My Brain Hurts

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.”