Wordle is one of those sites where you can enter in text and it gets turned into a word cloud.  You can copy your url, a blog post feed, your delicious account or just simply paste some text. I came across it here, and after reading Karen’s post wanted to try out my own blog to see if my ideas were being backed up by my words.   Glad to see they are.

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I’m always looking for little quirky Web 2.0 programs that I can introduce to my students so really enjoyed coming across Stripgenerator in one of Larry Ferlazzo’s many posts about about web tools.  I see it as a tool kids can use for making introductions to unit projects or spicing up presentations.

At NECC Week, I had been playing with a Flip Cam that my work bought for students taking my Web 2.0 class next semester.  I needed to learn how to use it in case kids had questions , so brought it along and recorded a few short clips.  I was more interested in playing with the camera rather than making a video, but decided to put together a pretty disjointed compilation of what I was able to record.  It has a few highlights though, some scenes from EBC including, Ewan Macintosh’s request for Pearson Learning to turn off their cameras (he was intimidating so I did too after that).  It also has a bit from David Warlick’s session, from Steve Hargadon’s Social Networking in Education session,  and a few other snippets if you’re interested.

NECC 2008 was the best conference I’ve ever been to.  Mostly, because it was so dynamic.  Usually I judge a conference only on the quality of the sessions but this one was so much more than lectures.  I wanted to take a couple minutes and reflect on the Goods, Bads, and Bests from NECC Week (EBC, NECC, and NECC Unplugged).

Easily, the best part of EBC and NECC2008 was meeting people from my personal learning networks.

The 2nd best part was participating at NECC Unplugged.  I didn’t get to schedule a session there because my travel plans were made so close to the conference that I had no idea if I would even be attending past Monday afternoon until a couple days prior.  So when I got to sit-in and contribute to an impromptu roundtable conversation with Steve Hargadon, Darren Draper, Robin Ellis, Karl Fisch, and several others from my PLN, I was excited.  We discussed how EBC could be better next year along with social networking in education.  I had been a passive observer at the Blogger’s Cafe until that point, and it feels so much better to contribute to the community.

The third, and last, best part is a little of a selfish one.  I hosted a poster session called Using Web 2.0 to Motivate Student Creativity which focused on Web 2.0 for Beginners and it went really well.  A lot of people stopped to watch our (OCHS) kids talk about their experiences using these tools.  I met hundreds of people and loved talking to educators who really wanted to make their children’s experiences at school more relevant.

The Goods.  The best sessions I sat in were all at EBC.  They were discussions yet, only one of the sessions that I attended at NECC was even close, mostly because they hosted a backchannel chat (pw:necc) through Chatzy. David Warlick and Alan November didn’t dissapoint but Social Networking in Education was the livliest and most passionate session that I attended outside of EBC.

The Bads.  By far the worst part about NECC Week was the lack of wireless connectivity.  In over half the rooms I was in I had nothing, nada, zilch for connection.  Kristen Hokanson said it best to an IT guy trying to solve the problem at EBC once he declared they had no idea so many people would have laptops, “but this is an edtech conference.”  They didn’t have enough access points and in the theater where the spotlight sessions were at, there was nothing.

Those view-blocking Pearson cameras at EBC were annoying, but I wasn’t nearly as mad as others about them recording and profitting from our words.  Spreading information…..good.

The other bad part, which I have encountered at almost every conference I’ve attended, was their take on Online Learning.  When I went to NECC in Philadelphia a few years back, I don’t remember any online sessions so was happy to at least see that strand in almost every concurrent session.  However, most of the sessions weren’t worth attending, the NACOL booth didn’t even have someone sitting at it, and the one session I did attend was horrible.  It was three instructional designers from the University of Houston who lectured for 45 minutes straight about 3 basic lessons you could teach online.  It was like they just discovered e-learning and somehow convinced ISTE to accept their proposal.  I wish they would screen for people who are really doing something with online learning and hybrid schools, its a future of education.

flickr user: kjarrett

David Warlick’s – Our Students Our Worlds
21st Century Global Learning

What kind of library might I design if Im not constrained by walls.  Shows example of file cabinet on 2nd life.

In straight rows, performing repetitive tasks, under close supervision. How old schools are designed, and what was required for industrial jobs.

We have to teach our kids to be able to prosper in a time of rapid change where we can’t predict the future and there jobs can’t be defined yet.

Develop a workforce where workers can create a niche career for themselves based on their creativity and developed skill set.

May want to read Daniel Pink’s A Whole New Mind, resonates deeply in the ed community.

May want to read Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class

For the sake of our economy, we need to invest in creative students.  The creative class jobs are opening up.  Keep art classes, drama classes, and history classes going.

Today’s kids have “no formative recollection of the 20th century.”   Our high school students enter at 14.  Born in 1994 so 6 at turn of century.

Kids dont have to say goodbye when they leave HS today because connecting is so easy that they don’t expect to leave forever or leave anybody behind.

I wondering about the digital divide.  He speaks of kids wexpecting to have the ability to access the tech they normally use once they enter classroom.  What about the at-risk kids that are so far behind.

Kids need to know how to find people to get help from.  We have to teach them to develop personal learning networks they can turn to an instant.

Real danger of digital divide is the network connected kids have but kids left behind will be alone and wont be able to access information within networks.  We need broadband for all kids.

Entire country of Macedonia is wireless.  But in US, if you can afford it you can have if not too bad.  Must change.

Need to have deep conversations with kids to try and discover the real value behind social networks so that we can just use one and dont need a separate one for everything.

Kids have invented a new grammar through IM and Text language which is developed for 21st century.

Wombat = waste of money, brains, and time

Video games coming up as new learning engines. Spore

Games Learning Society, conference about using games for learning

“machinima” production techniques with computer generated imagery rendered using 3-d tools

Our students think of things as raw material where we had cd’s to listen, books to read, movies to watch, but kids think about how they can remix that data and create something new

the Longtail learner, review a little more

lulu.com self publishing, you must market yourself, also get indiv. web page on the site.

We need to create producers of content, and teach how to do properly.

Innocentive, problem solving site

64% of teenagers have produced original digital content and published it online, they more literate in many ways than teachers.
Ajax Chat possible back channel option for future presentations

Handouts available at http://handouts.davidwarlick.com