preclectic.com

After finishing up the day at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center , I managed to make a trip over to the White House and snap a few photographs along the way.

conference conference, ISTE, necc, travel, washington

One of the best concurrent sessions I attended today was conducted by Westley Field. He’s  in charge of Online Learning and Manager of Instructional Technology at MLC School in Sydney. Field is also the Director of the Skoolaborate Initiative. The session was entitled Emerging Technologies: The implications for the Future of Schooling and it dealt with topics I find supremely intriguing. That Field is a likeable, plain-spoken fellow made listening to his lecture a treat.

Uncategorized change, conference, necc, necc2009

Well, my workshop, Principal 2.0: What Every 21st-Century Administrator Should Know, is over. Anyone who is interested in notes and resources from the session can find them here:

• http://tinyurl.com/necc09admin

Follow-up:

I’d like to take an opportunity to thank the kind folks who attended my session today. They were very understanding. I explained how lost I felt without the support of my very good friend, Joe, who usually attends NECC with me. Joe is a consummate teacher, technical troubleshooter, and witty fellow who can multi-task ever so much better than I. Thankfully, my audience persevered with me as I worked we worked our way through a number of ideas and details.

My two participants from Qatar Academy (Sandy Sheppard and Kirsten Holland) brought a great deal to the discussion. I was particularly impressed with and their hearty support for Open Source resources in learning as well as their continued emphasis on the importance of collaboration.

Michele King from the Austin Independent School District impressed me with her desire to incorporate opportunities for rich formative assessment into the professional development for her colleagues. She expressed a desire to find reliable instruments for assessing teachers’ comfort and ability to meaningfully implement technology. I suggested that she explore LOTI, a very useful instrument developed by Dr. Chris Moersch, who it turns out, is attending the conference.

Melissa Goodwin of the East Dakota Educational Cooperative (Educational Service Agency Region 2) brought up a number of good points about effective ways to help administrators and teachers overcome their hesitancy to embrace and integrate technology resources. From Melissa’s keen observations and questions (i.e.,

• What are some excellent blogs to follow for advice? (For starters, I suggested The Fischbowl,  Weblogg-ed,  CoolCatTeacher, and 2¢ Worth and would have mentioned Infinite Thinking Machine,  The Open Classroom, and a few others, but I got distracted.)
• What, of all the tools and resources I shared were the most important to start with, when working with administrators? (I suggested Google Apps for Education because the Docs and Spreadsheets features go a long, long way toward helping administrators communicate and collaborate while modeling best practices…and they are FREE!)

Joanna Mangiapane of Classrooms for the Future expressed a great deal of interest in the power of social bookmarking tools such as Delicious. We explored how to add others to one’s network. This allowed us to also point out that bringing new users up to speed on Delicious could be achieved by exporting and importing a seasoned Delicious-users bookmarks.

I am extremely indebted to these patient and very wise people and everyone else who attended and contributed to the discussions that occurred in workshop. I can only hope that my attendees left with some new ideas, resources, and tools for learning–tools helpful for 21st Century Administrators.

Uncategorized admin, administrator, conference, ISTE, necc, necc2009

I’m sitting outside the Ballroom C of the Walter E. Washington Convention Center where, in one hour, keynote speaker Malcolm Gladwell (author of The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers) will address a growing crowd of eager NECC attendees. I’m very interested to hear his ideas. He consistently unleashes a number of cognitive zingers in his work, concepts that make a reader stop and say, “Hmmm, now why didn’t I see that before?”

Follow-up: I positively enjoyed Gladwell’s keynote! He warmed up the crowd with a few well-delivered remarks about politicians (something completely appropriate for Washington). His address was much akin to reading one of his books. Within a few moments, the audience was immersed in the narratives that support his ideas. A remarkable orator, Gladwell expertly entertained and educated all of us and we ennjoyed the experience. He revisited a major theme of Outliers. He deconstructed a rags-to-riches myth (this time it was the rise of the popular band Fleetwood Mac) and painted a more detailed picture of what it really takes to be successful in any endeavor.

Gladwell’s point was that success in anything, rarely, if ever just happens. Rather, success is often the result of continually making an effort to work on a performance, process, product, or perspective regarding a problem. Success, he told us, takes time and people who ultimately succeed fail many, many times. I was heartened by his frank explanations as to why we shouldn’t give up on students or ourselves. Gladwell’s ideas compliment the efforts of the  Schlechty Center. One of core ideas of the Schlechty Center is that students need protection from adverse consequences for initial failures. Pupils need opportunities to engage in learning without fear of embarrassment, punishment, or an implication of personal inadequacy.  Gladwell’s speech masterfully embraced and echoed this sentiment.

Uncategorized conference, gladwell, necc, necc2009

I went over to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center today to check out the room where I’ll be conducting my workshop. I checked in, picked up my materials, and asked the kind folks at the service desk if I could take a look around my designated location. “Not a problem,” they said, and off I went. Finding everything in order, I strolled about the convention center finding myself bemused by all of the low to no-tech displays companies and organizations are using to advertise their wares–lots of paper and banners.

I couldn’t help wondering what kind of novel, innovative attention-getting displays ought to be introduced at the conference. I just know that, if a few high-tech companies (not necessarily educational outfits, mind you) were coaxed into sharing their products, educators might begin to rethink how they are delivering instruction. I’d love to see companies demonstrating…

• a holographic projector like Arena3D Industrial Illusion produces. Imagine teaching geometry or calculus with something like that!
• RFID tagging used to relay realtime visitor control and tracking information to NECC attendees (say, for example, projected displays that instantly tell us if a room is filling up or how many people are in the building). Science and Mathematics teachers and students could do some amazing data analysis with such tools.
• Japan’s ever impressive National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology employing robots with appearances and performance skills similar to humans–I’m thinking of android versions of famous historical (or literary) characters (please, please, some of the most popular personages from the stories of Charles Dickens!).

Those kinds of technology would mesmerize and inspire me. I think they’d also crank up the idea machines for many other NECC attendees as well. All of us need to climb out of the box and wander around in a landscape of new ideas. Don’t get me wrong, this NECC is shaping up to be a great event. It boasts a ton of excellent presenters and new ideas. Still, if anyone from ISTE is reading this, consider getting some clever folks from Google (they’re near Denver) and other industry leaders (I dunno, firms like IDEO, Toyota, IBM, and Amazon) who are noted for being innovators to contemplate or design a NECC conference that:

• is completely or nearly paperless (it’s time to practice what we preach about going digital)
• is green or as environmentally cognizant as possible. Need a few ideas? (Hey vendors–instead buying all of those little knick-knacks, t-shirts, and other things, streamline and pass the savings along to attendees. Yes, I know, this is flat-out economic heresy.)
• allows educators and students to talk with businesses that have applied critical thinking and creativity to solve problems and make money. (Imagine pupils meeting, videoing, interviewing, and producing podcasts, vlogs, and blogs about the leaders such as Frank Ramirez of Ice Energy, Kevin Surace of Serious Materials, and Saul Griffith of Makani Power.)
• makes use of crowdsourcing to address or solve a world problem. (Where else can we get so many talented educators, techies, and geeks together? Let’s tap that potential! Cameron Sinclair, the witty and passionate Executive Director and Co-founder of Architecture for Humanity, would be a great facilitator for such an event)

Okay, okay. Enough of my digressions. Like my best friend Joe, who is often overcome by candor, I felt compelled to say something. And like Joe, I’ll probably say it again. And again. And again. But, enough already.

After leaving the convention center, I made my way to the Metro station, got a few directions and headed over to Union Station. I snapped a few pictures and milled around until hunger overcame me. One delicious meal later, I headed back to my hotel.

Uncategorized heresy, ideas, innovation, necc, necc2009

I finally made it to Washington, DC. What a trip! I ‘m sure this year’s  NECC will be well worth the effort. That said, driving up here took more patience than I had anticipated. The majority of the driving necessary to get here was quite pleasant. Aside from Atlanta, I actually enjoyed seeing everything along the way. I grooved on hours of good music and verdant canopies of trees.

Today, however, the last 20 miles of my trek were the most grueling. Traffic on I-95 backed up, slowing to a crawl. Wising up to the predicament, I pulled off the freeway around Quantico and took U.S. Route 1 instead. After that, progress slowed due to traffic lights. Even so, I made good time until I got to Constitution Avenue. Then things really got slow. Navigating the traffic in that part of Washington (at least on a Friday afternoon) was a tedious chore. Still, it wasn’t nearly as frustrating as being mired in Atlanta’s gridlock. Eventually, I made it to my hotel. Anyway, I’m here now and ready to get my NECC adventure off to a fun start!

.

Uncategorized conference, necc, travel

Well, it’s that time of year again. Educators all over the world are making tracks for NECC. I know because I’m among the throng. Tonight, as a matter of fact, I’m in Greensboro, North Carolina, the half-way point of my own NECC trek trail. This year, rather than wait around in airports and go through the hassle of security lines, I’ve opted to make the trip in my hybrid automobile. I loaded up my iPod with many of my favorite podcasts (including the Classic Tales Podcast performed by the vocally talented B.J. Harrison, National Public Radio’s cognitively-rich Planet Money podcast, and  literary offerings from Selected Shorts) as well as audiobooks and answered the call of the highway.

For the most part, today’s trip was pleasant. I drove, enjoyed audial delights, snag along with a ton of 80s hits, and stoppped from time to time to take a look at unfamiliar sights. The only snag came when I got caught in Atlanta’s hellish interstate traffic (to get a feel for the area’s Spaghetti Junction insanity, take a look Georgia Navigator’s intriguing metro-traffic webcams one day around 2PM to 5 PM). It was my own fault, really. Since I was heading to the nation’s capitol, I figured I could maximize my time and attend to an errand in the vicinty of the Big Peach. I didn’t count on getting drawn into a gravitational field of urban sprawl-crawling cars. Ugh!

Anyway, I’m in my Hampton Inn hotel room in a very, very comfortable bed. I’m going to review a few of my RSS feeds and poke around the corners of the parts of the internet I regularly haunt. Then, then I’m going to sleep.

Uncategorized NC, necc, North-Carolina, travel

Yesterday was Fathers Day. My wonderfully sweet child gave me the best present ever–a compliment.

Uncategorized art, artwork, comics, holiday

I live in south Georgia in the United States where cool weather is the stuff of dreams. With summer approaching, everyone in my area is cranking up an air conditioner or making plans to find a shady spot with cool, refreshing water nearby. It’s a time when electricity is in high demand. National Public Radio has an intriguing visualization of the U.S. Power Grid. This clever and informative resource will spark rich conversations in a classroom where students are studying conventional and alternative sources of energy.

environment, nature, science, visualization earth-science, energy, science

I’ve a hunch that non-techy folks are gonna like 43Marks. Users can easily created a webpage that hosts all of their favorite, categorized bookmarks. It’s pretty much point-and-click easy.

.

productivity bookmarking, bookmarks