EdTechTalk, a collaborative web casting community. Educators volunteer to host weekly live online interviews with a wide variety of guests. Listeners participate via a back channel chat room, asking questions, suggesting resources, and sharing experiences. All sessions are recorded and archived in a podcast format for those unable to attend. I am also interested in the delivery of online professional development and have recently started using a meeting tool called Elluminate while participating in webinars run by Steve Hargadon and sponsored by several entities at the Future of Education.
Note that none of the tools I've mentioned thus far costs me a cent. More importantly, I can engage with tools and content when my schedule allows. I choose to develop professionally using the tools that matter to me because I believe that educators must continue to evolve and refine their work. I must practice what I preach.
To demonstrate the power of a personal learning network, I recently used Twitter to pose a link to a survey for my online colleagues on the potential of digital technologies to transform teaching and learning. If you're not quite convinced on these potential transformational effects, take a look at the stories submitted from over 60 educators around the world. Change is indeed happening; we just need to get more educators on board. Our next step in this area should be to contemplate how to effectively help educators to customize their own professional development on a large scale.
Here is the survey I created using a form in Google Docs and here are the results. (Also, check out this word cloud based on survey responses.) One comment in particular sums this up for me. In an excerpt of a survey comment, Keith Hamon of Macon, Georgia writes:
"Technology has enabled global networks which have put me at the center of my learning. This is one of the neat tricks of the shift from hierarchical structures to network structures. As a student in an old-school hierarchy, I was at the bottom of the food chain with all the other students, with teachers a bit higher up, and then department chairs, deans, and so on...but in a personal learning network, I am at the center...This gives me great power to pursue the learning that is important to me, to create my own educational program. I am my own universe - ity. But here's the real magic: so is everyone else. In a network, we are all in the center, all empowered to work the network—adding value and taking value—to meet our goals."
On Thursday, I'll be at this EdWeek event and am planning on live blogging as much as possible. I'm particularly looking forward to hearing keynoters Susan Patrick and Eliot Soloway! Feel free to join in the live blog I've created.
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:
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
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.
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!
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.
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!
NICE Mini-Conference 2008: Google in Education
NICE Mini-Conference 2008: Global Awareness
DOWNLOAD PDF :
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.
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!
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!
Google Preso
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!
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.
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.
Recent Comments