Tag: necc06

KidPix Podcast

One of my favorite software discoveries from NECC was MacKiev’s KidPix 3.x.

We go way back with KidPix. KidPix helped Cindy convince the school board that Macs (the LC) were the way to go when computers were first purchased for Grand Forks elementary classrooms. Our second grade daughter created a Kid Pix project (she colored a line art drawing of a dinosaur, recorded a song about dinosaurs, and typed in the lyrics of the song) as a demonstration. She entered the text as a something to do as the meeting progressed without our suggestion. At the time, it was a very impressive demonstration of multimedia authoring (we still include her “dinosaur project” image in the forward to our book).

We created a slide show before we knew what such things were called and before the feature was added to KidPix. The procedure was a little complicated – it required that KidPix pict files be attached to individual cards of a HyperCard stack, audio had to be extracted from the KidPix files (using Resedit) and added to the HyperCard stack, and the stack had to be activated by a script we hacked together and attached to each card so that stack the entire collection would automatically play. (I still miss HyperCard.)

I think KidPix got kind of buggy and there were some strange things going on with which company was actually upgrading and selling the product (I am still confused because you can purchase two versions).

I am an advocate again. We ran across a new KidPix feature at NECC (the MacKiev update to version 3) that we like. You can now export a KidPix slideshow as a podcast. I find the idea of second graders creating podcasts a little freaky, but why not.

A simple example (turn up the volume). This is playing as a Quicktime file (podcast size) within a web page – I thought this would be easier than sending as a podcast.

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The World of Educational Software is Flat

OK – my title is a derivative. In his book (by a similar name), Tom Friedman describes when he discovered the world was flat. I think this conference represents the time point at which I realize the world of educational software is flat. Now I understand that MacKiev is not a company located somewhere in Idaho. Now I understand that the “international types” do not all attend NECC to learn what folks in the U.S. are doing.

The person who described the feature of KidPix that allows podcasting was a software engineer from the Ukraine (very cool – more on that later – by the way this is MacKiev). The woman showing the best document camera I have seen (Wolf Vision) was from Austria. EducationCity is from England (I have this strange image of these electrons running through a cable across the Atlantic. One electron with an angry look on his face turns to the other and says – “North Dakota, again?”)

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Different faces, different places

We meet some of the students from Fultondale, Alabama, while waiting for the fireworks to being on Tuesday. They were engaging in a little competition to see who could invite the most adults to their Thursday morning showcase session. They were mature and polite and seemed excited about being at the conference to share their technology experiences.

Fultondale

We did attend the student showcase and reintroduced ourselves to the student who had invited us. He then explained the different parts of their exhibit and described their epals projects (check out the link from the web site). I said I would blog their presentation – so here is a “shout out” to the students in Mrs. Ramsey’s class.

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Outside Aisle 2006

Vendor

My reason for posting this image requires an explanation. Over the years in which I have attended NECC, I have become interested in the vendors who populate the outside aisle. Vendors purchase different areas of the arena floor for different prices and the small and lower price spots are around the outside. The vendors who purchase the smaller and less central locations often seem to have a single product and are not well established. I admire these folks. Gaining attention must not be easy, but where do we expect new ideas to come from? So here is to those small companies with big dreams.

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Blogging NECC

NECC (National Educational Computing Conference) is coming up in a little over a week. NECC was the occasion of my initial blog posts (back in 2002) and I have posted from NECC since. For me, it is possibly the best conference for learning about K-12 technology innovation. NECC has since organized bloggers. I don’t participate in the organized venture – too much pressure to generate a body of focused content for me.

David Warlick proposes that those who attend and blog tag their blogs NECC06. This practice will provide some evidence of the impact of the conference (check Technorati) and also allow interested parties to locate NECC related posts. A good idea I think.

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