Disclaimer: Same as before. These are my notes. They tend to wander a bit, because my mind often wanders. It’s not necessarily a good thing nor a bad thing. It’s just the way I’m wired. Since these are notes, there are probably a slew of spelling mistakes, and grammar simply does not exist at all. Many of these issues that I talk about in these notes will probably be blogged about again later in a much more polished form. So if I haven’t scared you off yet, enjoy!
Bah, I left my power supply at home L Looks like I’m not going to have many notes from the afternoon session. Hmm… perhaps I’ll try to take some notes on the PocketPC. It does have a keyboard. Of course, battery life is a concern with that one as well and if that one dies, then I have a very different problem.
Matthew Brown is discussing GIS. He’s part of Inquirium. Never heard of it, another site to explore. Also have to check out myworldgis.org. GIS is becoming more accessible to schools, actual real world tools that scientists use. You can use actual data instead of creating artificial problems.
Maps consist of layers, geographic, historical, spatial, etc. You can add or remove layers dynamically and synthesize the information in a visual format.
Ok, because I’m never satisfied, I want to see this combined with NASA World Wind, to see real satellite photos of the world, layered with GIS data, and be able to view real photos through time depending on what is being studied. Imagine how fascinating that would be.
He’s talking about all sorts of different activities or problems students could engage in by using this data. No question, it would definitely make things interesting. In particular, the best thing about it is that it isn’t artificial. It’s real live data that has applications for beyond the classroom walls.
Tangent time. The biggest problem with traditional conference structure is that every session engages in the precise practices that we keep evangelizing against. One person, standing in front of a large group of people imparting information upon them. I wonder if this occurs because that’s the way it has always been done or because it’s the model that most teachers/administrators/adults are comfortable with. Could the conference structure be changed to accommodate 21st century learning? What SHOULD a conference session look like? There is an incredibly intelligent group of people sitting in one room together. I get the feeling that there has to be a way for the other 99% of the people in the room to be more than passive listeners. One person talking, a hundred other people sitting and listening. It doesn’t really make sense, does it? So how could things be different….
First of all, nothing personal against Matthew (it really is a fascinating topic), but his entire presentation could be vodcasted and distributed to everybody in this room ahead of time. There is absolutely no reason to see him doing this presentation live. In fact, I bet it could probably be even better if it was prerecorded. He’s rushing quite a bit because he has a lot of content and wants to get it all in before he’s yanked from the podium. If he designed a 15 minute presentation in the privacy of his own office and made sure that it was exactly the way he wanted it to be, I get the feeling he could really create something special. The 100 people in this room download it before hand, watch it, visit the sites he’s talking about, get a little experience with the material, head over to the conference wiki and pull up this specific session. Then people post questions, queries, ideas, issues, concerns, and discussion points. When everyone gets together at the conference, this group of 100 people can actually use their collective brainpower together to try to accomplish something significant. Perhaps create a model for integrating it into a school setting, perhaps try to figure out how to align activities to state standards, or perhaps simply explore it and talk about how interesting it is. May use the Open Space concept.
David Warlick is on the microphone. First time I’ve seen him speak, but I’ve listened to his voice about 20 times or so, for a total of around 600 minutes or 12 hours. It’s a familiar voice. He’s discussing blogging. It’s a familiar subject to say the least and he keeps bringing up screenshots that I’ve seen on his site before J It’s kind of fun to be honest. His powerpoint is pretty darn slick. Really exentuates what he’s talking about. He uses animation the way it SHOULD be used. It’s not just gratuitous text flying around the screen. I’m beginning to understand why people have him come to their school.
He’s talking about blogging 101 right now. RSS, aggregators, and so on. I’ve given a pretty similar presentation before to this point. But I do have to admit, I could learn a bit about the art of presenting from this so far. He’s used the same slide to talk about blogs, RSS, XML and aggregators, all visually and clearly. Very slick.
Moving right along to Podcasting. Wow, way more hands went up when he asked how many people had heard of podcasting than I would have expected. That’s incredible. Ok, I have to wonder how many people have heard of my podcast? Yes, I’m egocentric. I have long since accepted that.
He’s doing a live demonstration of XML right now. I have to be honest, I think he’s losing people just a bit right now. I know how simple it is, and it doesn’t look TOO complicated when he’s doing it, but it’s too many steps. Go to Weblogg-ed, click on xml, highlight the url (ignore the messy code on the page), go to bloglines, click on add, paste in the url, click subscribe, and then click on the blog itself. To someone that isn’t familiar with it at all, that’s a whole lot of someone who is unitiated. Of course, it’s the sad reailty that there aren’t too many shortcuts (yes, there’s boomarklets and plugins, but they don’t always work). It’s still too complicated a process for mass consumption. It needs to be easier.
Quick musing: Don’t you love the way I point out all the problems with the way things are and say that things need to be better without giving practical ideas for how they could be better? I have a knack for pointing out what’s wrong with a situation without suggesting how it could be changed or improved. Isn’t that useful? I’m an idea man who needs a group of people who listens to what I say, solves all the problems that I identify and then gives me 20% of the profits.
Back to reality. Even though it’s more complicated than I’d like it to be, I do like the fact that he’s showing a real life, live demonstration.
Dave just showed my site and had me stand up, and introduced me as the foremost educational podcaster in the world. Ok, that may be true, but I still live in relative anonymity. My audience is a faceless group of people that sometimes drop me an email or a voicemail. Standing up in front of a group of people and being recognized was pleasant but just a little embarrassing. You could have warned me Dave J I ‘ll have to return the ‘favor’ some way! One other note, he pulled up my site and my del.icio.us account. I’m glad that he showed the RSS tag and not the Vegas tag.
Syndicate Subscribe Send. He ended with this one. I really like the way this sums it all up. Information is no longer a one way avenue. It’s not even two way. It’s omnidirectional. You don’t send information to specific people. You send it out and allow people to latch on to it. The strength of the bond is variable (people can visit, subscribe, or even subscribe to subsets [categories/tags]). I’m back to the Strength of Weak Ties again. I really have to read that book.
Question and answer time. My favorite, audience interaction.
Is RSS powerful enough to change our current notion of Information Literacy? (David Jakes’ question)
Aggregators can become overwhelming. Are they just new file cabinets that are becoming packed with information that we can’t ever absorb?
Only two questions for the presenters? We’ve moved on to using Qwizdom to have the audience provide answers to questions from Judy Salpeter, the group leader of sorts. So far, it seems like a gadget. We could have just raised our hands. I love the devices, but I want to see it really used to ask something that couldn’t be answered by a simple show of hands. Next question was is your district cutting edge, getting there, or way behind. We got a bell curve, not much of a surprise. Follow up question is how receptive is your district to the idea of letting the technology have a transformative effect. (A note for the people who make quizdom, you should be able to see the chart without stopping the reception of responses).
Ok, one person brought up that the receptiveness of the teachers may be very different from the receptiveness of the administration. Someone else brought up that some schools may be receptive but not have the applications required. Personally, I get the feeling that the application piece could be greatly reduced with the advent of FOSS.
That’s all from this session. Boy I wish I had some sort of grand conclusion to write here, but I have to wrap up and try to do some networking. Surely some of the people here are looking for the most dedicated teacher on this side of the Mississippi.