My Brain Hurts

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 Didn’t realise he was a University type, by the time they collect, collate and present their data it’s often out of date.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.

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 . . .