We all have to protect our time. Look at what Scott is saying about how overwhelming it all is with all that information, and face-to-face interactions on top of it. I just concentrated on the sessions, meeting people, and twitter, in that order. My reader is full, I haven’t really looked at the NECC 2008 Ning, and that’s what’s kept me sane (that and naps).

Who knows, maybe Scott was concerned about me stalking him, although I think we had agreed to talk at NECC prior to going there, and we have a long running practice of me asking for his time, and making arrangements. I do that, not because he is “famous” but because he is very busy as a professor and father, and time is a finite resource. Still, I think Scott made a mistake in how he framed this particular problem, and I saw something similar happen on my staff this year, when someone talked about a particular shortcoming they saw in some staff members, and didn’t mention who is was. When you drop a bomb like that post, people begin to wonder, “was that me he was talking about?”

What I think we all need to ask ourselves when we have a conversation with others is this, is it about your vanity (and/or theirs) or is it to share something of substance, or just have fun (the last two are what we should be aiming for)? If it’s the former, you’re not just wasting a FB’s time, you’re wasting your time, and that is a precious commodity. Treat it with some respect.

Live Blog

This was originally a fuller session, but became a short discussion (about 20 minutes) by Chris Lehmann, it was a really great session, where we did a mini plan for a unit on the Alamo as a group using Understanding By Design principals. This is was a very short session, BUT some of the information from it may end up being what I use in the classroom that is the most important, etc. I may have misunderstood in so short a context, but it appear to be about set a learning objective, and making sure that you are both aligning your learning along the way to that, but that you have thinking/actions at each level that tie in, and that you check for understanding along the way. What I learned here became important in a later session.

Session 4: Cell Phones in Learning

Live Blog

NECC Session Description

Presenter: Liz Kolb

This is the session where the connection between the session, and folks outside really seemed to click and I was glad to be a part of it. It was a BYOL (bring your own laptop) and bring your own cell phone session. I was very excited to participate because I habe been playing with my new “smarter” phone, sending a lot photos and videos up to my microblog from San Antonio. The session included a number of activities for us to do with our cell phones. We did polls, sent photos and videos, requested information from services that send out SMS (text) messages in response, and did podcasts. With many of the activities I had remote participants on my live blog of this session participate as well. It was interactive, and remote. It is my sincere hope that this will be a model for sessions in future conferences. It would even help with the problem that NECC had of not having enough seats. With even a simple audio cast, participants at NECC out of the room could have taken part. My thoughts about using this in my classroom. I can see this would be very useful at the elementary for remote podcasting and great for field trip documentation. I have already tried to incorporate this in field trips with my son, but need to practice more, which I will do on excursions over the summer. Part of what kept me from doing it is that it’s hard to manage the phone stuff while herding the kids, but I may need to think more about handing the phone off to the kids themselves. I’m already teaching my almost ten-year old to text. The presenter did an excellent job, and I have only one complaint about the session and it was something the organizers did. They should never have had a cell phone based presentation in an interior room. I began to lose my cell connection towards the end and had trouble doing the final activities.

Session 5: Technology and Differentiated Instruction: A Hands-On and Differentiated Experience - NECC 2008

Live Blog

NECC Session Description

This session was both interactive, and helped me make connections in many ways. First, the session presenter’s recommended text was one on Understanding by Design that Chris Lehman had referenced in his NECC Unplugged Understanding by Design session.

The presenter first had us sort ourselves out by selecting certain links on a wiki that said what we knew/practiced already in differentiating curriculum. There was a “tree” of pages that you went to depending on your responses. We were then sorted into groups. I posted instructions to my live blog, but it didn’t seem like folks were following. So once we were sorted, we were supposed to find some near us in the same group (this was a wise idea because having all of us move around after we had plugged in, etc. would have been awful). We then were supposed to choose a reading, and report back (a classic jigsaw activity on a wiki—I wonder if it could be done between remote participants via VOIP, chat, or asynchronously on a wiki? We did readings, and then shared what we learned. The presenter was attempting to bring in a differentiation expert remotely via Elluminate, but she lost her connection. This seemed a little overly ambitious, but the presence of helpers to facilitate, and assist in this session was wise, since they could check in for understanding.

I am guessing that the resources I got in this session, and some of the techniques modeled for managing group work in a lab setting (a problem I have had implementing sometimes) will be very useful in my current teaching assignment in an elementary computer lab.

Off Task Web Sites

This presentation was by Charlene Chausis. It was a solid session, somewhere after the basics of Web 2.0, and an appetizer plate style presentation, with lots of links, and resources provided. The thing that is a problem with such big session spaces is that it really inhibits audience participation, but I didn’t let that stop me, I raised my hand, and added my two cents whenever possible. Charlene overcame some of the deficiency of the venue by asking for us to participate in the last part, sharing our favorite resources, she also invited us to update the wiki that the session was based on. This session did cover a lot of territory I already know, but there were some sites I wasn’t aware of, and they will be useful in my work for Instructify. I don’t know if I’ll use them in the classroom, but they will be great for productivity, and that is what the session was designed for more than anything. This was one of the best resource links presentations that I’ve been too (she had us sharing what we knew), but I really need to move onto discussions about projects more. Still if this is my one “cool tools” session it was very well executed.

Copyright and Fair Use in Education with Kristen Hansen

This was a very well presented, and thought out session on copyright and fair use in education. The thesis was that teachers have very little common understanding of copy right and fair use issues in the classroom. We all know rules of thumb, but some of them contradict each other. She shared an insight that had been given to her that fair use (the use of copyrighted materials) is conceptually more like a floor (the base of your right to use it), rather than the ceiling.

The next concept she discussed was whether the use was transformative. This is term is usually not simply “misunderstood” by educators, but not even known. This was a discussion that I had when I interviewed copyright lawyer, Amiee Bissonette on It’s Elementary. We did a “case study” on a use of copyrighted materials that my class had used to create a podcast. That led to a discussion of derivation vs. transformation.

Kristen asked us to discuss ideas among ourselves, then talked about the pertinent law. This is part of an ongoing effort to devise guidelines for Fair Use that Kristen has been working with Temple University’s School of Communications on. They are concerned that because of ignorance, and confusion, teachers are being over cautious about using copyrighted materials in the classroom and on the Web.

This will be useful to me in my lab because we are often creating multimedia projects, and commons, and public domain materials may not always be as good as copy righted materials. Having a better idea of fair use will help me make good decisions about how and when to use materials, and when to seek permission.

The only problems with the presentation were the venue. It was in a lounge located just outside the exhibit hall on the first day of the conference, as it was being open. It was insane just before the session started with literally thousands of people lining up and milling around the immediate area, and there was no mic for Kristen to use, so she had to invoke her teacher voice.