Thursday, October 4, 2007

Fall Conferences - K-12 Online Conference and local

The K-12 Online Conference - What Keynote and post a comment

1. The K-12 Online Conference invites participation from educators around the world interested in innovative ways Web 2.0 tools and technologies can be used to improve learning. This FREE conference run by volunteers and open to everyone. The 2007 conference theme is “Playing with Boundaries”. This year’s conference begins with a pre-conference keynote the week of October 8, 2007. The following two weeks, October 15-19 and October 22-26, forty presentations will be posted online to the conference blog (this website) for participants to download and view. Live Events in the form of three “Fireside Chats” and a culminating “When Night Falls” event will be announced. Everyone is encouraged to participate in both live events during the conference as well as asynchronous conversations.
** Online and free, our class will be participating.
October 8th Keynote - Watch or listen and post a reflection
This presentation, by 30+ year educator, author, and technologist, David Warlick, will explore some of these changes and challenges and arrange them as a set of converging conditions that might just help us to redefine and retool the 21st century classroom.

Presentation - Watch or listen and post a comment!
Video
http://k12online.wm.edu/davidw.mp4

Audio
http://k12online.wm.edu/davidw.mp3



Other Conferences -
2. MassCUE - November 15-15th - Sturbridge

3. Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference "I Touch the Future, I Teach". The Radisson Hotel Nashua November 27-29th.
I will be presenting with a math teacher Using Tablets/PCs in the Classroom With Students
NOTE: Session on the Sentro Clikers
W2-16 - Wed November 28th!
Ashwood Court
12:00-1:00 SMART Senteo Interactive Response System
Rachel Jeantry, SMART Technologies, and John Kozlowski, SMART Technologies
ET
Level: Beginner
Grades: All This session focuses on how the Senteo interactive response system is designed to enhance interactive teaching and learning. With it, you display or speak prepared or ad hoc questions, students anonymously key in answers with their remote, and responses are tallied, then displayed on a projection screen or interactive whiteboard. Tallying and displaying results occurs immediately. To assess student understanding, you can use a variety of question types, including true or false, multiple choice, numeric response and more-than-one-right-answer. Decimals, fractions and negative numbers can also be incorporated into questions and answers. This session will be led Rachel Jeanty, SMART Technologies Education Consultant for The Northeast and John Kozlowsky, the Northeastern US Area Manager for SMART Technologies.

14 comments:

Peggy P said...

I went to the Krista Mccauliff conference two years ago and it was god -- too many vendors though.

Peggy P said...

not god but good.

I had trouble logging on:)

Peggy P said...

I was unable to access the video so I listened to the audio. I have to say that it would have much easier to watch the video than to listen without a visual. At one point he was a Starbucks which he refers to his second office and you really could hear him slurping coffee!

He talks about how things are changing so fast that kids today don’t know how they are going to be making a living. He says that the way that he (David Warwick) makes a living is a better model for students today than ours is. And he makes enough off his website (ads through Google) and the books he sells to pay for his kid’s education! His way of making a living is a workplace literally “without boundaries”. Kids today are facing a future that can’t be clearly described nor identified. This has profound implications on education obviously. Many are still teaching in a confined setting (school room with desks in rows) that has boundaries when we live in a world that is literally at our fingertips.

I liked the phrase “Digital natives vs. Digital immigrants” We are digital immigrants and our kids are Digital natives. So true! He talks about the digital divide and how vast it really is. Students have grown up with technology (IM, texting, facebook, myspace, youtube etc.) Although they use these tools for socializing, they are ready to use them as learning tools. He talks about literacy how the nature of information has changed and as a result, what it means to be literate has changed. The library is no longer the “gate-keeper” They are now learning from the world and it’s more important than ever to teach them to evaluate the information and organize it in digital libraries.
For the first time in history, students are in some ways, more literate than their teachers. They are comfortable with digital content.
We are preparing a generation of students who are technology savvy and they need teachers to help them “work” the information. There is “energy” in the all of the information that is available to them.” We need to harness this energy.

I have seen him speak at the Christa M conference two years ago. He addressed this literacy there and showed a digital persuasive essay prepared by a student on sweat shops. It was awesome.

It’s definitely a lot of food for thought.

As I spell checked this “texting” is not recognized by word……huh!

Peggy P said...

Some grammatical mistakes in my posting. I was typing as I was listening. Sorry!

I always get this sinking feeling that I am lost in a blog and no body is out there!

Peggy P said...

One more thing....as I was scrambling this morning making sure I was ready for my first class, I realized that although I agree with most of what David Warwick said, until society changes what education and learning look like, things are never going to change. Teachers are truly overwhelmed by what they are expected to do and unfortunately, the cost is great lessons that harness kids energy and utilize the world's information in an engaging way. If I had the time...today's lesson would have been so much better! Society in general does not value what teachers do..so we have to teach 120 kids at a time, use outdated facilities and technologies, prep for 3 and in some cases 5 different classes...all because teachers have their summers off.
So I guess the lesson is, you have to try and improve on one thing at a time.

Unknown said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Unknown said...

Hi Peggy -
Thank you for all of your posts. I remember seeing David present on RSS several years ago and thought why would I ever need to use that. As I read more blogs and try to gather more information I now understand how an aggregator can be a useful tool.

David along with other tech leaders refer to "Digital natives vs. Digital immigrants”. I watch how my kids interact with the internet like any other tool in our house (phone, microwave, etc) and it no big deal. I am finding more teachers doing more with the internet especially with so many Web 2.0 tools. The fact that you can pull in a YouTube video into our classroom to help teach a concept is amazing.

I hope to spend more time this week looking at the posting on the K12Conference site.

If you still trying to make sense of all of this here an article Tech Tools for Learning by Will Richardson that defines some of the Read/Write Web tools such as blogs, podcasts, and streaming videos and gives tips for how to integrate these tools into the classroom.(link to the article http://www.ciconline.org/web/archive/home?p_p_id=20&p_p_action=1&p_p_state=exclusive&p_p_mode=view&p_p_col_id=&p_p_col_pos=0&p_p_col_count=0&_20_struts_action=%2Fdocument_library%2Fget_file&_20_folderId=21&_20_name=AL-01-06-TechTools.pdf )

Keep checking back on the conference and hopefully other members of the class will join in.

Sarah said...

Wow Peggy, I'm impressed with all you have shared! I'll be honest, I have spent the better part of the last two hours trying to navigate through the K-12 Conference. I too was listening to the David warlick audio because I couldn't get the video open.I became incredibly disinterested in the whole thing at about the time the airplane took off in the background and he began making analogies to the paths of planes and trains. I opened another page and attempted to check out another presenter. this time I cold actually open it! I followed the directions that Anne Davis (wasn't that the maid in the Brady Bunch?...but I digress)had on her mini-presentation that was supposed to take me to another web site. I typed in the appropriate web address (http://pedagogytools.pbwiki.com), but I couldn't access that either (at this point I am frustrated not knowing if it's me or my computer).To make a long story longer, I finally got to the page and found some pretty cool stuff about Flickr (a place you can access some cool photos) and other tools that would be helpful for blogging. Most of this was geared toward English and creative writing classes. The part that I was missing was a connection for me personally in how I can use it for my math classes. as I stumbled around the conference website, I found a few math teachers that were talking about the same thing. I have already been absolutely iverwhelmed by the amount of material that I have found on just the Pedagogy presentation from today. How do people process soooooo much information???
I am having a hard time getting the movies to open and know that my flea-like attention span won't carry me through another audio presentation. Any suggestions for what I am doing wrong?
I feel like an 18th century person slogging (not blogging) along in the 21st century! HELP!!!

Peggy P said...

Don't be too impressed Sarah. As you can see, I can't spell. I too have been having trouble opening video clips and would love to devote some time to just videos...I feel like I must be doing something wrong as well.

How's the tablet going? I am wondering why some people have them and some don't...do you know if they are all in?

Have you gone on the wiki thing yet? Do you know how to post anything?

p.s. I love the Brady Bunch.

Unknown said...

Sarah and Peggy -
Great to you online, remember the blog connects us between classes and assignments.

I have been in an out of the K-12 Online Conference all week, I had hoped to spend more time viewing the presentations. This evening I viewed a few presentation and spent some time looking at “twitter” and trying to figure out why so many bloggers are talking about it. There are so many aspects to Web 2.0 and just when you learn a few of the tools, there are new tools. When visiting the conference, do not try to take in too much information at once. For instance this evening I review a session on cell phones, a math teacher integrating Web 2.0 and twitter this evening. That was enough for me this evening. I spent the day at the STEM conference http://www.massachusetts.edu/stem/
today and saw people from Lunenburg!! yeah! I also met a superintendent from the Cape that just attended the Alan November conference. He is looking at ways to integrate Web 2.0 into his district. It was so refreshing to have a conversation with him! He told a room full of people that he has learned more viewing the K12 Online Conference this month than years of attending technology conferences. At the end of the conference I asked him who his favorite presenters were at the conference and we had a great conversation. He seemed happy that someone else knew what he was talking about. I also informed him that Lunenburg teachers were “attending” the conference. He thought it was great!

Remember, this course is about exposing you to new technologies. It is not about mastering every site, tool, blog or wiki. The fact that you now realize there is a whole new internet out there is great.

To the rest of the class…. check out some of the presentations and let us know what you think, or play with a new tool that is discussed at the conference. Go explore!

Unknown said...

I also checked out Will Richardson's blog this evening http://www.weblogg-ed.com/

Will is using yet another new tool ustream.tv and has a video posting http://www.ustream.tv/channel/weblogg-ed-tv

Will is talking about the shift/changes in the world around Web 2.0 and the impact on teaching and learning.

Sarah said...

Last night, I somehow found a cool clip on creating a wiki.(I think it's just a link on your page Mary) Today I realized as I scrambled to get information from 10 different student council kids on 10 different committees that are organizing next week's homecoming rally/parade that a wiki would be a perfect tool for that. I felt so cool when I asked them if they wanted to create one for Student Council and they didn't know what I was talking about!! For once I am ahead of the game. From what I gathered from the video I watched, it's sort of a webpage that multiple people can particpate in and is great for organizational purposes. I went to the recommended website and found that we would have to pay a monthly fee for it :( Maybe I can figure something else out between all the tools available.

Mrs. Borreson said...

Hi!I too tried to open David's video, and after waiting almost 8 minutes for it to download (twice) - I gave up. I didn't try to open the audio - maybe another time. I spent most of my time downloading Senteo onto my laptop and then creating the project I want to use with the clickers. Speaking of clickers - Where are they? I heard a rumor that Martha had them!! Guess I'll find out tomorrow. I created the project using Senteo - I hope that wasn't a mistake (should I have used power point). Will I be able to always access this project - or will it disappear when the licensing runs out? I'd like to also save it in power point - but I'm not sure how. I was also at the STEM conference on Wednesday (the one Mary referred to). Good conference. I went to two sessions by the Boston Museum of Science to see some "engineering for elementary students" programs that they have developed. I'm definitely getting at least one. I'll start by using it for my students who need more challenging work. See everyone tomorrow.

Christa said...
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