One nice thing about NECC is that many presentations are available after the convention has ended. If this opportunity is new to you, you can locate these resources at http://www.kzowebcasting.com/necc/.
I have been taking advantage of this opportunity for the last several days. Today I watched Chris Dede and colleague describeEdtags. Edtags is a social bookmarking site for educators. The primary focus is on tagged links to educational content, but some additional services are available.
I have operated my own bookmarking site for several years. It made sense to me to create a core of focused educational resources for a target audience and then allow this audience to expand this list. My site began as a resource to extend our books, but I have expanded the purpose to include resources of more general educational value. My site and the Harvard site are both built on an open source project named Scuttle and we have each modified the open source resources to extend services.
I would recommend the NECC session available through the link above as a way to understand some of the key ideas behind these sites and what makes them different from general purpose bookmarking sites.
Free wifi is a good thing. I carry a wireless USB stick, but the connection is slow.
I was pleased to see that the San Antonio airport has free wife, but then I discover that “social networks” are blocked. Evidently the “work” I do is not considered a “legitimate business need”. What is that supposed to mean. Perhaps this is how the kids feel.
There seem to a great number of closed sections this year. This always happens to a limited degree, but the % of closed sessions seems much higher this year. Folks are having to make decisions about sessions that amount fo skipping every other session to get into the sessions they really want to attend. It is not obvious why this is the case – the general attendance is down this year (approx 11K). Perhaps this facility does not offer enough large rooms.
Cindy has a reception to attend and then we are moving on to the Tech4Learning reception. I thought I would be able to socialize in the Bloggers’ Cafe. It looks like the bloggers have given up for the day. No more profound thoughts to share. Just me and my friend the policeman. Not sure what he thinks I am doing here. NECC citizens, the Bloggers’ Cafe is being carefully guarded.
Today was the first opportunity to spend time in the vendor exhibits. For me, this used to be one of the most useful parts of a NECC trip. However, with more and more services and tools moving to the web, I personally have picked up less and less. One interesting item this year was that Apple did not have a presence in the exhibit hall. Apple has always had one of the largest displays in square feet and perhaps Apple cannot scale back – it might be the largest or nothing.
It does seem like there is a greater emphasis on hardware – more white boards, projectors, digital microscopes, robotics, small PCs (I may post on this later) and firewall devices.
A few years ago Safari Montage (a company providing high quality video content on closed networks to schools) purchased the products from eZedia. The role of eZedia is an important issue for us because we write a book for future teachers and the tool we focused on in the last edition for student multimedia authoring was eZediaMX. We were also interested in eZediaQTI because it took advantage of some of the unique capabilities of Quicktime and it seemed a Quicktime authoring environment in connection with a video company might offer great opportunities for student authoring.
It now seems certain that this may not be the way Safari Montage is going. Our company contant had moved to Safari with eZedia and he was not at the conference. They booth person we talked with also indicated that eZedia products had not be upgraded nor were upgrades in process. Not good news for us. From a business perspective, this probably makes sense. Student authoring is moving to Web 2.0 tools and authoring tools for students is probably not a big market. Still, I am sorry to see this happen.
There was one item of news from Safari Montage. They will now offer their content outside of the school WAN. Teachers will now be able to work outside of the school.
ISTE announced the new Standards for Teachers this morning.
Facilitate and Inspire student learning and creativity
Design and Develop digital-age learning experiences
Model Digital-Age Learning
Promote and model digital citizenship
Engage and professional growth
I am sure groups of loyal ISTE-ites spent hours arguing over the wording of these values.
One thing I noted in the NET-S for students that was a change was the focus on student use of technology in learning (compared to developing skill with the tools). Perhaps these standards for teachers might also be considered as actions teachers must take to engage students in learning with technology. One thing I noted was that evaluation/assessment did not get a separate heading. It is now linked as part of the design of learning experiences.
The standards have yet to appear on the web site (I attended a second session and the standards were displayed, but I still can’t find them on the ISTE site), but I am sure the basic statements and related comments will be available soon.
After the second session I attended on NETS-T, I have drawn a few additional impressions. Someone noted that assessment of teacher competency would have been easier with the original standards. Most focused on skills and knowledge more easily tested. Now, the skills are what might be described as “squishy”. Still, I like the direction.
One perspective more suited to my own environment might be to look at what happens in colleges of education. Take the descriptive term “model” and seek examples from the general education class. What tools and tasks are being used in these settings? What future teachers experienced as K-12 students would not be what we might want them to model because of the pace of change in our world. Would we want them to model the uses of technology they observed in their classes preparing them to function as teachers? At least this would be a concrete place to start.
One final comment I recorded that stuck with me: With all of the standards how do NETS fit within the priorities among priorities? (my interpretation and wording) NETS values processes that would often seem consistent, but when future teachers are familiarized with standards (say in portfolio projects they are to submit) are NETS included as well as the content area expectations?
I promise to add the NETS-T when I can locate a link.
This is pre-session day and I am not attending a pre-session. Cindy is off to a meeting with ADEs and I am exploring.
Here is a short video from the Convention Center. I am spending a little time in the Bloggers’ Cafe. Lots of folks staring at their computer screens. Some even talk. Electrical plugins – very important. The final scene is what I tend to associate with NECC – the buses. No other conference I attend has a fleet of buses to move folks about.
I shot the video with a Flip with a quick assembly in iMovie. Flickr translates the content to a flash file. Moving about with both my computer and camera bags in the heat of the South is a bit much so the Flip is perfect. I should get a commission for endorsements.
I promise more substantive comments tomorrow. Today, I play.
NECC has one of the largest vendor areas I have encountered at any conference. Today was setup day and the roadies (if that is what they would be called) were busy onloading and assembling.
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