Other blogs on the conference....

Quite a few folks were blogging about their conference experience. Here's a list provided by NECC:

http://center.uoregon.edu/ISTE/NECC2005/glance/blogging.php

Thursday

Ok, just too much for me this morning! No post on the session I attended... I was getting my thoughts together on my presentation and trying to pay attention. On that note, you can see my web site in support of my presentation at:
http://homepage.mac.com/hermanwood/BPL/main.htm

I had no more than a dozen people flow through, about half that stopped to chat. Several from private institutions near us that wanted to just stop by and say thanks for paving the way with our initiative. They all expressed their support for our efforts- some even offering to write letters to the media. It's certainly nice to hear support from other professionals!

ES solutions that work

The title was:
Technology Solutions That Work! Research-Based Practices for Elementary Grades, presented by the Metiri (sp?) Group. They gave us free access for few days only to a large body of research with a token that we can use to create a temporary login. As you see things you want to keep up with, remember that under the print dialog on your Mac on the lower left part of the window under the PDF button, you have several options, including save as PDF.

Here's the link & token information:
http://www.Metiri.com/tsw
token for tsw is necc2005
entire database for only a few days
The presentation is at: metiri.com/presentations/necc2005

I don't think access is set up yet.

Keynote this morning

"The Natives are Restles"
Interesting session- she spent almost the whole session in character. First, as Dr. Normal, your special sage on the stage teacher who knows nothing about technology & can barely run "puwer point", then as 3 different students sharing their stories, all success stories enabled by technology. One movie she showed was from Dianne Lewis, whose name you might recognize as someone Linda saw at the leadership institute & commented on. You didn't get anything close to the whole story on Dianne Lewis, but you got enough of a taste to want to see more. (The movie was the one using dog training as a metaphor.)

Notes from the exhibit floor

Suggest you all visit tech4learning & look at web blender. It looks very easy & creates simple code for web pages. That's it for now...

Overcoming obstacles to Webquests

This was an interesting presentation in that Bernie Dodge talked about all the obstacles to webquest creation and possible solutions, none quite perfect. Then, in the last ten minutes he showed a solution he has put together that brought some gasps from the audience in terms of ease, appearance, and essentially solved all the problems he had gone over. He will release it for free on 9/1/2005 for one year. After that, it will cost $20 for two years. Everyone in the audience was quite happy about that information.

My notes below with links:

http://webquest.org
Takes you through all the steps that you should do, co-authors possible
ability for webquest workshop leaders to monitor progress
also able to download someone else's webquest into your space to tweak it.
stored on site or moved off to any other site, ability to translate multiple languages, style sheet control over fonts, but can change style sheets
available for everyone on September 1 for 1 year free, then $20 for 2 years.

iPod in Education @ the booth

Here's my notes from the iPod in Education presentation this morning at the Apple booth:

Use of iPod in the classroom
Mentioned setting up audio from a time period in history to set the environment
historical speeches available through archives
audio through NASA
showed text capabilites of ipod
foreign language music also to set tone & environment, different way to experience the language
iTalk shown, to allow to record voice onto ipod itself-
Audio tours created by students with iTalk- examples on Apple iPod example page
zoo tour done by first graders
interviews
radio shows
way to record audio for use in iMovie
audio saved only with date & time stamp- use iTunes later to rename.
Photo iPod
Photo slide show for walking tour of Philly shown
Camera connector for getting photos to iPod
Present from iPod itself to LCD
www.kitzu.com- pics & resources for use in multimedia projects, stuff from museums, audio also there for download.
ipod + distribution
itunes 4.9 let's you subscribe to podcasting via rss, ways to publish podcasts as well.
If podcasting blows up for education, which it sure seems to be doing at this convention, then us having one for work usage is absolutely a valid purchase!
NECC Dashboard wideget- didn't quite catch what he was saying, but it looked like they showed a NECC widget, but I could not tell the purpose.... sorry!

Read, Write, & Blog

Mindy & I enjoyed this one. The Chicago Publics Schools discussed their use of blogs and invited us to use their resources for staff development or in any way we choose. Mindy has the handout & perhaps the links there are better than this one:

http://learntoblog.weblogger.com

Breakfast

Interesting comments this morning about the mistake we made as we started our initiative. I don't agree, because I don't think the speaker understands all the players or considers their possible motivations.

The New Shape of Knowledge

What did you think of the keynote? Randy, I'd especially love to hear what what you have to say!!

Here's a link to his home & main blog:

http://www.evident.com/

http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/

Welcome

I've set this up as a common place we can come to comment on a session, share information about the conference, or simply to communicate. Please use it any way you see fit!