My Brain Hurts

www.wordle.net

What an interesting little web application. It creates word clouds from a list of text that you paste in. Quite a few options for fonts (interesting font names) and colour pallettes. This is very use for presentation slides and would creat interesting word lists for any school project.

Now that it has come to an end IT is just beginning as we try to sift through the mountain of new knowledge and ideas for transforming learning.

The ideas were easy to come by in an environment like this bit now the hard work of building those ideas into working classroom practice begins. The theme words for this year were  Convene  Connect  Transform  and that theme was certainly evident throughout the conference. Global collaboration was given a large presence as were web 2.0 tools. If there was one message to take back it would have to be to capture and engage our students by moving education beyond the classroom walls. eTools for iLearners in a digital environment.

The exhibition hall was amazingly large making it very difficult to get around in between sessions. It was good opportunity to get comprehensive information about a great variety of products. The inventive presentation awards go to the Wii golf game, the mini bowling alley and the bucking bull – yes a full size bucking bull that you were challenged to ride!

Organising a conference for 20 000 people must be a difficult task, one which was handled superbly. I would thoroughly recommend this conference to any educator.

NECC 2009 will be held in Washington DC June 28 – July 1

Today began well with a trip underneath the Convention Centre for a sneak peak at what is happening at MIT. The presenter likened his job to being like a kindergarten child as his day allows him to : imagine – create – play – share – reflect – imagine. Sounds like a pretty good job. At NECC, MIT and  Lego launched WeDo which is an extension of robotics designed for K-2 students. They had had it running on MIT’s $100 laptop as well. The session was mainly devoted to Scratch which was something i wanted to learn more about. There is only one word for Scratch – Awesome. It may not look much on the surface but it contains a multitude of very powerful learning attributes. Apart from fostering creative and critical thinking to problem solve, projects can be shared to a central depository which currently holds 150 000 projects. Students share collaborate and improve on projects in very active community of users. All educators should seriously consider Scratch as part of their classroom toolbox.

Apple hosted a session on using podcasts to improve reading ability and showed some impressive stats from schools that have been using this approach. We mainly went through a “how to” using iTunes, whilst I would have preferred see examples of this process in action. Upon reflection it was probably more useful to use the limited time learning the skills to make it happen, so another very worthwhile session.

“HTML code wizardry”, using HTML to add functionality. Some would call it a hack some an enhancement but either way it was pretty cool stuff. Use a simple line of html to take control of an iPod, embed a floating head, video files and even a live video feed into Google Earth. As he said, kids are doing this sort of stuff so why shouldn’t we know how they do it. Embedding a video image through a place marker tag has enormous educational potential.

Next it was Ice cream time which seems to be be a last day tradition at NECC. Oversized choc nut drumstick type ice-creams – mmmmm.

The closing keynote “The Transformational Power of Social Media Technology” was presented by Idit Harel Caperton, founder of World Wide Workshop. She spoke about how “social networks, wikis and blogs are changing the informational, social, political and educational landscapes.”

The keynote this morning focussed on two educators who have mover from IT avoiders to global collaborators. They presented some very moving examples of the work their students had done with student in Sierra Leone. The story of how those students are adjusting from years of war and human rights violations including being used as child soldiers was very powerfully presented. The International Education and Resource Network is a valuable source for taking part in collaborative global projects. The keynote theatre was huge, think of the largest theatre/convention area you know and double it!

Back to the exhibition hall for a presentation by Thinkfinity.org. This is a free depository of resources for educators. Very American but with over 50 000 resources available there is still a lot for educators from other parts of the world.

Entitled “Student Podcasts as the English Curriculum” this session fell well short of expectation. A quick survey showed half the audience were GarageBand users and we were treated to how to use Audacity to make a sound file. Actually he did this very well within a curriculum context. The examples shown were good but fell a long way short of covering an English curriculum,  the session was really some examples of using audio to enhance learning within the English curriculum.

Another point is the popular misconception that by simply recording an audio file you have made a podcast. A great many people do not seem to realise that it is not the file but the sharing through the RSS feed that is the podcast.

Strangely enough mentions of Audacity, Photostory and Moviemaker are everywhere but barely a mention of the far superior Mac alternatives. Especially since no matter what room you look around  Macs are very prominent. I think the reason is that Mac users have had access to these programs for many years now so they have been there and done that while Windows users are only just discovering these great tools and the the tools mentioned above are the best available to them. If you have experienced the brilliance of GarageBand and the amazing power of the iLife suite of programs then you’ll know exactly what I mean.

A quick trip back to the exhibition hall and . . . remember Hyperstudio? Well the good folk at MacKiev have done a great job to reinvent it. The presentation was done by Roger Wagner himself and while it has a familiar look and feel there have been many enhancements. For those who know the quality of MacKiev products this is another job well done. Notably it will export as a web page complete with navigation and slide transition effects or as a podcast or to YouTube. Drag a folder of photos to the HyperStudio icon in the doc and it quickly creates a stack out of of photos ready to write on. There is a Photobooth style countdown when recording audio and integration with video. A product well worth looking at. 

Alan November gave an inspiring session on “Designing Global Assignments” . He started by asking some open ended questions which the 1000 people in the audience voted on using the Activ vote audience response system. This worked incredibly well and Alan was able to lead the discussion based on the results. One interesting result was that in a room full of teachers who voted to be innovative and creative most felt they were held back by their school systems. He shared a few tips and tricks on web searching before taking a large axe to traditional schooling. His options were creative and collaborative, using real examples of classes using these methods. 

Visit Kiva.org for an excellent alternative to donating money to needy countries.

Will Richardson’s “Online Communities for PD” provided some insightful assistance on setting up a network of resources for staff. Wikispaces and Ning were mentioned as was an example of where this has worked in a school district : abpc.wikispaces.com

Since global collaboration is a big buzzword I decided to spend the last session hearing about such a program. Rock our World has been going for several years now and the material presented was very impressive. www.rockourworld.org

A significant event occurred at NECC last night when Apple launched a K-12 section of iTunes U. Many highly regarded universities around the world are already contributing 60 000 files to iTunes U, now K-12 content comes on board through several US state initiatives. A logical next step would be the inclusion of international contributions, based on recent initiative releases this could be expected next year. iTunes is becoming a very cost effective one stop shop for recreational and educational video and audio content. A similar facility is being released for iPhone content.

The conference started in earnest today,  a non official source stated that the attendance is up to 20 000 this year. The exhibitors hall is incredibly large. The image here only shows part of it as it covers an area equivalent to 5 football fields.

The first session attended today was entitled on “Blogging Communities in the Classroom”. Didn’t realise he was a University type, by the time they collect, collate and present their data it’s often out of date. He started talking about the data he had collected and I started looking for the door but the room was so crowded escape was impossible. He then moved onto his own classroom experiences and the session became a lot more interesting. He favoured free writing which I’ve always thought provided little quality unless some structure is present. He went on to mention that the most important point is that students feel part of a blogging community within which they respond and critique each other.

He showed numerous example of very impressive student work as he compared traditional school writing with expressive writing. He was content to develop the creativity and inspire the writing process, then bring up spelling and grammar.

Now talk about coincidences: there are 20 000 people her and who should be coming through the door I just opened than Martin Levins. A good chat and some note comparing and I missed the next session.

The next session was Ian Jukes whom I had heard on podcast and was very keen to listen to him in person. It was extremely disappointing when deja vu hit and he delivered the exact same presentation as last year that I had already heard on podcast. He is very animated and passionate about his topic and was easy to listen too, even if it was a repeat. His main point was that students today are mentally different learns as a product of their over stimulated digital upbringing. He made many interesting points but his reference sources were quite outdated. He stressed the point that because of digital bombardment students are digital learners and switch off in text based lessons.

I’m sure that there is a lot of truth on what he says but I’d like to see some more current data to substantiate it. His advocacy for change was certainly well received. One surprising point was when he mentioned do you use a Windows PC or a really educational computer as e pointed towards his Mac. The surprising part was the crowd reaction, a very large and loud chorus of support. I guess we Mac user get used to being in the minority but no so here.

After the session we were hanging around outside perusing the next session when Ian came over and started chatting to us. He is actually very personable and seems a nice guy, even if he does think the Aussie accent is a “speech impediment”

The next two sessions I tried to get into were full when I arrived so I spent the afternoon wading throughthe jungle that is the exhibition floor of which I managed to cover about a third.

Today was for registering, an opening keynote and function. Over 15 000 people are expected to register this year.

The keynote was by James Surowiecki who spoke about the Wisdom of Crowds. Though moderately interesting there probably wasn’t an hours worth of educational relevance in what he had to say – I’m sure it was jet lag that made the lady next to me fall asleep half way through. He spoke very well and had some interesting anecdotes but the educational message was fairly narrow. He spoke about the power of the collective knowledge of many people, which relates fairly well to Wikipedia. 

He mentioned the jelly bean experiment – allow a large number of people to guess how many jelly beans in a jar – the average of all their answers will be very close to the real answer. Possible the best example as his tale of the US submarine Scorpion which sank in the 1960 and could not be found by conventional search methods. A think tank of many experts was brought together to develop possible scenarios for its location. All suggestions were examined in detail by the group and combined into a most likely chain of events which did not reflected the thoughts of any one person. It was found just over 200meteres from the location they suggested. Singularly no-one was even close but collectively they solved the problem.

This was followed by the first poster session – over 30 booths showcasing projects of interest happening within their schools. Each is of interest to different groups of people.  For this session most were pretty bland, one group was showing examples of student work that combined video, digital stills and web based presentations which was interesting.

Being night one supper was provided along with a band and a hoe down. The food in this part of the world is very much Tex Mex – lots of tasty food and after hearing this on TV for many years I now know what a tomale is. It appears to be mashed food inside a corn husk which I discovered is not exactly edible. I guessed it had to be unwrapped to be eaten, I really should have watched what others were doing. Also the jalapeno tomale was not a very wise choice.

The road to NECC

Not much of the journey actually involved a road but after exactly 24 hrs of travelling later our feet were on Texan soil. Time zones certainly are strange – 12 hrs in the air and we arrives at LA 4 hours before we left Sydney. Then a two hour flight to San Antonio has us arriving 4 hours after we left LA. Any wonder students have difficulty understanding this concept if they haven’t experienced it. A good sleep on the plane really does wonders to avoid jet lag. What can’t be helped is leaving our home in Canberra where it was 3 degrees this morning to be greeted by 37 (95F) degrees in San Antonio, unseasonly hot. We felt like snowmen at the end of winter.

San Antonio

Famous as the site of the Alamo, this region has some rich history. Apart from the Alamo, which was very interesting, other nearby Spanish missions are in more original condition and well worth a visit. Texas itself had a troubled beginning involved in a tug of war with Mexico which once controlled all of  California, Texas, Nevada, Colorado and Arizona as well as large portions of Utah and Wyoming. This represents an area roughly a quarter the size of the current US. The history of the battles over these regions is very interesting.

The Riverwalk area is a must to visit, a level below and a world away from the cityscape of San Antonio. The San Antonio river is only 10 metres wide and 2 metres deep, concrete walls and light green in colour but well lined with trees, pathways and arched bridges it really is a very attractive area. Dotted with restaurants this area really comes alive at night. Take a twilight water tour to get a feel for the area.

Found a wonderful little restaurant tonight called the Republic of Texas. For the entrée we chose a house special of two frozen margaritas and nachos for only $8 followed by a 16oz steak for $11 and a humungous apple crumble  . . .  and another margarita which really hi the spot after such a hot day. They sell a 46oz margarita (I think that’s one and a half litres?) for $25 but we weren’t game to go that far.

Lucky me! The Fedex Courier Company has been “waiting for you since to contact FedEx” because British Insurance has deposited US$900 000 in West Africa for me. I just have to send a $162 Security Keeping Fee to a very official sounding person with a hotmail address. Hmmmm

Wow! Lucky me again for today I have won US$1 500 000 in an Italian lottery and I didn’t even have to buy a ticket?? I just have to send some nice person my bank account and pin number so they can deposit the funds in my account. Hmmm

How does anyone fall for these scamms – they are so obviously fraudulent I can’t believe anyone is taken in by them – but people are. With the ability to bulk email the entire Internet it only takes one gullible fool and the sender starts to rake in the cash.

Some scams however are very well crafted and very believable, so follow some general rules:

1. If something sounds too good to be true then it probably isn’t

2. You never win anything without entering

3. Official warnings of great catastrophe and impending doom are not sent via email.

4. NEVER giver out banking/credit card details – stranger danger for big kids.

5. Official organisations do not use hotmail, gmail addresses.

Before you play good samaritan and send your hard earned money to Africa to save the poor child who’s been chained to an elephant’s butt for the last 12 years check out the Urban Legends reference site www.snopes.com – you may be surprised what is and is not real.

Why not use Snopes to verify the water bridge in Germany for instance . . .

A very descriptive new term, well at least it’s new to me.

“Technacy is the ability to understand, skillfully apply and communicate creative and ‘balanced’ technological solutions that are based on understanding the contextual factors involved. The Australian meaning of technacy is as a theoretical ‘model’ of technological activity. It implies a deep (critical) knowledge of the nature of technologies as systems, or phenomena or simply as a comprehensive prowess in specific technologies, especially if understood in the context of their application.” – Wikipedia article

The descriptive article explains how the term technacy evolved.

Will this spawn new terms such as technative, technation or technability?

Along similar lines is my own  ICTonomy created along the lines of Bloom’s Taxonomy.