Social Learning Summit

The annual virtual conference conducted by the Discovery Educator Network has taken a new direction this year and I’m pretty excited about it. The DEN has teamed up with the folks at Classroom 2.0 to create a great lineup of webinars throughout the day on April 21 and have called it The Social Learning Summit.

Members of the education community were encouraged to submit their ideas for presentations and the accepted proposals can be seen HERE. The schedule is still being created, but the list of presentations looks great – there will be a lot of opportunities for educators to find exactly the content they are looking for. The beauty of a virtual conference is that you can attend whenever fits into your schedule and wherever you have internet access.

Be sure to check out the presentations, and I hope to see you in one of mine!

A movement

I had the opportunity to attend the annual Podstock in Wichita, Kansas, this weekend. As I tweeted, using the hashtag #podstock2011 as instructed, I started to get replies from my Twitter followers – “what is podstock, and should I be there?”

This post is an attempt to explain, just a little, what Podstock is. If you “get” it, then you just might begin to think about what Podstock can be.

Podstock is a conference.

Or rather, it is an un- conference – with a conference-style format, the sessions lend themselves more toward discussion than traditional sage on the stage programming. Around 250 people attended this year, which is not quite twice as many as attended last year. If it doubles again next year, it will have outgrown its traditional venue, The Hotel at Oldtown.

Growth can be a good thing. The beauty of this conference, though, is the sharing and discussion, and I fear that could get lost if the conference gets too big. Even the vendor interaction is personal and relevant – I saw vendors participating in the sessions, just as enthusiastic and devoted as the full-time educators who attended.

Podstock is an attitude.

This was my first year at Podstock. I had a friend who had told me a little of what to expect, and I had done a little research on my own. I even attended a shorter Podstock of sorts in Tyler, Texas, (Podstock Pineywoods), where I had the opportunity to listen to the glue that holds Podstock together, Kevin Honeycutt. Kevin has a vision and a dynamic charisma that makes people want to learn, to share, and to grow. Kevin’s hope is for Podstock to become a nationwide movement, with small un-conferences happening on regional levels so that the original idea can be maintained with smaller attendance than the mega conferences that are becoming so successful across the country. Then it just might be a movement . . .

Podstock is.

Just when I was giving up on the value of attending an educational technology conference, there Podstock was. From the new technology adopter in a small school district to very advanced users in very large districts, educators came together for two days to share, discuss, and learn. It was an opportunity to dream, dream big, and start making connections that might actually facilitate true change.

Podstockers are a faithful group, often using personal funds and driving hundreds of miles to attend. They are what Honeycutt calls a “family” – these educators get to know each other well enough to be a support network outside of their profession.

“What is Podstock, and should I be there?”

Podstock was an exceptional experience. I would encourage any serious educators who have been finding traditional conferences lacking, and who want to get re-charged by finding others who are just as geeky as themselves to save the dates – July 18, 19, 20, 2012 – and start planning to attend.

Yes, you should have been there.

TCEA Days 3 and 4: Whirlwind!

Wednesday and Thursday of TCEA were packed full of information, networking, sharing, and learning. The highlights of Wednesday for me were the great resources that were being shared on Twitter using the official conference hashtag #tcea2011 (or #tcea or #tcea11, etc.). Many people were sharing the resources they were being given in their sessions, along with comments about what was being said.

One of the comments on Wednesday that still has me reeling is that Xtranormal is no longer as free as it once was. It now only offers one free video and that video can only have one character in it. According to Xtranormal, they surveyed users and believe that their users will pay for a premium account. Hopefully, the education world will have enough of an influence to either change the policy or encourage the option of and edu-account. I really have to think there are alternatives to charging such as sponsors who would love to have their logos on the Xtranormal website as businesses who care enough about educators that they are helping to keep the service free . . . just sayin’.

I also participated in a BrainPop focus group on Wednesday and learned about some of the very exciting things that are on the way for subscribers. I cannot disclose what those things are – you’ll just have to wait!

On Thursday, many of the sessions I planned on attending were full. However, some of the sessions posted links to their resources on the closed doors and I began to wonder – really – why do we spend several days in Austin when a list of links to such resources could just be shared online? I suppose it is the connections that are made in a face-to-face setting that are the true value in TCEA.

Because of full sessions, I ended up in the general session with smoke, lights, and juggling – oh boy! Austin has a lot to offer, with regards to entertainment and food, but I really wish TCEA would move around this state each year. Austin isn’t able to handle the growing number of educators descending on its restaurants and parking. Perhaps alternating between DFW, Houston, and Austin would also make it easier for some people farther away from Austin to attend from time to time.

Tomorrow will be a short day. I’ll be facilitating a round table discussion at 9:15 in Ballroom B entitled: Recruitment and Retention of Girls in STEM.

TCEA Day 2: Discovery pre-con and good conversation

Today I spent the morning and part of the afternoon at the Bob Bullock Texas History Museum for the Discovery Education pre-con. The group I was in started our day with the keynote speaker, Dr. Lodge McCammon, who talked to us, showed us some of his videos, and led us in two video creation activities which were truly engaging and gave us useful experience with a strategy to use in our classrooms.

Of special interest to me was Dr. McCammon’s video “No Lecture in the Classroom” which was entertaining and made several good points. The first video we made was a “paper slide” video to the tune of one of Dr. McCammon’s science-themed songs. You can see the results HERE.

My favorite video was the music video we made, and Dr. McCammon is hosting a contest to see which of our videos will be voted the best. You can watch the videos HERE, then vote at the bottom of the page once you have decided which is best. I was in the Brown group (shameless plug). Anyway . . .

The cool thing about both of the videos we made is this – when I had my students create videos in my classroom, it was always one video per group. These videos were produced as one video for the entire class, with the groups each being responsible for one part of the video. It seems to me that this not only made it a much quicker process, but also would encourage higher quality from students, who would feel that they need to do their best in order to make their classroom video the best that it can be.

After the pre-conference, I attended the TCEA Golden Apple Awards ceremony. There were several very deserving individuals in that room and I was happy to be there to cheer them all on. My friend, Andrea Keller, was a finalist in the Teacher of the Year category! It was awesome to see her accomplishments rewarded.

The best part of the evening was joining an eclectic group of educators for dinner at Mulberry, followed by great coffee at the Hideout Theater on Congress. The staff was very gracious and allowed our small group to stay past closing, not rushing our conversation. I would highly encourage anyone visiting Austin to pay them a visit.

Tomorrow begins the conference in full swing. I’ll be part of a panel at 10:00 in room 19B. The session is entitled “Moving into the Metaverse: Education in Virtual Worlds.” I’ll be joining Valerie Hill and Mary Miner for this session.

Conference 101: To laptop or not to laptop

www.morguefile.com

That is the question. Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer . . .

Let’s face it. Laptops are heavy. They are not the latest technology. One speaker yesterday even said that laptops were “for old people”.  However, there are a lot of things for which people at a technology conference, naturally, will want their laptops.

As a habitual conference-goer, I have evaluated whether I need to carry the thing around and have decided that, with the availability of everything I need on my smart phone (which now is an HTC Evo, but when I decided this was a *blush* Motorola Moto Q), I didn’t need to carry around a laptop.

Here are some things I have learned since then:

1. Although you can easily take notes on a smart phone, many speakers seem to think you are texting and not paying attention.
2. Even if you are not taking notes on the phone, sending tweets is a very valid and well-known form of backchannel – which many speakers seem to think means you are not paying attention.
3. Every tech conference I’ve been to has at least one “email station” where you can do anything for which you require a keyboard.
4. Be sure to bring the charger for your phone! It doesn’t do any good to go to a conference with the intention of only carrying around your phone when, in fact, you end up having to lug your laptop around because it is the only way to charge said phone!

I know this isn’t much, but they are the small insights I have gained over the past three years of phone-toting conference-going. Please add your own thoughts by adding a comment.

All that said – look for me at TCEA. I’ll be the one using a laptop for a phone charger . . .

TCEA Day One: Google Academy

I know, the first thing that comes into one’s mind when they hear Google Academy is the super sought-after Google Teacher Academy – the ones that people have to compete for spots at. This wasn’t one of those. It was just a day full of presentations about Google products that anyone who was fortunate enough to sign up for before all the slots were gone could attend.

I spent my first day in Austin at the Google Academy. I started off the morning with high expectations. I was very excited and the tweets that others were sending increased my excitement because they were all excited, too.

I found myself disappointed by the end of the day. It wasn’t because the Academy wasn’t well organized or that the presentations were not valuable – it was VERY well organized and the presentations actually were valuable. The problem for me was that the presentations were all about things about which I already had knowledge. I know that many people got a lot out of the day because there was valuable information for people who had never used Google Forms or Google Calendar or other Google apps. What I learned today is that I already know quite a bit, which really encouraged me to attempt a Google Trainer certification.

Again, I’m not saying that the Academy was not good. It just wasn’t what I needed. I hope that one day there will be a strand added for high-use people – showing us some of the innovative things people are doing with Google apps.

In the meantime, you can find the links I saved during the day on my Linkable site. Here are a few tidbits I learned:

• Google Magic Fill
• Google Beatbox
• Google Docs can now convert PDF files!!!

And I was reminded of a few things:

• Visit Google Labs often to see what is being developed
• Use Google Voice to have a phone number you aren’t afraid to give out. One of my colleagues, John Witter, uses this and he also told me about a very handy feature – he can change the number the Google call is directed to during a conversation so that he can continue a call that originated on a landline, move it to his mobile phone, and the caller never knows that the transition has been made. I don’t know how many times I’ve been on a landline call and wanted to leave, but couldn’t because I’m still talking on the phone!

At the end of the day, Jaime Casap gave us a great closing presentation. I really enjoyed some of the things he had to say and was sad that he didn’t really have enough time to say everything he planned to say.

I want to thank Google and the folks at TCEA for all the planning that went into the day!