Day 1 of NECC '06 in San Diego

The End of the First Day of NECC is upon us.

I am going to be blogging the happenings at NECC. It has been a wonderful opportunity to see new things that are happening. I will intersperse these accounts of my doings with comments on interesting software packages, people, ideas and places that I see.

This is actually before the actual beginning of the conference. Actually, I guess the conference began tonight with the gala reception and festive fireworks. Would you believe that we went out on the terrace of the Convention Center where we watched 5 sets of fireworks exploding up and down the San Diego coastline. AND they were all synchonized.

But I jump ahead of myself. My NECC day began with attending the ISTE NETS Forum. This was a meeting where the ISTE folks who developed the NETS (National Educational Technology Standards) 8 years ago, were meeting with educators from around the country (and even the world) to discuss how they can be updated. We were engaged in a number of interesting activities including identifying the new technologies and educational applications for the past 5 years.

An important thing for me to share here, is the address for a survey on the NETS Standards that they want as many educators as possible to fill out. If you want to have a say in how the next set of NETS standards look, complete the survey at this address:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=390142293245

3D-Interactive Mindmapping: Saw some interesting software tonight at the reception. My favorite is called 3D-Interactive Mindscene. It is a mindmapping tool that allows you to review an "aerial view" of a mind map for the book "Of Mice and Men." Then you can change your perspective and move down to a more "on the ground" perspective as you "walk through your mindmap" of the book. You can visit the site of this company at http://www.reachout-interactives.com. The site takes you through a multimedia presentation. This is the only book they have developed but the possibilities are endless.

simSchool: Saw an interesting simulation software that creates a classroom simulation that poses classroom situations/problems for teachers and they can practice their teaching skills in handling the problems and get immediate feedback about their success. I didn't get an opportunity to spend much time playing with this software but if what I saw in the short demo holds true with the rest of the product, this looks like a valuable tool for teacher education and mentoring. You can get to it at simSchool. Click on the "Tour the Classroom" button to try it out. You have to register but it is worth it.

My Hero: www.myhero.com is a site where kids from around the world post stories and videos about those people who are important to them. Apparently over 20,000 schools are registered on this website. I may go to the screening on July 6th from 4 - 7 pm to see more about it.

Well, that is the beginning of my experience at NECC. If there is anything that you want me to search for, leave a comment on this blog.

Nite,

Z