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Staff Development
My trip to NECC, 2006
The Read/Write Web, also referred to as Web 2.0, was a big part of the conference. Many sessions dealt with wikis, blogs and podcasts as easy ways for teachers and especially students to contribute content to the web. As Will Richardson put it, “A society of authors.” This was also said about the web not too long ago. The difference is that learning html or Dreamweaver requires lots of time while setting up a blog or a wiki on one of the many sites that offer them is relatively easy.Many people were blogging the conference. I sat next to someone in one session who was typing right into her blog . She said everyone in her district who is at NECC is blogging the conference. This is one great way to create a district resource that teachers who did not attend the conference can use. Also, teachers who attended the conference have a blog to refer back if they forget something.
During one session the person sitting in front of me was looking at my blog during the session. I tapped her on the shoulder and said hello. Small world. In another session, I met a person who had emailed me about my blog the day before. The great thing about NECC is that the people who are using technology are at NECC using technology. There were laptops everywhere and the entire conference site offered free wifi access.
Some people were saying that educators should not take away the tools that kids are using at home when the come to school. The tools that they were referring to are cell phones, blogs and myspace pages. I believe it was Will Richardson who compared a myspace page to a beer commercial. He pointed out that there was the same amount of commercialism and sexual innuendo in the beer commercial as in the myspace page. The important thing is to teach students how to use these tools for educational purposes and publish responsibly.
In the exhibits area I was impressed by www.schoolweblockers.com. This company offers a web based file storage system for students and teachers. For about $1.00 per user in a school each student gets 100Mb of storage and teachers get 1Gb of storage. Students and teachers can take files that they are working on at school and upload them to the schoolweblockers.com server. When they get home the files can be downloaded to their home computer. This is a great way to give students and teachers the opportunity to store, access and transfer files at school or at home. Answers.com had a booth at NECC and their website, http://www.answers.com/, is a useful research tool for k-12 students.
Check my blog for more detailed reports on the sessions I attended.
In addition to keeping a blog about the NECC conference I also signed on to be an eSchool News Correspondent. eSchool had this great idea to involve conference goers in reporting on all of the sessions. You can access all the reports at: http://www.eschoolnews.com/cic/necc/blog/
The reports I contributed are:
California Streaming: A Golden Model for Rich Media Delivery!
http://www.eschoolnews.com/cic/necc/blog/2006/07/001522.phpeJournalism: Authentic Learning with Technology and Journalism
http://www.eschoolnews.com/cic/necc/blog/2006/07/001524.phpReaching Beyond the Walls: International Projects and Partners
http://www.eschoolnews.com/cic/necc/blog/2006/07/001523.php
NECC Links of interest
Global SchoolNet Foundation (GSN), founded in 1984 by teachers who believed that in a connected world students need a global perspective, brings together youth online from 194 countries to explore community, cultural and scientific issues that prepare them for the workforce and help them to become responsible and literate global citizens. Global SchoolNet's free membership program provides project-based learning support materials, resources, activities, lessons and special offers from Global SchoolNet partners.I wrote about this session for eSchoolNews and it is on my blog. Take a look at their site for a better idea about eJournalism: Authentic Learning with Technology and Journalism. Links to eJournalism projects are on this site.
Using wiki in education is a comprehensive article on wikis. You can also take a look at What can I use Wikispaces for? for examples.
Wikispaces Create simple web pages that groups, friends, and families can edit together. A wiki is a set of web pages that anyone can edit. Wikis are a revolutionary way for communities to write pages together and use the power of many hands to create great content.
Wikispaces gives you the power to create your own wikis around topics you care about. We call these wikis "spaces" and we give them their own set of pages, discussion areas, and members. Each space also gets its own location on the web, like http://spacename.wikispaces.org. You're free to create as many spaces and pages as you like!PBwiki Let students collaborate using the wiki: they can write essays, share class notes, and have other students critique and even improve their work. See who makes what changes. Grade students for active participation. Since they'll want to use the wiki, you can easily build community. You can also use different "teacher" & "student" passwords to lock certain pages (e.g., the syllabus) against student edits.
edublogs.org free blogs for teachers, researchers, librarians and other educational professionals. edublogs.org was founded in 2005 by James Farmer as an extension of the incsub.org project aimed at providing teachers, students, researchers, librarians, writers and other education professionals with freely available emerging technologies. See this example of a math teacher's blog.
Read a short article about an elementary school's podcast. You can also listen to Radio WillowWeb, a podcast for kids and by kids from the students at Willowdale Elementary School in Omaha, Nebraska. Check David Warlick's site for more resources on podcasting - http://epnweb.org/
iVIE stands for Innovative Video in Education. This California organization promotes video in education. Check out their award winning videos in subject areas like math, science and language arts.
Learn how you and your students can check the validity of a website - go to November Learning.
FindSounds.com searches the web for sounds.
NECC Links to Conference Session's Handouts, Podcasts and Videos
Presenter Handouts & Research Papers
More than 330 presenters submitted handouts for their workshops and sessions, including Research Papers. Here you’ll find details on how to use the Program Search to find handouts of particular interest to you.Video-on-Demand Sessions at NECC
Fourteen sessions were videotaped at NECC, as well as eleven interviews, including Keynote Nicholas Negroponte. All 25 videos are available for one year, through June 24, 2007, thanks to a partnership with KZO WebcastingPodcast Sessions at NECC
Eighteen sessions were podcast with production support from the team of Apple Distinguished Educators, and are available through the iTunes Education directory.
In addition, the NECC 2006 Poster Session Co-chairs, Kurt Larsen and Pamela Redmond, recorded a number of poster sessions and have made them available at http://edbits.org/necc/.
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