So Much to Learn

It's been virtual conference week! I've been learning a lot, what with both the FETC Virtual Conference and the DEN Virtual Conference within two days of each other, and a DEN webinar three days later. The first one occurred last Thursday and boy, what an amazing interface! However, I do have one criticism on the FETC Virtual Day; there was hardly any information about it before hand. I received email after email to register for it, and knew it would be 11-7, but that was it. No mention of the sessions or anything until about a week before hand. This seemed to also discourage some teachers from registering too. But was I amazed when I got in! It looked like the Orange County Convention Center on the Internet! You could move from "room" to "room", listen to speakers, chat with friends and vendors, even have your virtual badge swiped for prizes. It was all very impressive.

One of the discussions I got in on, was an educator describing how their district does online trainings and webinars. This year they've done 12 webinars using Adobe Connect Pro, each training is about 20 minutes, with 4 sessions for each webinar that correspond to teacher prep times in the buildings, and focuses on informational or how-to educational topics. Teachers are able to tune in "live" if it fits their schedules or can view the webinars on-demand at their convenience. So far, they've had very good feedback. They prepare each presentation with live links, files to share, and broadast a video feed with integrated VoIP all within the web browser, no application installations needed. Each webinar is archived and made available their district Intranet for viewing later (here is an example of one on WebQuest refreshers https://admin.acrobat.com/_a853141003/p45253355 This particular educator also uses Adobe Connect Pro for in-house video podcasts on their podcast network called TWIRT (This Week in Rockwood Technology). Here's another example where they interviewed Bernie Dodge, inventor of the WebQuest, http://connectpro21991761.acrobat.com/p75077836

I also saw 2 other things mentioned in chats that interested me:
- Try using Talkshoe, yodeo, or podlinz might be good websites to check out for
phonecasting. Not sure what phonecasting is? It's a way to record someone
over the phone for a podcast.

- www.kuglin.com has files and downloads,
for Google Earth and also tech movies

I had a hard time getting much more out of the FETC Virtual Conference, as I kept losing my connection at school. It got a little bit better when I went home that night to finish up with the evening sessions, but I still got kicked out a lot. Luckily, the sessions presented during the conference are archived until July, so I can go back and check out what I missed.

The DEN Virtual Conference was held on Saturday, which ended up being a busy day for me, as my book club was also meeting that day. So again, I get to go back and look at some archived sessions :)

The keynote, called the Benjamin Button Effect by Lance Rougeaux was very interesting and immediately grabbed my attention. The Benjamin Button effect here that Lance was talking about, is if he could go back and change something he taught several years ago, what tool would he use now? For example, he described a field trip they took his class on to Valley Forge. What he do differently now, if they still took that trip? Use Google Earth to give the kids an up close view of the park before going and help deepen their experience and understanding.

Two other examples he gave was a school project where they needed to advertise for a fundraiser and looking at documents (maybe this could be a primary resource). For the first one, Lance would now use www.glogster.com, the digital poster website to advertise for that fundraiser, because he could include pictures, videos, and links. For the second one, he actually took the description of the DEN virtual conference listed on the DEN site and put it into www.wordle.net by pasting into their text box and creating a word cloud to see the description in a new light and get a different understanding of the text. It was incredible to see and very enlightening on how this could be used in other ways.

I also learned about a great resource for those who are new to glogster. An educator, Traci Blazosky, has put together a tutorial for glogster using glogster on their wiki. Check out www.ktitraci.wikispaces.com. I also go to see one of the great class lesson that this educator did with her elementary students on tree frogs. She created a tour in Google Earth where all different kinds of tree frogs can be found on the earth and then linked the placemarks to glogs where she had put information together on each of these frogs the kids were learning about. It was truly creative and made me think that would be a perfect idea for studying cultures in geography or biomes in life science. Traci, also showed how she created writing prompts for her students using the writing prompt builder in unitedstreaming and how she embedded a voki, a web 2.0 tool, into the prompt. This voki character explained to the students a little more about tree frogs and what they needed to do for their assignment. Great stuff here!

Then this past Wednesday, I got to join Matt Monjan, in his presentation on Break It, Bend It, and Bust It Loose, new ways to use the DE streaming tools during the Road Show webinar. He showed some great stuff on unitedstreaming (DE) tools, such as, embedding a video into PowerPoint that has controls. Never used the control toolbox before! He also explained how other teachers are using the images from unitedstreaming in their classrooms. One teacher is zooming in on pictures of things such as sharks and having them use this picture in math class. Another teacher uses the calendar function and images to get his students to class on time and improve their writing skills. You can find more of Matt's presentations on his blog, www.geekybird.com.

I've learned a lot of great stuff this week and really want to use these ideas soon!

Earth Day Resources Found on Twitter

I swear I find great things on Twitter everyday! Today, there were loads of resources for Earth Day that everyone was willing to share and not just educators! Here is a collection of what I found:

1. 10 Most Incredible Globes: Taking Earth Day Literally http://tinyurl.com/dhtxdr

2. Mashable Social Media & Web Guide to Going Green http://bit.ly/801Jo #earthday

3. A list of Earth day bookmarks shared by McTeach: http://htxt.it/9Pt5

4. Even see how Hollywood gives Mother Earth a beating from TVGuide: http://www.tvguide.com/PhotoGallery/End-Earth-Pop-1005270/1.aspx

5. A quick Earth Day fact from the Jack Diamond Show on Mix 107.3. Did you know that Today is the 39th Annual Earth Day. 77% of Americans recycle! Still behind "the world", but SO much better than a few years ago.

6. Stop by Mom Central Goes Green for green tips and news for moms & families - http://goesgreen.momcentral.com

And some websites I got from teachers in my district that I put on Twitter:
7. Here's another fun earth day site that can be used all year long! http://www.meetthegreens.org/episodes/

8. Thinkfinity also has a page set up just for today at http://thinkfinity.org/highlights.aspx?feature=EdEarthDay

Blowing the doors off NECC

I am so excited about the upcoming NECC conference in Washington, D.C. this summer! It will be my first time at this global conference and what makes it even better is that it's practically in my backyard this year. No airplane fare, hotel fees, lugging luggage, not knowing where I am...just an "easy" drive to the Springfield metro station (depending on traffic) and a metro ride to the convention center.

It looks like Classroom 2.0 LIVE is excited too. Tomorrow they are offering a webinar on everything NECC related, in their "Blowing the doors off NECC" session. There will be a brainstorming planning session with Wes Fryer, the author of the blog "Moving at the Speed of Creativity", and discussions on the third annual EduBloggerCon at NECC being held on Saturday, June 27th for anyone interested in web 2.0 in education, and NECC Unplugged and NECC Live.

I'm not sure what NECC Unplugged and NECC Live are, but I'm guess I'm going to find out. I participated in a mini-edubloggercon at FETC. So it should be a fun session tomorrow! For more information, go to Steve Hargadon's blog. See you online!

FREE 2009 Summer Virtual Technology Camp

Here's a great idea for tech-savvy kids during those lazy Summer days! Freshbrain.org, is putting together a virtual camp where students can learn to create a variety of technology, from websites to game simulations. Freshbrain is a website dedicated to "enhancing the education and development of our youth in the areas of business and technology by providing hands-on real world experience." Campers may spend anywhere from a week to the whole summer participating in one or many different "Learning Paths"; a collection of hands-on activities. The learning paths being offered are:

- Create a 3D Video Game
- Build Applications for the G1 Mobile Phone
- Building Flashy Websites
- Java Development
- Create a Facebook Application
- Make Amazing Videos
- Learn Graphic Design
- Animation
- Music Production
- Photo Editing Techniques

Each Activity within a learning path will take 1½ – 2 days, resulting in about 1 – 2 weeks per path, with an exciting chance to share results. In addition, there will also be “Challenge Activities” that run parallel with the learning paths, and students will have a chance to compete in contests with some pretty neat prizes, such as internships, monetary awards, scholarships, and gift certificates. As students complete a learning path or participate in a "challenge activity" contest, they will receive a "badge". Badges will be visible on their FreshBrain profile and will indicate levels of accomplishment to other campers.

Students can login or Register at this link: http://freshbrain.org/user/register and join the FreshBrain Summer Virtual Camp 2009 Group at http://freshbrain.org/group/summer-virtual-technology-camp-2009-group.