Day 2 of NECC '06 in San Diego

While Day 2 of NECC was intriguing, it was a bit of a technological challenge. I seem to have lost my ability to access the wireless network through my computer so I will be unable to provide the "on the spot" blogging that I had hoped to do. I worked with multiple Mac gurus (including Richard at the Apple Exhibit) and it turns out that I can access the Web through a direct connect to my computer but not through wireless. This provides creedance to the age old (at least 10 years old) adage that there are three types of death: Brain death, Body death and being off-line.

I was fortunate enough to go to the SIGTC (Special Interest Group for Technology Coordinators) breakfast. The $15 breakfast (biscotti, muffins, and coffee) wasn't much but the entertainment was great. It began with a Web 2.0 panel including David Warlick, Tony Vincent, Will Richardson, Thor Prichard and John Hendron. I won't describe these folks because it is already posted at the SIGTC wiki. You will find links to their websites as well as the podcast of the discussion as well.

This is exciting that SIGTC already has this posted. We (SIGTC) will be using a wiki and a variety of Web 2.0 apps to provide resources for educators to use.

A highlight of the day was the keynote speaker, DeWitt Jones. DeWitt is a photographer for National Geographic. He gave a wonderful hour-long talk where he shared some of his life stories and then connected them with the photos that he has taken over his lifetime. He said that his interests are Vision, Passion, Purpose and Creativity. I was most impressed with his comment that "If you truly have a mission, the passion will be there. The purpose and creativity will follow without question."

I also had an opportunity to listen to Tim Wilson. Tim is the host of one of my favorite education podcasts, The Savvy Technologist. It was a great presentation. He has already posted his links to his website and will probably put his podcast up soon. I greatly appreciated Tim's view of the future. He spoke of Applications, Conversations, Audience and Challenges. One of his emphases was keeping students safe online. He suggested that we use tools on our server so that we can pull the plug until it is remedied. He isn't saying that we can fully control their access to technology, he only wants us to have a certain amount of sway so that they will pay attention.

Tim mentioned that we don't do much to teach web safety to our students. An attendee mentioned the iSafe curriculum. I don't know much about it but you can check it our at http://www.isafe.org/

I attended a presentation on Writer's Companion at the Visions booth on the Exhibit Hall. it is an interesting program that merges a graphic organizer, word processor, and desktop publisher to create a powerful tool for student writing. I need to review it a little more. This will be much easier since I won a copy of it at the end of the demonstration - lucky me.

Tomorrow, at 8:30, I will be at Nicholas Negroponte's keynote where he will unveil the $100 computer. I wrote about this earlier in this blog. It has a great photo of it. I will tell you more after I see it tomorrow.

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

Blueberries . . . Soft Semantics

Continuation of my discussion with Dr. David Thornburg:

David,

I think that you are getting caught up in "soft semantics."

Whether you want to admit it or not, education has a set of products. Dictionary.com defines "product" as:

1. Something produced by human or mechanical effort or by a natural process.
2. A direct result; a consequence: “Is history the product of impersonal social and economic forces?” (Anthony Lewis).

As ethereal as you want to be about education, educators do a great deal of work and they have products. The question arises when we try to define how these products are measured.

Should we use tests? Sometimes.
Should use Porter-esque rubrics to evaluate projects? Sometimes.
Should we use attitudinal surveys? Sometimes.
Should we just talk with the students to see how they feel? Sometimes.
Should we interview parents to understand their perceptions? Sometimes.

There is a plethora of opportunities for evaluating the success of the educators in achieving their goals of producing their products (whatever they may be.)

Creating a positive educational environment is the key to developing a learning situation where students can succeed. This environment is filled with intangibles but it is still developed by the educators (these include the classroom teachers as well as the administrators, staff, school board members, parents and community members.) Much like going to your Japanese restaurant, the school and classroom teachers try to provide a successful experience to all who come. It works for some and doesn't work for others.

Having taught for 6 years in a dropout recovery program in East Los Angeles, I know something about systems that don't work. I also know about finding and creating systems that appeal to the students that don't "fit in." In every case, there is a product that we are trying to create. That product is not the student but the student's ability to succeed in the world in later life. We can't follow the student into later life to measure our success, so we identify the skills that we believe are necessary to succeed, we find ways to measure the success on a more immediate basis.

It is a problem when we don't feel that we can measure our success in achieving our goals in the classroom. Usually educators say that this is because we don't want to be told that we didn't succeed. If we can't find ways to measure our success, we will have no way to be able to compliment ourselves when we have successfully created our "product."

Thoughtfully yours,

Leigh

Blueberries . . . But curriculum isn't our product

Continuation of my discussion with Dr. David Thornburg:

David,

I must disagree about curriculum being our product. The success of our students' learning is the product. The students are clients but their parents are as much the clients as the students. It is the parents who move their students to a different school if they don't see the results that they want with their cherished children.

Leigh

Our kids aren't blueberries

I recently sent a link to a great story that connects kids with Blueberries. No, these are not computer-Blackberries.
It is about a lecture that was given by Jamie Volmer. Jamie was giving a speech to teachers where he was connecting education with a business model.
http://www.blogger.com/img/gl.link.gif
http://teachers.net/gazette/JUN02/vollmer.html

I sent this link to a mail serve where I got into a discussion about this with David Thornburg. I have asked him for permission to post this discussion here in my blog.

I will provide this by posting his responses as comments to my postings throughout this blog.

Z

Building Community through Blogs

Blogs . . . Blogs . . . Blogs . . .

Blogs are a wonderful way to communicate with others about your ideas and develop a community of like-interested folk who want to discuss things. At first, I wrote "Like-minded folk" in the previous sentence, but that could and would make it a bit boring. Like interested folks are those who may have differing opinions on similar ideas.

The most important part of a blog is building community. I started a blog on EdTechTalk.com but no body responded. It identified that people read the post but there were not comments. This isn't much of a community. Either I am not very interesting, or people are not very talkative. Either way, a community needs to have a dialog between those who are writing and those who are reading.

a $100 computer for only $300

What a Deal!!!!!

You have probably heard of the MIT $100 computer by now. This is a computer that is designed to make computing available for underdeveloped countries.

The proposed $100 machine will be a Linux-based, with a dual-mode display—both a full-color, transmissive DVD mode, and a second display option that is black and white reflective and sunlight-readable at 3× the resolution. The laptop will have a 500MHz processor and 128MB of DRAM, with 500MB of Flash memory; it will not have a hard disk, but it will have four USB ports. The laptops will have wireless broadband that, among other things, allows them to work as a mesh network; each laptop will be able to talk to its nearest neighbors, creating an ad hoc, local area network. The laptops will use innovative power (including wind-up) and will be able to do most everything except store huge amounts of data. (http://www.laptop.org/faq.en_US.html)

This computer is designed to provide computing power at an affordable price. I was listening to the TWIT (This Week In Technology) podcast where they were discussing the features of the computer including the power generating crank. I heard Leo Laport say "What are you going to use a computer for if you don't have the power to run it?" He obviously "doesn't get it." I have lived in Malaysia where many of the children went to school by day and returned to their homes which were plywood huts that had no electricity. Having one of these computers would allow them to continue in their studies. They don't have to be chatting or web surfing. Writing in the dynamic world of word processing allows for students to revise at will and develop into better writers. The world is not based upon technology, but if students have the opportunity to develop their skills and knowledgebase through technology, they will be better prepared for the world of today and tomorrow. KUDOS MIT!!!!

An interesting proposal has come to the forefront. Let's purchase these $100 computer for $300. Pledgebank is providing an opportunity to make this purchase so that you can help support providing computers for students in underdeveloped countries. Basically, your additional $200 would buy 2 computers for the needy students. (I would suppose that it would be tax-deductible but I would check with your CPA.)

Nicholas Negroponte will be speaking at NECC 2006 in San Diego on Thursday, July 6, 8:30 - 9:45 am. He will discuss the "One Laptop Per Child" initiative.