There is never enough time to see what you want to see and hear what you want to hear at a major conference like NECC. We end up splitting our time between presentations and the exhibit hall. Here are samples from each.The exhibits hall at NECC very possibly contains the largest collection of vendors focused on the education market of any conference. It is immense and one could spend the entire conference talking with the sales people and sitting through short instructional presentations.
This is our opportunity to learn about new products and services. We often spend a lot of time at some of the smaller booths that attract our attention. Jeff Patterson of Gaggle.Net told us about new online service for schools (and gave us permission to use his picture). We had heard about Gaggle.Net before, but this was an opportunity to speak with someone from the company. Not every school operates an e-mail service for students and schools may find limitations if they tried to use services such as Hotmail. Services such as Hotmail may not be appropriate because unsolicited email may contain inappropriate content and because students cannot be monitored when using the e-mail service. If classroom teachers were to remake Hotmail, they might create something like Gaggle.Net. This service allows the school to deal with the concerns of inappropriate content and student responsibility.
If you use one of our books, you are familiar with Dr. Bernie Dodge and WebQuests. We attended Bernie Dodge??s session on WebQuesting in 3D (http://webquest.sdsu.edu/wq3d/ – this may not be immediately operational due to some technical difficulties). The presentation challenged teachers and software developers to consider how education can compete with other experiences in students?? lives and explored the tension educators interested in technology feel between the educational and entertainment components of edutainment. Bernie presented a soon to be released technology from Adobe ( Adobe Atmosphere) that allows the development of 3D multi-user online environments (some of you who enjoy computer games may recognize this terminology). He demonstrated how it may soon be possible to extend 2D WebQuests into online 3D and how certain applications would allow some very exciting experiences for learners. We have always been interested in exploratory learning environments (see of present chapter on instructional software) and Adobe Atmosphere and what it might allow looked pretty cool.
