Okay. Officially, this blog post comes to you on the second day of the NECC conference. The session, events, and meetings have left me with no time for reflection. I had planned on doing more, alas this will have to do.
I am sitting in the Bloggers’ Cafe this fine Tuesday morning watching thousands of people file to the Keynote. This morning Jim Carleton and Mali Bickley are speaking and I am sure it will be both inspirational and informational. I am going to watch the event from the lounge as I can plug my computer in and can get a few quick thoughts up.
On to my thoughts so far.
First. Wow. This truly is an awesome conference. So many great sessions. So many great people. So many opportunities for new connections to content, tools, methods, and people. I have to recommend that all educators attend this conference at some point. Especially those who still hold the view that technology is a separate subject instead of something to be integrated into the classroom.
On Sunday night Crystal Priest got me seats up front to the kick off keynote with James Surowiecki. He authored The Wisdom of Crowds and gave a poignant speech to the phenomenon of how a group of people can be “smarter” than any one of its members. He argued we should harness the wisdom of crowds in the information age with the new communication mediums that are popping up everyday. I enjoyed the talk very much and grabbed a copy of his book for the flight back to Maine.
Monday morning I attended two sessions given by Chris Dede from Harvard University. The first, Immersive Collaborative Simulations in Augmented Reality, discussed how Chris and Rebecca Mitchell have used augmented reality in the classroom as part of the Alien Attack curriculum they developed. Students were given handheld GPS devices and walked around town trying to piece together what the aliens are doing here. In the process they are learning math, logic, reading, and collaboration skills. I was great hearing Rebecca talk about how the process went and what she would do differently. I had read about Alien Attack before and it was great to connect with the author and see what she was working on now. It looks like she is taking what she learned and creating a new aug reality curriculum called Gray Matter. My beliefs on situated learning were reinforced listening to her talk about how the students were successful. Students seemed to have a more authentic learning experience just by simply (ok..not so simply) being put in a role where they are expected to produce an outcome.
The second session Chris Dede gave was on his other work with collaborative simulations. He talked to Harvard’s Rivercity multi-user virtual environment (MUVE) and how it is used for meaningful formative assessment. Another great session. It was probably the best talk on assessment I have ever heard. Yes, I know. Assessment. Something we hear about way too much, but this wasn’t your old summative multiple choice tests. He talked about how Rivercity MUVE used formative real time data to leverage student improvement. While we are still in the early stages of this type assessment, it is certainly going to gain traction with tools like Second Life being more accepted into the traditional classroom.
I attended the NETS-S implementation discussion. It was a group talk on how best to use the new ISTE NETS. It was very insiprational and gave me a few new idea on how to use them at the college for both the IT program and in the teacher prep program. I have to admit to leaving a bit early. The session were going so great that I forgot to eat lunch. I am finding that very easy to do here.
After refilling my gas tank I ran to the Grand Hyatt to catch up with Westley Field from the MLC School in Australia. We had talked a few time already due to our travels in Second Life. He is a lead in the Skoolaborate project, a collaborative of schools using Teen Second life to deliver course content in new ways. The group allows schools from all over the globe to work together in the learning experience as well as lowering the costs to get involved. My thought is that this may be the right opportunity to getting a group of students from Maine involved with Teen SL. I will be following up on this one, so those of you who are interested, contact me.
Nope, not done yet. Still going. Like I said, LOTS of great sessions.
Will Richardson lead a session on using new Web 2.0 tools for Live Web TV. He talked on using uStream as a delivery mechanism and the low costs (free) in using them. They also showed Mogulus, a tool I hadn’t know about. Yes, I learned about a new tool. I love it. It is a free streaming tool, but is more like a TV studio. you can switch between camera and prerecorded footage. Amazing. Just 10 years ago…or even 5 years ago…it would have cost thousands to do what we now have access to for free. What a great tool. I will be blogging about this tool a bit more when I use it a bit more.
The final session I attended was the birds of a feather Moodle discussion. I finally had a chance to meet Michelle Moore from remote-learner.net. It was basically a group of 100 or so people who use Moodle and wanted to discuss issues and concerns. It really is amazing to see how much Moodle has grown in a few years. Michelle was mentioning that they have done the same session for three years now. The first year was done in the hallway with only a handfull of folks. Really cool to see so many embrace such a cool open source tool. I made some new contacts from aroun the globe during the session. They are doing things with their configurations that could help me with the COEHD implementation as well as helping support others who are using moodle around the state.
Whew. Day one down. Here goes day two.
Posted by harttml 
Posted by harttml 
Posted by harttml 