Reflections on NECC09

I can't believe that NECC09 is over already.

This has been an awesome week worth the time and money it took to get myself here.

I have attended several NECC's over the years. I have learned not to over plan for myself. I did have one or two sessions planned for each day; however, I left plenty of time to spend on the exhibit floor. The exhibit floor is so much more than 5 football fields of vendors. It is a place of networking with vendors, an efficient way to find out what is new in educational technology, and a place to meet / remeet educators that I communicate with online.

I enjoyed the BYOL sessions that I attended. Learning new things and being able to try them out at the same time has been great. I remember several years back when NECC didn't provide wireless as part of the conference. (Yes I attended pre-edublogger...)

Having continuous internet changed my conference. This year I was able to blog during my sessions (hence the recent activity of my blog.) (A sore spot still is that the Renaissance Hotel didn't provide internet access for the digital equity summit.

I was able to attend several of the sessions that were hosted in the SMART room. This forum actually allowed for a much more interactive type of workshop. Presenters were mostly great educators that happen to use SMART boards.

One of the greatest successes for myself is the networking and re-networking that took place. Some of this happened during the day, but much more during the evening receptions / events. A highlight for me was attending the reception at the Canadian Embassy. It was powerful to know that I was walking back into Canada when I walked under a row of Canadian flags flowing in the breeze and then into the building.

I hope to present again next year but would really like a space in the regular program not on the first Saturday AM before most have even arrived....

Feedback that I plan to officially provide will include:

1. Better publicity for evening events. (Even if they are invitation only events - if they have an event code, they could be placed into our planner with out us having to input all details.)

2. Recognition of Canada on Canada Day during the conference (which ironically doesn't apply next year)

3. I would like less 'guest' passes in the exhibit area. I appreciate that spouses can join; however, there were too many times with young children on the floor that seemed detractions. (I do greatly appreciate the students that were attending as part of a poster or other presentation.

4. There weren't any family events planned this year. I travelled alone this year but really appreciated that my family was able to be involved at previous NECC conferences. It is hard to be away from family a long time and almost as hard to come back to the hotel to find a well rested family ready to go out. (when all I want is some quiet time to process the day.)

I do hope I can attend the rebranded ISTE conference in Denver next June.

I find that attending NECC is a huge power boost to my batteries. I am ready to go again for a year of learning and working with students and teachers. If you ever get the chance to attend a major conference (especially ISTE) try and make it work somehow.

Erin Gruwell at #necc09

Erin is an author of Teaching Hope.

Dealing with inner city kids. Starting with challenging days with students not wanting to read about "dead white guys in tights." Erin have them all write in their journals. After some time she found Homer. They would be interested in a 'Homie' trying to get home.

The life story of the students that had many challenges. It was more important to make people laugh than be laughed at by the teacher. It was better to belong to a gang and belong. It was better to be beaten than to not belong.

Given an opportunity to change then reading the Diary of a Young Girl. This student was able to relate (after being supported to connect the similarities) Maria was captured to reading the story but was shocked when Anne dies. This surprise was a loss of hope, but Darius commented that Anne did live because of the writing she did.

Darius was inspired to write to the women that helped hide Anne. She did come. All 150 students came to the 'student renovated' community centre.

There is too much to share with the story. I am certain that Teaching Hope by the Freedom Writers and Erin Gruwell will be an incredible read. So many stories ....

Very moving story.

150 students that had a difference made for them, 150 students that chose to make a change, 150 students that made a difference by raising money to present their stories to Congress, 150 students invited 150 teachers and trained them in what it takes to reach students. 150 teachers that then wrote their stories.

Very powerful story and great way to end NECC.

Integrating SMART and Google Earth #necc09

Planning for Field Trips

- students label where they are going, and how they get there. Now with more Google Street View, you can walk through many neighbourhoods at street level. Learning theory considers that the we need to have prior knowledge and to activate prior knowledge.

Much of what I saw was not about the SMART board (except the screen capture to Notebook that Mac and already do)

Cool Tools in Google

- Showing Day view - then sliding through a day to reveal where doesn't get dark in the summer (or is always in the winter)

- Showing Chronological View - then sliding to change over time (forest growth, building, demolitions)

- Weather Layer - looking at weather patterns, following hurricanes, look at difference between weather / climate

Version 5 also includes Google Ocean. You can explore the depths and terrain under the ocean surface

create-kmz-who-me.pbworks.com

I had a question after the session by another delegate about creating KMZ with timeline so I showed him.

• http://earth.google.com/outreach/tutorial_time.html

Lots of fun using the SMART board.

Literacy isn't enough: 21st Century Fluency for the Digital Age - Lee Crockett

Lee has warned us that he will be speaking very fast....

Following up from yesterday's presentation (that I didn't attend)

Kids are fundamentally different. Classical conditioning. If you put apes in a cage, and spray if they reach for bananas, soon other apes will prevent any ape from going for bananas. You can replace all apes one at a time will prevent any ape from going for the bananas. The apes learn

TTWWADI - That's the way we've always done it.

This is true of modern day axle width for trains - goes back 2300 years ago from a Roman War Chariot - The chariot was just wide enough for two horses rear ends. Today the Solid Booster Rockets are built to the same 4' 8.5 Inches because they are shipped by rail. The most complex piece of machinery built base the specification on the size of two horses butts.

Education has a lot of TTWWADI.

Why are kids in our classrooms ???? they have no other choice.

There are 5 skill sets in education and life today

1. Obsolete Skills

- once valued - sharpening swords, milking horses, candle maker

2. Traditional Skills

- once important - less mainstream - still valued - handwriting, dewey decimal system

3. Traditional Literacy Skills

- Reading, Writing, Numeracy - Traditional Communication Skills

- just as important today as they are an essential foundation for 21st Century Skills

4. Modified Traditional Literacy Skills

- Emphasis has increased based on the digital culture

- Reading is no longer a linear passive activity

- Writing is no longer reading and writing a report on what you read

5. New Skills

- emerged or are unique to the Digital Age

- This are critical in the world today - online communication - social media

Schools continue to train students to be consumers of content; now students need to be producers and prosumers of content. Students literate with 20th Century skills only will only be prepared for our past and not their future. (What a great quote)

Students need to move to fluency in 21st Century Skills. Fluency is at a level that you no longer need to think about how to do the skill

1. Technological Fluency - you know how to use excel and use it to calculate and think - the focus is not on the hardware, it is on the headware

2. Media Fluency - Beyond creating a podcast or taking a photo - It is about looking critically at the medium and how it is being used to communicate and shape your opinion. Measuring the effectiveness of the message communicated with the media.

3. Information Fluency - Unconsciously and Intuitively interpret information

a. Ask good questions

b. Acquire

c. Analyze - authenticate, arrange, understand bias

d. Apply - within context of real life, real world problem - write a blog, - vision into practice

e. Assess - product and process.

Traditional Literacy and 21st Century Fluency need to both be taught in a structured and valuable way. Our job as educators should be to teach lazy (progressive withdrawl) - empower our students to be independent learners and thinkers with 21st century thinkers - provide them with the skills and knowledge to succeed in the outside world.

Our job is to plan for learners to graduate no longer needing us for them to succeed.

To have learning stick (learning triangle) we need to have students teach concepts to each other and apply it. Now they will remember 90%

Today's students are not the students that schools were designed to teach. Today's students are not the students we were trained to teach. If we don't change how we teach, it is us that has the learning difficulty

http://committedsardine.com/resources.cfm

Kevin

10 Ten Web2.0 Tools - Gail Lovely

1. Wikis.  Gail considers them a bit more flexible thus ranked higher.

Cool Branching Story with the wiki - Teacher starts a story, students add choices for the next step in the story.  Then they write the results.  What a cool idea for collaboration.

2.  Blogs

Gail shared an example where a grade 3 student had 800 readings of her writing.  This level of readership encourages and motivates your readers and writers.  (The comments were moderated by the teacher)

3.  Voice Thread

The ability to publish quickly with multimedia.  Voice, Text, markup, or image.  

I missed the rest of the presentation.  The full presentation http://glovely.wetpaint.com

The special focus with this presentation was aiming at young learners.   

Early Literacy Skills

Attending #NECC09 Early Literacy Skills by Kathleen H. McClaskey, EdTech Associates

The website is at http://earlyliteracyskills.wikispaces.com 

Great list of websites that are listed for supporting early literacy.  Several to start  Phonemic Awareness.

Creating Practice Guides.  This was interesting.  Setting up a set of websites and providing links for a specific skill.

Phonemic Awareness

Website	Activity Link
Star Fall - A	http://www.starfall.com/n/short-a/sa/load.htm?f
More Sites

You can then carry on with placing the table on a websites

Also looks at Vocabulary Building

(A great one that I didn't bookmark is WordWeb that looks at synonyms but is a free PC download)

News to me - You need to be exposed to vocabulary at least 11 times before you know it.  From Grade 4 to 12 students need to acquire 3000 words per year to stay at grade level.  Wow.  It highlights the value of reading and exposure to literacy in many forms.

Check out her website.

It was impressive to see the collection.  Kathleen has more resources here as well.

http://www.edtech-associates.com/education-and-technology.htm

Kevin