Saturday, February 7, 2009

FETC - January 22 - 24 2009

Florida Educational Technology Conference February 2009 - Jeff's Notes

Thursday/22


Session #1: Intro Session for Beginners Rating: Satisfactory

  • Interactive Boards are a must
  • Student Response Systems

    • quick formative feedback of lesson plan
    • quick responses to surveys

  • Digital Equity

    • iPhone? a start?

  • Gaming

F.A.C.E. (Florida Association for Computer Education)

Session #2: 21st Century Skills for Administrators
Rating: Very Poor

  • Learn -->Advocate-->Focus-->Activate-->Impact

Google: 21st Century Skills

  • Two Themes:

    • Student Skills Outcomes
    • Support Systems

Google: Word Cloud
Google: "NETS" (National Education Technology Standards)
  • NETS-S/NETS-T/NETS-A
  • Digital Citizenship

***Check out NECC 2009 conference


Encourage project-based learning

Session #3: Google Docs Can Cure Your Classroom Headaches Rating: Very Good

www.xrl.us/FETC
- look up newspaper bloopers of education headlines (YouTube: "What's so funny about education")
www.animoto.com

Google certified teacher
46 Google applications
***can upload a MS PowerPoint into Google Docs (try to upload PDK)
- "Cloud Computing"
- view YouTube Google Docs

Google Docs:
- share 1 document with multiple editors! by first publishing the doc then send URL to email addresses
- word
- PPP
- survey tool called Forums (make one up for DLSB meeting/self-graded exams)

YouTube "Self-graded Exams"

Check out Twitter

Session #4: "Gadgets: Some even for the Classroom" Rating: CANCELLED (presenter didn't show up!)


Session #5: Keynote: Oceans (Phillipe Cousteau) Rating: Very Good
- 2009 Grads were born in 1991, the year www was launched
- cybrarians = librarians
- media centres = libraries
Discovery Educator Network

Watch These Movies: "The Silent World" "The World Without Sun" "Ocean's Deadliest
Steve Irwin - Animal Planet Host (died)

look up Conshelf II (underwater living)

Quote: "Vanishing shapes of a better world"

Friday/23

Session #6
(7:45) "Game On" Pandora's 'Box: Video Games and Virtural Worlds" (Jim Brazell: jim@ventureramp.com)
Rating: Excellent

Pandora's Box

seriousgames.dk
seriousgames.org

Educational/Health Games: BAttle Zone (the 1st)
- Mind Ball
- Meditation Techniques
- Virtual Heroes
- America's Army (free at americasarmy.com)
- Budget Hero
- Mass Casualty Triage
- Pulse!!
- Getupmove (Dance Dance Revolution)
- ProPED (www.pro-activellc.com)
- Glucoboy
- Boxy
- Food-Force.com
- Global Conflicts: Palestine

The Future of Education: Mixed Reality
- physical reality
- imaginary reality
- virtural reality

"Gaming: A Technology Forecast" (Augmented Reality on Cellular phones by Dec/09)
iCT2Institute

Primary Educational Tool will be the cellular phone

3D Virtual Worlds = Future of Education

DimensionM

Tabuladigita.com

Whyville.net (free - targets tweens)
- numedeon, inc

"Game Camp"

STEM: Science Technology Engineering Math (+The Arts)

Alice.org

Check out "The Last Lecture"
squeakland.org

"The Medium is the Message" (Thorneberg)

Microsoft Flight Simulator has:
  • Visual Fideltiy
  • Procedural Fidelity
  • mixed realtiies (physical/imaginary/virtural
Game-based realities are the new eLearning reality

Google: Evolution of the Technologies of Learning

Mammals learn through PLAY


Session #7 (9:15a) "The Net Generation: The Next Generation, Are We Ready?" (Julie Young) Rating: Good

FLVS (Florida Virtual School):
  • 12th year (6 - 12)

  • first year K - 5
"Growing Up Digital: The Rise of the Net Generation"

The Net Generation is 11 to 30
The Next Generation is 0 to 11

"Change is the process by which the future invades our lives." (Toffler)

Change Process:
  • Entry (struggle)

    • Adoption (Inegration begins)

      • Adaptation (Technology to Teaching)

        • Appropriation (New Methods)

          • Invention (New learning)
Children love disruption

Students "power down" when they go to school and admit to being engaged in learning ~20% of the time

Student Poll:
42% = social networking
30% = growth in online access
71% = digital students who's virtual world is important to them
75% = use www to join a social networking cause

The Net Generation are
  • tech savvy
  • personalizers
  • connected
  • want to control their own learning (customized learning experience)
EA spun off to Edutainment and together with FLVS created:
"Conspiracy Code" action adventure game that teaches a full course in American History
  • brought on students right away
  • replacing their "traditional" online course
  • formative and summative assessments

Session #8 (10:35) "Free Internet Telephony Tools for Educators" (John Nahm) Rating: Very Good
CEO/Co-Founder Phonevite

Yahoo Messenger uses DialPad VOiP (started up by John)
  1. What is Internet Telephony?

    • live voice and video communications over the Internet
    • E.G. Skype

  2. History of Internet Telephony

    • started in 1995
    • 1999 free to USA destinations
    • bust in 2001
    • damage was done to the big Bells
    • 2001 saw the shift from dial-up to broadband
    • IP Phones born in 2001
    • 2003 Skype was launched (PC to PC)
    • 2005 Yahoo buys Dialpad
    • 2005 video telephony started

    • Grand Central (Unified Messaging Service)
    • Vonage
    • 2007 Phonevite send a pre-recorded voice message (VoIP) to thousands of people at the same time)
    • real time video broadcasting (YouTube is asynchronous)

  3. PC-to-Phone, PC-to-PC Voice and Video

    • Skype.com
    • Gizmo5.com
    • iCall.com (free 5min calls to USA)
    • Tokbox.com (flash-based video
    • Jajah.com (was free; does "call patching")
    • Vonage (a box that you plug your telephone in to that connects to modem)
    • Skype out (PC to Phone)
    • use Skype to have a small group conference call with online students

  4. IP Phones (Phone-to-Phone)

    • Vonage (a box that you plug your telephone in to that connects to modem)
    • Skype out (PC to Phone)
    • use Skype to have a small group conference call with online students

  5. Unified Messaging Services

    • Grand Central will forward your calls to any phone number
    • Grand Central was bought by Google
    • Ring Central becomes a virtual switchboard for small businesses

  6. VoIP Broadcasting

    • pre-record messages and broadcast it to multiple phones instantly
    • Phonevite enables 25 phones receiving the message for free

  7. Video Broadcasting/Mobile Video Broadcasting

    • blogtv.com
    • www.blogtv.com/People/phonevite
    • Ustream.tv
    • Justin.tv
    • qik.com & bambuser.com lets you use you cell phone camera to live broadcast
Session #9 (12:30p) "The Game has Changed: Welcome to the Future" (Ntedo Etuk) Rating: Very Good
- by age 21 students played 10,000 hours of video games
- 43% of gamers are female
- 33 yrs is average age of gamers
- K to 12's spend 3X more time gaming than on any other activity
- 90% of instruction today is delivered through textbooks
***must change the textbooks
- videogames is on of the most powerful learning tools ever created.
The Tabula Digita Vision (multiplayer educational gaming) + The Pearson Education Vision (21st century content) = DimensionM Math Game
  • huge question database
  • collaboration & competition
  • do it on their own time voluntarily!
  • students recommend the game to other students
  • DM calls the textbook "cheat codes"
  • high engagement
  • high relevance
  • safe environment to fail in
  • ***free with textbook purchase***
Session #10 (1:50p) "Wireless N: WiFi Finally Delivers on the Promise" (Brent Williams, speakwisdom.org) Rating: Very Good

WiFi speed is ovesubscribed (never get even close to 54 MBs speed)
"B" 11 MBs access is standard (2.4 GHz band)
"G" 54 MBs access is standard (2.4 GHz band)
"A" isn't likely in schools (5 GHz band)
- B/G/A WiFI are old

Issues in Schools:
  • Low bandwidth issues
  • Range issue
  • Small # of channels
  • IP subnet hopping (
Wireless "N" is BIG news:
  • wire-like speeds
  • backward compatible to B,G,A
  • uses 2 x 20 KHz channels
  • must plan well
  • ***confirm that IMS is installing "N" in DECC
  • not a standard (IEEE) yet, even though it is 3 years old
  • should be approved in Fall 2009 (maybe later)
  • all vendors are selling "N" WiFi gear
  • range: 150 - 300 feet
  • speed: 65-250 MBs (real)
  • uses MIMO (multiple input/multiple output)
  • data is broken up into streams (up to 4) on same channel
  • TxR
    • 3X3 Three antennas transmit, three receive

  • SoHo "N" Gear: D-Link DR D65 is a great router for "N"
  • < 2 yr old laptops should have "N" built in
  • Frys Electronics is THE place to shop and offer many loss-leaders
  • "N" Enterprise 'Gear:
    • Trapeze - Smart Mobile
    • Meru -
    • Cisco - Aironet
    • BlueSocket - AP 1800
    • Xirrus abg+N was the BEST in a unbiased test

  • Concerns"
    • 15W max on most
    • Vendors turn off radios or reduce range to stay in limit

  • Gig Ethernet ports
    • aggregation of bandwidth

  • New site survey needs
  • The Standard is not finalized...
  • may cause bottlenecks up the network
  • ****get a "N" USB adapter stick*****
  • WiFi Security:
    • WEP is DEAD (it has been thoroughly hacked)-old
    • WPA and 802.1x (legacy)
    • WPA2
      • New gear fully supporting
      • XP SP2 does not - need SP3 or patch
      • Hackable if PW is dumb
    • 802.11i
      • new gear fully supporting
      • XP and Vista support it

  • N Implementation Issues

    • cost
    • brand
    • controller based or stand-alone
    • Existing G? Put N on 5GHz bandwidth
    • Bandwidth Aggregation
    • Power over Ethernet
    • Site Survey

  • Presenter works at a large University has open wireless access (with published password) but has all the antivirus software on the server (Server 2008 actually scans the laptop for viruses, spyware, etc.)
Session #11 (3:10p) "The Google Classroom" (Anita Foster) Rating: Very Good

Presentation Found Here:




Google:
  • unlimited inbox size
  • connects with other applications

Google Docs ROCKS:
  • upload or do new
  • create folders
  • share through collaboration
  • won't do transitions or animations in the PowerPoint
  • Spreadsheets work much like Excel - not exactly the same
  • create forum to survey people through a blog

RSS is an easy way to update what is new on the web
  • add RSS to view other people's blogs (eg. Alan November


Google Earth
Google Books
  • has every book ever scanned!
Google Blogger
  • doesn't filter "next blog"
Google Groups
  • discussion board
  • moderate conversations
  • new posts get sent to moderator's gmail

Wiki - Google Sites is their version
  • anything "Google" can be inserted into the Google Site
  • won't embed html code

Custom Google Search
  • lets you set up the appropriate web sites to search

Google Calendar

Google Knol
  • place to post a piece of knowledge that you are an expert at
  • will rival Wikipedia

Google In Quotes
  • debates
  • just political at the moment

Sketch up
  • tool to create 3D models

Picasa
  • organizes and uploads your photos

Google Chrome
  • a new Browser

"Even More"
  • new tools all the time

Google Labs
  • has the recently released and whats cool tools

Google Educator

Session #12 (4:30p) "Its in Your Pocket: Teaching Spectacularly with Cellphones" (Hall Davidson) Rating: Very Good

Posting a Video:
  • Cell Phone ---> Internet ---> YouTube

http://DiscoveryEdspeakersbureau.com
(Hall's site)

Cell Phones can/have/will have:
  • clock
  • music player
  • podcast
  • phone
  • GPS
  • camera
  • camcorder
  • text messager
  • video projectors
  • heart monitors
  • medical records
  • First Aid
  • Pill phone

Are we really going to avoid using this device as a teaching tool?
  • elephants text message
  • telephone poles text message police when there are gun shots
  • they track/monitor/stalk/tether/document

Nokia bough Navteq (GPS context-based)

Mobile Google (1-800-Goog411)
  • check out video

Google phone is here!

Look at "Discovery School"
  • Discovery Education was United Streaming

online quizzes on cell phones
could upload a video of your lesson plan to your TOC

Web Links:
  • Check out Film on the Fly (FilmOnTheFly.org)
  • Shazam (can find a song name by the audio)
  • Jott.com (voice to text)
  • DialtoDo
  • Google translator
  • Gcast.com (gives you a 1-800 # so your child/student can call and their voice will go on the Internet)
  • cellphonesinlearning.com
  • voicethread.com
  • Polleverywhere.com

Jott + Google Translator moves you from your voice to text in another language!
Business Card bar codes are here
Bar codes on T-Shirts (cell phones will capture the bar code and extract the information)

Saturday/24

Session #13 (7:45a) "Emerging Interactive Technologies: What to Use, When, and How" (Chris Dede: ) Rating: Fair


"Web 2.0 redefines what, how, and with whom we learn"

- Wikipedia articles can be written by anyone so some concepts will not be stable (theory of evolution won't get a consensis)

The Spectrum of Interactive Media:

1. Thinking
  • blogs: are like someone who used to write many letters with responses (share lesson plans, web sites, )
  • podcasts (vodcasts): are like the old educational radio back in the depression, tape recorders; now they can be interactive; equity issues (eg. Stanford on iTunes; KidCasts; Sesame Street; Grammar Girl;
  • online discussion forums: used for a long time in DE; asynchronous, equitable (eg. Education World;
  • wikis/collaborative file creation: collaboratively create and edit a document; (eg. ZOHO Writer, Socialtext, whyworld)
2. Creating
  • social bookmarking: delicious, diigo,
  • photo/video sharing: voicethread, YouTube, TeacherTube,
  • writers' workshops and fanfiction
  • mashups/collective media creation: scratch, A Swarm of Angels
3. Sharing and Doing
  • social networking: Facebook, Ning
  • collaborative social change communities

Session #14 (9:15a) "Google's Docs, Earth and SketchUp: Cool Tools and Possible Projects" (Rushton Hurley: ) Rating:Very Good

- snurl.com/googlestuff
- nextvista.org/

The Tools:
  • Docs: free/stored virtually/sharable/collaborative

  • SS

  • Presentations

  • Forms: Google "Self-Grading Quiz" video

  • Sites: Wiki-like (fatbet.net)

  • Earth

  • maps

  • SketchUp

  • Books

  • Advance Search: saves time!

  • NextVista.org: student-audience videos

  • Zamzar.com (convert files; YouTube; and more)

  • Pod Safe Audio: copyright-friendly music

  • Creative Commons Search: Flickr has 2B pictures!
  • Flickr: has a photo wall tool
  • Tag Galaxy
  • Fresh Brain
  • Urban Dictionary
  • nextvista.org/conference

Session #15 (11:10a) "eLearning & Virtual Worlds" (David Davis: )
Rating:Good


"JumpStart Worlds for K"

Metaverse: concept that captures what virtual space does
  • 4 areas:
    • augmented reality: eg. GPS built in to cameras and cell phones
    • lifelogging: where people record their life (facebook, twitter)
    • mirror worlds: information enhanced models of the physical world (www.geography.org.uk)
    • virtual worlds: Second Life
Quest Atlantis (free online game)
  • social responsibility
  • environmental awareness
PeaceMaker
  • resolving conflicts in the Middle East
Spore
  • a science world
  • show the children

***Look at the Virtual Introduction Handout*****

Edusim
  • show the children
Second Life
  • two versions:
    • teen: can be made secure; no non-teaching adults allowed
    • regular
Session #16 (12:30p) "Three Types of Immersive Interfaces: Implications for Learning and Teaching" (Chris Dede: www.gse.harvard.edu/~dedech/ )
Rating: Good


- a big need to better educate our children in order to solve the complex problems of today and tomorrow.

Cyberinfrastructure
  • computing
  • data and networks
  • digitally-enabled sensors
  • observatories and experimental facilities
  • an interoperable suite of software and middleware services and tools

  • www.nsf.gov/crssprgm/ci-team

Immersion
  • eg. dreaming
  • can recreate this at a movie where you are intensely engaged in the experience, or even by reading a good novel
  • ramped up in a 3D world
Three Types of Immersive Interfaces:
Immersive Devices

1. Science Space Worlds
  • MaxwellWorld
  • NewtonWorld
  • CAVES (instead of head sets)

2. Mult-User Virtual Spaces
  • avatars
  • eg. Second Life
  • built river city (River City)
  • situated learning
  • Alice in Wonderland

3. Overlay Devices
  • real life game with virtual reality overlay
  • HARP (Handheld Augmented Reality Project)

A Different Model of Pedagogy
  • Experiences central, rather than information as pre-digested experience
    • for assimilation or synthesis
  • Knowledge is situated in a context and distributed across a community
    • rather than located within an individual: with vs. from
  • Reputation, experiences, and accomplishments as measures of quality
    • rather than tests, papers
Session #17 (1:50p) "America's Digital Schools: Six Trends to Watch" (Thomas Greaves: )
Rating:Poor


Six Trends in Digital Schools:

1. LMS Go Mainstream
  • closed (older like Plato Learning) or open (new like Blackboard)

2. Large-Scale 1:1 Computing Implementation
  • one computerized device for each student for use at home and at school
  • key factors in success/failure: top-down/grass roots/training/
3. Online
4. Student
5. Interactive Whiteboards
6. Internet Bandwidth Crisis


Session #18 (1:50p) "The 21st Century Web: Beyond the 2.0 Tools" (John Kuglin: kuglin.com)
Rating:Very Good

John's PowerPoint was showing his huge list of weblinks which are found here.

Trend: Minicomputers (eg. Netbooks) coupled with Google Docs = no more need for MS Office!

Links:
  • commoncraft.com
  • delicious
  • zamzar (converts files)
  • answers.com (online reference tool) **Show Tristan
  • animoto
  • twitter
  • basecamp.com (get projects done)
  • motionbox.com (stores your videos) Get Escalator video
  • kuglin.com

RSS Feeds
Google Earth is being used to solve the world's problems (e.g. Tribe in South America)
Design your own free web site (www.nhln.com)

Get your own Domain!

Session #19 (3:00p) "Closing Keynote" (Hall Davidson)
Rating:Very Good

What will FETC 2012 look like:
  • International conference
  • more virtual than live attendees
  • people will stream sessions back home
  • bar code badges/creative hologram badges
  • conference will be in Second Life







Saturday, January 24, 2009

ate here... a few times

web links... lots!

Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a freely available teaching tool designed to be a student's first exposure to object-oriented programming.
http://www.alice.org/



With your free account from PollDaddy you can now create surveys and polls for your website, blog and social network profiles.
http://polldaddy.com



1 Ask your audience a question
2 They answer using SMS text messages or the web
3 Results update live in your web browser or PowerPoint
(saw this in action... wild!)
http://www.polleverywhere.com/



Kid-cast.com is a website for kids to publish their own Podcasts so that other kids can listen. The idea is to make sure that there's a kid-safe Podcast out there for our young minds to hear. Contribution by kids makes it that much better, by allowing kids to listen to their peers on subjects they love!
http://www.kid-cast.com/


Grammar Girl Podcast provides short, friendly tips to improve your writing. Covering the grammar rules and word choice guidelines that can confound even the best writers, Grammar Girl makes complex grammar questions simple with memory tricks to help you recall and apply those troublesome grammar rules. Whether English is your first language or second language, Grammar Girl’s punctuation, style, and business tips will make you a better and more successful writer. Mignon Fogarty is the creator and host of Grammar Girl. Grammar Girl is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast.
http://grammar.quickanddirtytips.com/



Remember Bloom’s Taxonomy? Sure you do! Well, this is the digital update!
http://edorigami.wikispaces.com/Bloom's+Digital+Taxonomy


RubiStar is a free tool to help teachers create quality rubrics.
http://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php



Checklists to support Project Based Learning and evaluation.
Amazing!
http://pblchecklist.4teachers.org/


Digital Storytelling is the modern expression of the ancient art of storytelling.
http://electronicportfolios.com/

how many iPods do u have?

at last count i have 3 working ipods. i have been asked "why have more than one?"

the current session i am in the presenter has a habit of walking up and asking people what r they listening to on their iPod. at the airport here in orlando he walked up to a 20-something and asked her the question. she said "which ear?"



she had 2 iPods in her jeans and had her chem lecture playing on one and music playing on the other.

Friday, January 23, 2009

Beets!

Carla and Pat - remind me to talk to you about the Beet Experiment. I think we should try this as a DL lesson.
We could give students a wide range of sharing options (flickr, youtube, firstclass, blogtv...)

There are other versions of this experiment not entitled The Most Danerous Woman in America. I am sure we could come up with a better title.

i'm creep'n yr facebook

In a session on security around Web 2.0 tools the presenter is suggesting all teachers planning on using these tools with students need to use them. how many of SC staff have Facebook pages? How many have created and used a blog in their personal life?

Jeff's Contribution

Thanks, James for sharing your Blog. I've attended some very interesting sessions showing cutting-edge innovations:

Unified Messaging Services
Grand Central, bought by Google,
will forward your calls to any phone number


Ring Central offers a virtual switchboard for small businesses

VoIP Broadcasting
Phonevite enables pre-record messages to be broadcast to multiple (up to 25 phones for free) instantly

Video Broadcasting/Mobile Video Broadcasting
blogtv.com This one is for you to check out, Teresa!!!! It lets you create live tutorials and Chat with your students - simpler than Elluminate!


Others include:
Ustream.tv



Justin.tv

qik.com & bambuser.com lets you use you cell phone camera to live broadcast


mascot 4 who?







...the orange one. not the SC one in blue.

question

what kind of bird is this...



loitering solitarily around the pond...




in front of the convention centre early in the monring?

Thursday, January 22, 2009

Nice weather

While everyone seemed to be complaining about the weather here (2 cold!), I think it is beautiful.
Sunny all day and 11° at 7:18 pm.




The conference site is a huge convention centre across the street from our hotel.


Session: Digital Book Talks

Why should a student read City of Ember when they could just watch the movie? Because that's one person's interpretation of the novel. The student becomes the director: reads the book and creates a video trailer!

digitalbooktalk.com

While the content on this web site was created by senior secondary and university students, I see so many exciting possibilities for K-7. (Especially if they had a few flips!)

1st-timers

Jeff and I attended the first official session of the conference and got a free mug...





...and a book bag, too!

cybrarian

at the keynote the local superintendent used a term new to the audience: cybrarian.
a quick google came up with this article from 1997:

"...time for the librarians to change..." riiiiight. 11 years ago!

Session: Digital Portfolios

presenter had lots of interesting ideas and web sites.
as with the first session this morning her ideas were based around brick and mortar schools but i saw lots of connections with DL.
her students have their digital portfolios online at http://www.weebly.com in the form of wikis.
they scan authentic documents.
they upload audio ( http://www.gcast.com and http://audacity.sourceforge.net/).
they upload video (http://www.theflip.com/).




i think we need to buy a whole bunch of these!

Wednesday - Travel Day

Got to the airport at 6:55 am. Got through security at 7:45 am. Got on the Plane at 8:40 am. On the way to Dallas at 8:55 am.



Landscape changes as we fly south... over Washington/Oregon:



Over Texas...



Dallas Airport shuttle...



In the air again flying from Dallas to Orlando..



Finally, above Orlando:



Arrived via Hotel Shuttle to my hotel at 9:45 pm.