One more time, this is my first time at NECC! One of the things that is very different from my state educational technology conference is the size of the exhibit floor. It is immense and the displays are the size of small stores that I might find in my hometown. Clarence Fisher, over at Remote Access posted his reaction to the exhibit floor. I felt compelled to report my reaction to the exhibit floor, as well as my reaction to his reaction. Mr. Fisher suggests the exhibit floor has no meaning for him, because he can manage his classroom using free tools in a DIY manner. I applaud his efforts…I share his blog with teachers…I share his practices as best practices.

If I had a district full of DIY teachers, an IT department of a size that could support the DIY efforts and federal guidelines that didn’t tie teachers down, I would agree that the need for vendors of products would be greatly reduced. However, after meeting teachers at NECC that had never heard of google docs and seemed confused about what type of computers were being used in their district - it becomes obvious that some teachers need a packaged product. Visiting booths like Fablevision, Tech4Learning, Discovery Education, Kerpoof and VoiceThread should not be missed. In fact, visiting the booths new to NECC this year gave me the chance to talk with many products that would otherwise have escaped my attention.

Many of my teachers are enthused to teach with technology and engage students in learning using technology tools. If the available tools are not reliable or require technical tinkering, teacher confidence plummets and often techniques revert to tried and true methods. The big vendors are giving away big prizes. If a teacher at NECC chooses to sit down for the 8 minute Plato presentation and wins and iPod or PSP to use in the classroom, who can blame them? It’s true that the content these vendors demonstrate can often be replicated with free tools. However, if attending one of those well packaged presentations excites a teacher and sparks desire in that teacher to talk to someone that recommends a free product to do the same thing, then that’s a winning situation in my eyes. I visit the exhibit floor because my district has funded me to attend the conference and one of my roles is to evaluate tools and products, for good and bad.

Technorati Tags: necc2008 mkrill mmkrill exhibit

There will be many posts coming out of San Antonio this week. I was disappointed (and secretly relieved) to find out that the fitness center in my hotel was closed for renovations. Now that I’ve experienced the vastness of the NECC convention center, I realize I’ll be getting tons of exercise! One thing I’m worried about is cramped toes from sitting with my laptop on my lap. Check out this image and see if you that’s how you sit with your laptop? I’m coining a term for it - laptop feet!

Technorati Tags: necc2008 laptopfeet mkrill mmkrill

Using Diigo and Grazr, I will be feeding in any links from NECC 2008 that I bookmark.

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With NECC quickly approaching, I’ve been working to design my conference experience using the conference planner. After talking to folks that have attended in the past, I added all the concurrent sessions I have an interest in and will decide which to attend once I’m there. The problem is that I want to attend ALL the sessions I have selected!

I have never spent this much time prepping for a conference. I’d bet I have 20 hours of prep work in already and there’s still a few days to go.

I’m hoping to have a chance to see some sites when I’m in Texas, as it’s the first time I’ll be in the Lone Star state.

Stay tuned here and at the Reporting Back wikispace for notes from the sessions I attend. It’s possible some other attendees may post notes there also.

Tags: necc2008necc krill iste

A group of teens participated in a prank that involved tossing a soft drink in the drive through window at the establishment employee. Then, they posted a video of the incident on YouTube. Interestingly enough, the victim at first thought the prank was personal, but then heard about the YouTube posting. The victim did some personal detective work and discovered the identity of the pranksters. Now, the perpetrators have been ordered to post an apology video on YouTube. Read the USA Today article . Also, see the apology video.

This isn’t the beginning of shame as punishment as noted in a 2004 USA Today article that describes shaming sentences as “… sometimes called Scarlet Letter punishments, after Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1850 novel in which an adulteress is forced to wear a scarlet “A” on her clothes.”

We discussed this topic in a workshop not too long ago and there were folks on both sides of the fence as to whether shame was a good punishment or not. What do you think?

The Literature Mapping site is really cool! At first glance it might seem bland, but go ahead and give it a try. I think you will quickly see that the literature mapping site could be really useful in class. Enter an author name and click the continue button. An author cloud will appear and authors that are similar will populate the screen and move around. The closer two writers are, the more likely someone will like both of them. Then you can click on other names and see their cloud.

I do not know for sure how the connections are determined, but even the use of this site to spark discussion about literature would be useful in a classroom.

I dug down (or back) a bit to learn that the literature map site leads back to Gnod. Here you can do a similar search for movies, music and even people!  From the site:

Gnod is my experiment in the field of artificial intelligence. Its a self-adapting system, living on this server and ‘talking’ to everyone who comes along. Gnods intention is to learn about the outer world and to learn ‘understanding’ its visitors. This enables gnod to share all its wisdom with you in an intuitive and efficient way. You might call it a search-engine to find things you don’t know about.

I continue to be amazed by what people are able to do…

Here’s hoping you find some of these useful:)

• Edheads - Activate Your Mind!

  Edheads helps students learn through educational games and activities designed to meet state and national standards. We partner with various school systems in the United States, which help us research, design and test our activities every step of the way!

  tags: science, weather, physics, interactive, math, cff_sites

• DIGITAL LEARNING ENVIRONMENTS: Tools and Technologies for Effective Classrooms - Annotated

  tags: screencasts, free, tutorials

• Mactopia - Discover Office 2008 for Mac from Microsoft

  Many resources for mac users.

  tags: mactip

• CSI: The Experience - Web Adventures

  tags: csi, science, cff, forensics

• Jakesonline Wiki

  Schools need to prepare students for a lifetime of storytelling through a variety of media, so that students can have a voice, and a voice that is heard.

  tags: jakes, digitalstorytelling

• Dandelife.com : A Social Biography Network.

  Dandelife is a place for you to record the events of your life, past and present, public and private.

  tags: digitalstorytelling, timeline, web2, tools, mashup

• Center for Digital Storytelling

  California-based non-profit 501(c)3 arts organization rooted in the art of personal storytelling. We assist people of all ages in using the tools of digital media to craft, record, share, and value the stories of individuals and communities, in ways that improve all our lives.

  tags: digitalstorytelling, storytelling, technology, pd

• 10 Big Myths about copyright explained

  Article by Brad Templeton about copyright…mentions of fair use. Would be interesting to include when working with students

  tags: copyright

• flickrCC

  FlickrCC - easily find photos on flickr that are released under the creative commons license.

  tags: creativecommons, flickr, tools, photography, search, images

• Emotional Engagement in Education

  Part One: Should Teachers Care About Student Apathy? | Edutopia

  tags: pbl, edutopia, moulton, pd, cff

• RTI Action Network - Home

  Response to Intervention (RTI) is a multi-tiered approach to help struggling learners. Students’ progress is closely monitored at each stage of intervention to determine the need for further research-based instruction and/or intervention in general education, in special education, or both.

  tags: rti, network

• Thinkature - Real-time collaboration for the web

  Real-time collaboration for the web.

  tags: collaboration, web2, mindmap, cff, iwb

• misterlamb » grading

  tags: cff, assessment, pd

• Jim Moulton’s Site

  Technology Integration and Project-Based Learning Consulting

  tags: pbl, speaker

• The American Institute for History Education (AIHE)

  tags: cff, socialstudies, history

Enjoy the links! I hope you find them useful:)

• National Education Network GalleryAll the resources in this Gallery have been provided freely for Educational use only.
• Animals Public Domain Pictures, Free Photos, Royalty Free Stock ImagesRoyalty free stock photos. All images are free for commercial and personal use.
• Tools for facilitating PBL? » Moving at the Speed of CreativityOne of the biggest challenges to embracing project-based learning as a teacher, however, is the formidable task of structuring, monitoring, managing and evaluating student work.
• eThemes | eMINTSeThemes is an extensive database of content-rich, age-appropriate resources organized around specific themes. These resources are created for educators to use in their classrooms.
• It’s No Laughing MatterAnalyzing Political Cartoons - The Learning Page from the Library of Congress
• National Library of Virtual Manipulatives
• The PBL Launch Pad: Worthwhile Projects for High School Students, Part 2 | EdutopiaProject-based learning has the potential to become one of the most useful and defensible instructional strategies of this age.
• The PBL Launch Pad: Worthwhile Projects for High School Students, Part 1 | EdutopiaA project-based-learning teacher and coach writes about “the most effective tool for organizing content and motivating students to think hard.”
• Collaborative Videoconferences wiki - Join a collaborative community genera…This wiki is a collection of educator-created templates and projects for collaborative videoconferences.
• Facebook and Google in Reference Checks - What Employers Use to Research YouSocial networking sites like Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn and search engines like Yahoo and Google have become very popular for employers to search and screen applicants.
• Computerworld - Wikipedia breeds ‘unwitting trust’ says IT professorStudents banned from citing Wikipedia in coursework.
• skrbl: easy to share online whiteboardShare resources with your team, co browse the web, annotate shared documents, video phone, skype calls … share ideas, communicate & sync like never before. ‘team-skrbl’ is the next best thing to being in the same room.
• Team WhiteBoarding with Twiddla - Painless Team Collaboration for the WebTwiddla is a free web-based whiteboarding software, but also a complete online collaboration solution
• Math Video Help, Math Worksheets, Math Word ProblemsAt TuLyn, we have hundreds of video tutorials on math. Our video clips cover most math topics you learn from kindergarten to high school. Our math video clips provide you all the math help you need.
• OpenDOAR - Home Page - Directory of Open Access RepositoriesAs well as providing a simple repository list, OpenDOAR lets you search for repositories or search repository contents. Additionally, we provide tools and support to both repository administrators and service providers in sharing best practice and improving the quality of the repository infrastructure.
• Directory of open access journalsThis service covers free, full text, quality controlled scientific and scholarly journals.
• NoodleTools : MLA / APA Bibliography Composer, Notecards, Free Research ToolsNoodleTools provides innovative software that teaches students and supports teachers and librarians throughout the entire research process.
• NoteStar : A Project Based Learning Research ToolNoteStar is an Internet utility to assist in the preparation of research papers. Teachers and students can set up research projects with topics and sub-topics. Students may then take advantage of NoteStar’s many features to collect and organize their notes and prepare their bibliography page.
• Macworld | Mac OS X Hints | Easily view an application’s icons
• Primary PreoccupationThoughts from a grade one teacher.
• Speak Up Press Release - AnnotatedStudents Want the 21st Century Classroom, but Schools Not Meeting Student Expectations, According to Latest National Study
• Site administration block - MoodleDocsStep by step directions for the headings under Site Administration.
• Course: Introduction to the Moodle System Administration PanelDirect link to moodle system administration panel.
• Project TomorrowPreparing today’s students to be tomorrow’s innovators, leaders and engaged citizens
• Staff DevelopmentSome of the documents from our staff development sessions at Central Bucks East.

The results from the Speak Up 2007 survey (formerly Net Day) have been compiled and released in a seven page pdf file. The following notes are my annotations from Diigo. Many of the findings are interesting, these are the ones that struck me as I read through the press release today. I have the pdf saved for later reading and digesting. Check it out for yourself at Project Tomorrow. The link to the PDF is on the left menu.

• Speak Up Press Release

  Students Want the 21st Century Classroom, but Schools Not Meeting Student Expectations, According to Latest National Study

  • The 2007 online survey collected authentic, unfiltered views and ideas from over 367,000 education stakeholders representing schools in all 50 states, bringing the total of survey participants to over 1.2 million over the past 5 years.

  • This disconnect is evident in the fact that 66% of school administrators, 47% of teachers, and 43% of parents say “local schools are doing a good job preparing students for the jobs and careers of the future,” but over 40% of middle and high school students stated that teachers limit their use of technology in schools. Forty-five percent of middle and high school students indicated that tools meant to protect them, such as firewalls and filters are inhibiting their learning.

  • “It is in our nation’s best interest that we support and facilitate student usage of technology for learning.”

  • 46% (of teachers) said they would like to receive specific professional development on how to effectively integrate gaming technologies into curriculum.

  • With the release of Speak Up 2007 results, Evans called upon education leaders at all levels to put aside their own “digital immigrant” paradigms and to listen to students who are not only on the cutting edge of technology innovation but whose future is dependent upon our ability to deliver upon the promise of a world quality, global 21st century education.

To learn more about Project Tomorrow and Speak Up, click here.

Technorati Tags: speakup 21stcentury edtech krill

• dogtrax - Animation-Claymation Camp Overview

tags: stopmotion, claymation, animation

• Top News - States struggle with assessing tech literacy At CoSN’s annual conference, representatives from two states discussed how they are meeting this challenge

tags: techplan, digLiteracy, assessment

• Research: Students Actually Use the Internet for Education : August 2007 : THE Journal It turns out kids are actually using the Internet for educational purposes.

tags: article, pd, 21st, techplan

• Are Schools Inhibiting 21st Century Learning? : April 2008 : THE Journal The idea of technology in education is to enhance learning, not limit it…

tags: article, 21st, techplan

• #1 Song on This Date in History

tags: fun, music, billboard

• National Gallery of Art NGAkids Art Zone Interactive art that you can make online.

tags: art, collage

• Home Empower Peace is a non-profit organization that is dedicated to building a worldwide network of high school students and teachers committed to breaking down cultural barriers and misperceptions through open dialogue using videoconferencing, the Internet and other new technologies.

tags: videoconference, collaboration

• Setting up your PLN - Horizon Project 2008 A networking space for teachers and students of the Horizon Project 2008.

tags: ning, bestpractices, socialnetwork, pln, horizon

• From Toy to Tool: Cell Phones in Learning A discussion on methods cell phones can be utilized as classroom learning tools.

tags: education, CellPhones, edtech

• Top 10 Ways Best Ways to Manage Firefox Tabs

tags: firefox, tips, extensions

• Internet Archive The Internet Archive is building a digital library of Internet sites and other cultural artifacts in digital form. Like a paper library, we provide free access to researchers, historians, scholars, and the general public.
• tags: search, research, library, reference

• FlickrStorm. Search on Flickr with some Magic

tags: images, flickr, photography, photos, web2.0, tools, creativecommons

• About That Quiz ThatQuiz is a free online resource for math practice and testing.
• tags: cff, math, quizmaker, assessment

• NPR: Get My Vote - Share Your Story Every voter has a story - what’s yours?

• StainedGlass Collage With StainedGlass Collages you share more than just collections of photographs; you share entire events.

tags: collage, web2.0, tools, art

• Glogster - Poster Yourself Poster yourself! Share your creativity with friends all around the world!

tags: art, poster, collage, tools