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 Didn’t realise he was a University type, by the time they collect, collate and present their data it’s often out of date.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 He made many interesting points but his reference sources were quite outdated.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.

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.

Last week we had the opportunity to host two 16 year old boys from Nara, Japan on a cultural exchange. Nara is a sister city to our own Canberra. The boys were again wonderful ambassadors for their country but a big difference this time was a langauge barrier – they spoke very little English and we spoke zero Japanese. A lot of pointing, hand gestures, showing of pictures, nodding and smiling seemed to work. We avoided speaking louder and slower.

An information sheet we received prior to their arrival stated that they were both allergic to vegetables????? Oh well we could indulge that for a couple of days – the wide eyes and smiles as some fairly large steaks went on the BBQ indicated that they approved of our meal choice. Come dessert time though neither of them liked chocolate . . . vegetables I can understand but chocolate?? All our limited stock of dessert items contained chocolate. However, we managed to feed them some carefully selected ice cream that had only a little chocolate in it – reminding me of the old Monty Python Spam sketch.

Google Earth was again very helpful and despite the languge barrier we managed to pass on a lot of information to each other. So if the opportunity to host some overseas visitors comes your way I encourage you to do it, with the promise that it will be a very rewarding experience.

New York offers such a great range of attractions. Spamalot on Broadway was hilarious in true Python style. The Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island were fascinating. The view from the top of the Empire State building was everything expected. The Ground Zero museum was a very moving experience as was Strawberry Field in Central Park. New York is full of icons that must be visited. A last minute detour found us at the Ed Sullivan Theatre but the Hello Deli eluded us.

Riding the subway at midnight was perfectly safe as was every other second of our stay, perhaps the very obvious and plentiful police presence had something to do with that.

Would we go back? Definitely. Hopefully a future NECC will be the lure.

The large number of concurrent sessions made it difficult to choose between presentations. Some sessions were podcasted so no need to go to those, instead download the podcast later. There were also poster sessions, student showcases, special focus playgrounds, birds-of-a-feather sessions and workshops ( for an additional fee). More than enough to cram into a mere three days. Most of the presentations I attended were very informative. These included blogging in the classroom, virtual schooling in Second Life, web based tools, online PD, teaching with emerging technologies, information fluency and podcasting – all of which were very informative sessions. Unfortunately there were a couple of dud sessions also but it was simply a case of bail out and sneak into another.

Then there was the trade display, this was HUGE and I mean really HUGE. So many companies on display offering insights into new and existing products – and of course the freebies.

While in Atlanta, it’s well worth a visit to the World of Coca Cola, but be wary when the sampling room attendant makes a recommendation – grapefruit flavour . . . yuck!

This was a great excuse to take a month’s long service leave pack up the family and see the east coast of the USA. We had a great time visiting New York, Washington and Florida. Next year NECC moves to San Antonio, Texas. Very tempting to go back . . . . .