Why Jeff went to NECC09

An amazing animoto that will hopefully be shared far and wide, from my good friend Jeff Agamenoni, Great Falls, Montana teacher and family guy supreme. I'm proud to be a part of Jeff's extended family!

Wordle 4th of July

Playing around with Wordle from my 4th of July post:

I'm still looking for comments, so jump on over to that post and add to the growing base of comments from SL educators who have an opinion about forming a Special Interest Group just for Second Life!

Twitter Follower Mosiac! Fun!

Get your twitter mosaic here.

On the Mall on the 4th of July!

Okay, I'm gonna do it.Last night I was pretty sure I was gonna be a party pooper, but today, after catching up on all kinds of things all morning at the hotel, I'm downtown at Gordon Biersch with a cold brew in front of me and my laptop aperch a singularly central bar table. People on the wait list just didn't see the table, I guess, or would rather sit at a traditional table or booth. I'm a happy camper.

I'm right across the street from the Spy Museum, which I fondly recall from a trip long ago, and I'm blogging whilst awaiting my jackcheeseburger with a spinach side. This beer is very tasty. and the burger just arrived. I always order those medium, so if it comes undercooked it's at least the mid-rare I prefer instead of mooing at me. This one's a perfect mid-rare, and the sauteed spinach is lovely. Took a pass on the garlic fries, with manful self-control.

Sorry Bernajean, if you're reading this. At the edubloggers' dinner at Charlie Chiengs the other night you did a very nice rant about ppl blogging (twittering?) what they're eating. I submit this only for local color, not to mention in order to recommend this place to anyone and everyone. My wi-fi is excellent, too, hence this post.

I had a nice talk with my dear friend Kevin Jarret over Skype earlier today. Get over and read his absolutely eloquent summation of his experiences at NECC09! Yay. Now I don't have to write one!

We were talking about a couple of things related to our main work, as we're both K-4 Technology Coordinators and both under some increasing fire for developing highly public profiles as educator-advocates for virtual environments. More pertinent to this post, however, we chatted about how one thing that struck me during NECC09 this past week was how Second Life needs a SIG (Special Interest Group) of its own, separate from the Gaming and Simulations SIG. That excellent group is not where we should be. Why? It's rather complicated, so bear with me. Let's bullet point this thing, since I don't want to reorder them after I spill them out. Please pay attention: I'm quizzing you at the end!

• Second Life is not a "game." You can find any number of statements, manifestos, and flat-out angry diatribes on this topic with your Google search engine and a few careful search terms. Perhaps the most eloquent is the "Classification" segment of the Second LIfe entry at Wikipedia. To whit:

Classification

During a 2001 meeting with investors, Rosedale noticed that the participants were particularly responsive to the collaborative, creative potential of Second Life. As a result, the initial objective driven, gaming focus of Second Life was shifted to a more user created, community driven experience.^[11][12]

Second Life's status as a virtual world, a computer game, or a talker, is frequently debated. Unlike a traditional computer game, Second Life does not have a designated objective, nor traditional game play mechanics or rules. As it does not have any stipulated goals it is irrelevant to talk about winning or losing in relation to Second Life. Likewise, unlike a traditional talker, Second Life contains an extensive world that can be explored and interacted with, and it can be used purely as a creative toolset if the user so chooses. However, the vast majority of users use Second Life primarily as an entertainment medium,^{[citation needed]} and for most of them the ability to interact with other users is critical to that.^{[citation needed]}

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

• Second Life may be a "simulation," but--at least as it is used by educators--it is much more a social networking platform that is mounted on a platform that is a simulated environment than it is a "simulation."
• Second Life educators, while they may be individually interested in gaming, are more educators than gamers. Many come into SL simply to enjoy the company of others, to benefit from the amazing sense of place that SL can provide for networking, teaching, and learning.
• The nearly 5000 members of ISTE Second Life could mostly care less about the content promoted by the membership of SIGGS, aside from Second Life. I'm not saying that content is not valuable, and educationally valid, and shared with good intentions, but the underpinnings of most of the content I saw at the wonderful SIGGS Playground are not relevant to many of the members of what I propose to be SIGSL, SIG Second Life. Shoot, there should probably be a SIGVE (one for all other Virtual Environment platforms as well. But even that's getting too broad for many of our ISTE SL members, and I truly think we need to populate the discussion with resources for SIGSL without broadening its scope.
• Second Life is free. Most of the SIGGS content, other than SL, is not. That's a huge difference that can't be overstated. While there are commercial aspects to networking, teaching, and learning in SL, an educator need not spend dollar one to benefit from it on a daily basis, if she or he so chooses.
• Back when the SIGGS was first proposed, I had put in a concurrent proposal in for a SIGVE. For a number of reasons, including my own overcommitments in various venues and on various projects, I deferred to ISTE's suggestion that we merge, and deferred leadership to the capable Greg Jones, since the broader topic suggested that his level of expertise is clearly more suited to leading that SIG. As far as I can see, none of the leadership of SIGGS has much interest in SL, aside from using it as a platform to promote their own interests. That's a good thing, and I applaud it, but I maintain that the Second Life "tribe" needs more representation in ISTE than the SIGGS can provide it. It needs its own SIG, ya'll.

Okay, my burger's done and my one beer's empty. I'm going to wrap this up and go stand in what dear pal Cathy Walker texts me is an increasingly long line at Mall security. I sincerely hope that I've not offended anyone: That's not my intention. What is my intention is to start a dialog about creating a SIGSL. Here's your solo quiz question: Anyone like to play?

The Money Shot

Nobody made an address. There were no Powerpoints. The food was marginal. This is why I do this work.

NECC09 for the Visually Needy!

NECC09 is dead. Long live NECC09!

I'll be reflecting over the next couple of days from Washington DC and adding pics to my necc09scottmerrick flickr set. I hope you enjoy the pics and if you have any to add, feel free to point us to 'em in a comment here. The pic at left might just need to become my profile pic for a while--taken right after the final keynote speech for NECC09--sitting in the Old Dominion Brew Pub right up the street from the Convention Center.

The next couple days will be spent with Cathy and John, getting us all on the same page with MUVErs LLC and enjoying one another's company. We'll not be glued at the hip, but we will be able to take advantage of synchronous communication, a rarity since we're so geographically dispersed.

There is a growing body of pictures tagged "necc09" that you can accesss at the necc09 flickr stream. Note from flicker, 8:58 a.m. July 2:

We found 4,610 results matching necc09.

Sunday at NECC09--Opportunites for Input

Today at NECC I reconnected with the real reason for coming to these things. It's not the opportunity to present on a topic dear to my personal and professional heart. It's not the odd, virtual, but also real in the "real world" celebrity that my blogs, my podcast, and my virtual worlds networking seems to have brought my way. It's not the food or the drink, or even the chance to be in a distant city--in this case our nation's capitol. It is, in short, the people.

I was talking with Scott Meech and Judi Epcke, just before exiting the convention center for the Metro (subway) to go change clothes for the President's Reception, and in those 20 minutes I enjoyed sharing opinions and insights with them so much that I knew I had to write this post. Much earlier, first thing in the morning, I spent 4 hours with 300 or so of the most influential people in the International Society for Technology in Education. After some very inspiring talks from an invited panel, and prepped by two documents we had been charged to pre-read, we broke out into 5 topic groups based on our expressed interests, from the following field of options:

• ACCESS TO HIGH-QUALITY LEARNING EXPERIENCES - What role can technology play in broadening access to high-quality, rigorous learning? (Including students living in poverty or in rural areas, learning English, and coping with disabilities?)
• IMPROVED ASSESSMENT - What role can technology play in developing and delivering high-quality assessments of the skills and concepts needed for college and careers?
• DATA-DRIVEN DECISION MAKING - What role can technology play in facilitating data-supported continuous improvement processes?
• TEACHER DEVELOPMENT - What role can technology play in enhancing the professional growth of teachers and improving the effectiveness of their teaching?
• STUDENT ENGAGEMENT - What role can technology play in promoting the engagement and success of students, including those from at-risk populations? (i.e., the kind of system innovation needed to dramatically improve high school graduation rates?)

I was assigned to my first choice: Student Engagement. Among my colleagues in that group were David Warlick, Peggy Sheey, and Bernajean Porter, three individuals I consider close friends, and all of them celebrated (and rightly so) innovative educators. David has been, for years, telling us many of the things we are revisiting in our deep sessions at this conference, telling us for years. I remember hearing him saying in 2000 that the internet has become one big conversation. How prophetic was that? And how is it that so many people don't "get that" yet? Peggy was just this very day awarded a coveted "pink jacket" as a symbol of her "Making it Happen" award from ISTE. She is fearless and unstoppable, lucky to be supported by her visionary administration and the huge organization that is ISTE. Bernajean wasn't at the awards reception to receive hers, but I understand that she gets one this year, based on her unflagging pursuit of her vision for digital storytelling as the foundation for learning, and for making the products of learning eternally contributive to the dialog in digital formats.

Once we had broken out into our 5 groups, those were assembled into sets of smaller groups of seven each, and the only one in my group that I already knew was Lisa Linn, my wonderful co-facilitator of the Second Life Playground and a longtime friend first from SL and then from NECC. She's an educator in Southern California and under serious constraints that limit her potentials for innovation, and her frustration with that is often palpable. Others in my group included one from Africa, one from the Virgin Islands, and one from Thailand. Another was from California, and two vendor/educators, one from OneText (the First Class email folks) and one from Smart Technologies. Toward the end of the experienced we were joined by a New Zealander. We were asked to pick roles for our group in standard breakout session manner, and I was chosen facilitator. Andrea from OpenText, was the reporter, Kimberly from Smart was the timekeeper, and Lisa reminded the rest of us to speak loudly and slowly for our international guest. What transpired over the next two hours as we pursued our directives to reflect, discuss and arrive at consensus on several topics was nothing less than inspirational.We were treated to some results reported in the NetDay Speakup survey from 2008 then set to work. I quote the charge:

"Imagine that the person who controls the purses strings one level higher than you walks in your office one day and says, "We need to transform the way we do business. I have access to stimulus dollars and other federal funding to invest in technology solutions that will provide along term pay off in improving our productivity and student outcomes. How can we leverage technology to promote the engagement and success of all of our students, including those from at-risk populations? How can technololgy help us innovate and dramatically improve our high school graduation rate?"

We were asked to reflect upon 5 questions, and given 2 minutes to do so. Then we were asked to discuss them, focusing on numbers one and three, and achieve something like consensus on brief contributions to the document that will eventually go to the Obama administration as our organization's recommendations for a National Educational Technology Plan. Wow.

1. What will the transformed system look like in the end?
2. What Barriers need to be removed (in addition to having access to sufficient funding?
3. What steps must be taken to achieve the goals?
4. What metrics will you use to measure progress?
5. Who will you cite as examples of progress toward this goal, demonstrating that the concepts have been tested?

The final exercise was for the reporter to use the provided laptop to access a document at etherpad.com. If you don't know that tool, investigate it. My friend Jeff Aganemoni first shared it with me, and it's one I'll use in my computer labs next year. The reporter was to distill consensual group responses. Then each table reported those out and against all odds, it worked. Our report-out was incomplete, but the essential message we agreed upon was there. There must be a radical paradigm shift, at all levels of participation--student, teacher, administration, family, community, and government. We must teach concepts in ways that are relevant to their lives and which encourage and reward students for their demonstrations of cognition through reasoning, intuition, and creativity. New assessments must replace current ones, which assume that it is the job of schools to teach everyone everything, regardless of interest or learning style. NOTE: all of this is reconstructed and essentially inaccurate, as I was too busy facilitating and contributing to take notes, but the bottom line is that I feel we contributed substantially to the document which will eventually go to the Administration, the top one, as our recommendations for the National Educational Technology plan. Do you want to contribute as well? Visit http://edtechfuture.org and state your views. It's got to change. It's "broke."

I'm sittin in a the Old Dominion Brewhouse 10 minutes before the President's Reception and I'm not really up for hitting the 30 minute subway trip up to my hotel to change clothes, then doing it again to come back down and again to return to the hotel after. I do like the DC Metro, but not that much, especially at the end of a long and taxing day. Long in good ways, taxing in spectactular ones. My apologies to the President's Reception, which I'm sure went swimmingly without me.

NECC09 ISTE Leadership Symposium

I'm streaming the ISTE Leadership Symposium into SL at the moment, using SL Voice. We have 12 avatars present.

http://slurl.com/secondlife/ISTE%20Island/97/81/30/

In DC!

I'm officially here, officially tired, officially IN THE WEEDS!

I'm 'way up out away (Uptown, I'm told) from the conference center, but I'm about to venture out and make a practice run to the Washington Conference Center, so that I an make it with confidence to tomorrow a.m.'s 7:15 door opening for the ISTE Volunteer Breakfast, then back up a ways to the Renaissance Hotel for the CSTA CSIT Symposium, which I fully intend to alternate during the day with the fabulous Edubloggercon back down at the Conference Center. I'll be taking subway trains so I'd better get good at it.

I plan to work on my schedule today, pound out a comprehensive to-do list for the weekend, and to wake bright and shiny for a day of networking and learning. No presenting for me tomorrow, or Sunday, for that matter, when I'll be attending several events, starting with the ISTE Leadership Symposium 8-12:30, then I'll catch the ISTE Member Welcome from 2:00-3:45 and then the ISTE SL Volunteer Welcome at 4-5 pm followed by the conference keynote address from none other than Malcolm Gladwell. Dinner? Maybe I'll head back up home for a catnamp before catching the ISTE President's Reception at the Smithsonian! That's from 8:30 to 10:00 so if I plan to be conscious that's likely a good idea...

Monday, of course, the Second Life Playground kicks off from 8-4, and Lisa and I will be wrangling a stable of capable volunteers for that, then I'll be presenting the Quest Atlantis Birds of a Feather Networking session from 4:4506:15.

Then there'es the SLPg from 9-4, then TP405--Introduction to Education in Second Life: n00bs UNITE! from 12:30 to 3:30 on Tuesday, the Second Life Birds of a Feather session from 4:45-6:15. Wednesday it's an early one with WA507--Educators' Toolbox and Skill Set: Instruction and Presentation in Second Life from 8:30 to 11:30 and the Closing Keynote address from Erin Gruwell from 2:45 to 4.

Wrapup work will happen on the 2nd, blogging, and archiving and thank-you'ing and such, then I'm hoping for some rest on the 3rd and 4th, catching some entertainment and fireworks the night of the 4th of July, and flying home to my much-missed and very patient family the aftnoon of the 5th.

There you have it--stalk me at will. Free hugs.

Off to the conference center dry-run!

Okies! Plane boards in 11 minutes for NECCO9!