KZOwebcasting NECC 2008!!!

Thanks again to Twitter, and to kpruitt in particular, for leading me this morning to the http://www.kzowebcasting.com/necc/ website. Like many others at NECC2008 in San Antonio, Texas, I missed a lot of sessions I really wanted to make. This site makes it possible for me to be there, albeit asynchronously. I'll be pointing my folks at my week-long Web2.0 for Us! workshop next week to this site, and may even use some of our precious time together to view these together using the kzowebcasting interface. Yay!

What if I form a "club" to visit these videocasts on a weekly or monthly basis with a group of my colleagues at my school over a cup of coffee or a local brew so that they can benefit from experiencing them the way that I now get to?

See my earlier post about how I actually spent my time at NECC!

NECC 2008 Resources and Commentary

Cross-posting from Oh! Second Life, my Second Life blog:

Wow, it's been like a week since I posted anything here. Some kinda record.
I'm firing my laptop at my home office stepmachine station and working out to lose some of the belly I've accumulated over the past months spending most of my waking hours at a laptop. I'll still get to be at my laptop, but at least I'll be burning some calories. My old vinyl record turntable is on the shelf above my laptop, so I'm firing up some vintage Shawn Phillips to help motivate my pace :)

Pardon me whilst I do a 5 minute yoga stretch b4 climbing aboard...

There.

So. I spent a wonderful week at NECC 2008, and the best part of the whole experience was meeting and renewing face-to-face friendships and acquaintances with so many folks I have been working with ageographically (I just made that up) for a year or more. I touted the virtues of my real-world employers to everyone I met, I passed out nearly 100 moocards (see earlier post) and I presided over a sold-out workshop with my 8 co-presenters and several other bonus guest stars and did the same for a packed-house "Birds of a Feather" session, helped the edubloggercon pre-conference "unconference" session called "Web 2.0 Smackdown" by ustreaming for stellar blogger Vicki Davis, attended Kathy Schrock's "Get a MUVE On" lecture and Peggy Sheehy's session on the Second Life Teen Grid, met and instantly felt a kinship with Linden Lab Education Director Claudia Linden, learned about how to begin working in the TG, worked a band member avatar in SL for the talented guitarist of "One Horse Shy," then worked a speaker's avatar in the closing session for a full house of around 7,000 out front. I also had numerous gets-together with folks irl at dinners and meetups, expanding my personal learning network(s) exponentially.

12 minute into my step workout I'm now perspiring nicely! Shawn is singing his magic. The album, btw, is "Do You Wonder." Nice.

From NECC2008, some links:

SLedupotential (for maybe the last time--be sure to bookmark it! I think this site, developed before, during, and ongoingly after our 3 hour workshop, will continue to be a valuable one-stop-shop for shareable information for some time to come. Need to show your colleagues a video about this cutting edge education platform? SLedupotential? Find a new one? Or a new research report or article? Share it a SLedupotential. You see what I mean, I hope...

NECC 2008 bloggers--not sure why I'm not in there, but I'm posting the link anyway :( with the caveat that if it missed mine, it must have missed others, so it's incomplete :)

NECC 2008 podcasts--Some really good ones here. Not seeing them in iTunes, but they're p0sted at the Apple Learning Interchange website. Apple could do themselves a favor by putting them up on iTunes, based on recent twitter exchanges pleading for help downloading to laptops and mobile devices.

My NECC2008 flickrstream

All flickrsets tagged necc 2008

I gotta get off the step machine. I'm done! For now...

Cheerio!
Scott

Last day of NECC--Rockin' and Reelin' from the Week!

Wow, this has been a fantastic week, and I thank my administrators at both University School of Nashville and the Vanderbilt Center for Science and Math for making it possible for me to go. I also want to thank ISTE and its administrators for giving me stage above and beyond what I expected here, and the fantastic Claudia L'Amoreaux (Claudia Linden) from Linden Lab for being there for all of us every step of the way. Toss in a deep bow to Steve Hargadon and the organizers of the pre-conference Edubloggercon "unconference" for giving me a rich day of networking with and learning from some of the best minds in the forefront of educational advocacy.

One of the limitations of what a dear Second Life friend calls "meatspace" is that one can only be in one place at any given time. We are often able to rise above that limitation with the Internet (when the wireless connection works--no jab at the tech folks here: I'm sure they're doing everything they can to make things work) by twittering, blogging, ustreaming, ninging, and such; but it remains an absolute limitation of physicality. That said, I want to say I missed hanging out with my IVC friends this year. My amiable and extraordinarily capable colleagues in that arena, friends for nearly a decade of collaboration, will always be my friends, or at least I hope they'll allow me that privilege. I've simply been limited this year by the Meatspace Law: "1 body, 1 place."

I'll be working over the next week to summarize as succinctly as possible my amazing adventures here at NECC 2008. Until then, I'd like you to chew on the following:

I believe that virtual environments hold so much promise for education in so many ways that I've thrown in with that group here at NECC, also a dynamic, dedicated, pioneering band of educators. I believe that so much that I'm proposing a new ISTE Special Interest Group, and I'll propose that it be called SIGVE, for "Virtual Environments." I talked with ISTE Membership Director Jennifer Ragan-Fore last night at a small gathering of ISTE Docents, and she seems to think it can happen, in part based on the full house Birds of a Feather session we staged Monday here in San Antonio. Anybody else think so?

I'm prepared to pursue what steps it may take to get it started. This, as friend Cathy Walker said last night when I discussed it with her, is a first and most important step toward legitimizing this fertile field in the minds of reluctant administrators, especially the ones who hold the purse strings for teacher professional development programs. Let's begin to work together to bring ISTE member focus to the potentials of the 3D internet. What say? Kitty, send me that paperwork?

Virtual NECCers!

Hey, ya'll,

Knee-deep, I am, working on a myriad of tasks toward being ready for NECC2008 in San Antonio. If you're gonna be there, look me up. I'll be hanging out at Edubloggercon all day Saturday, then you can expect to see me around the fine folks who are the core corps of the ISTE Second Life initiatives.

For my dear readers and colleagues who cannot travel to the fair state of Texas for NECC, I just created a ning group at http://www.necc2008.org/group/virtualneccers for you all. I think this might just catch on, so get in on it early and participate enthusiastically! I'm not sure how much I'll be around, so it's up to you to move the conversation around and make the group what you want and need it to be.

Tell 'em I sent ya!

Cheers from Nashville!

SLedupotential--FULL!!!

Yippee! I just finished adding "Reserved" signs on the last of the realworld attendees' chairs (the tie-dye ones on the floor) in the SLedupotential Virtual Room high above ISTE Island. Here's a snapshot--the little white signs all say "Reserved for a San Antonio SLedupotentialer, click for more info" and a click will take the clicker to the workshop wiki, already populated with more stuff than we could get thru in 3 days, much less 3 hours. Neat!

Attendees will be getting a brief pre-conf. survey the first of the week to help us narrow focus a bit to tailor the learning experience, which this will definitely be, and for all of us! Check back here for a SLurl the "day of," Monday, June 30, at 6:45 SL time!

At present, the workshop will be open inside Second Life to anyone, although I'm sure the ISTE Island Managers reserve the right to close the teleports if we get too busy. I currently have seating for 24 (the red "unreserved" chairs) and off in the corners I've placed 3 dance floors for the breakout sessions, which I'll name soon. Any suggestions for names?

Stay tooned!!! Oh, here's the NECC page that brought me the news:

NECC Birds of a Feather Gets its Final Co-presenter!

Okay, ya'll. In an effort to make the Birds of a Feather June 30 interesting and fun, I've added several co-presenters. Why? 'Cause I CAN, silly! I promise I'm finished!

The RL rundown:
Me, you know me
padl is a Tech Coordinator in Arkansas, JS is a Community College nursing educator in Washington state, Gia is a SLoodle expert in London, Know is a theater teacher in New Jersey, and the Prof. is an English language teacher in Kobe, Japan.

Sound fun? It will be. Join us. :)

Agony and Ecstasy

So, the agony is in all the shortfalls one has regarding actual instruction and affect. The ecstasy is the good stuff (though the agony has its place in that queue). I'm doing a day long workshop tomorrow on aspects of Adobe CS3, an opportunity located by my Technology Director and supported by my school administration, and I'm reeeeeallly excited to be going. We just purchased Adobe CS3 and I want to know how to lead my teachers to places where they'll use it.

Today (the Ecstasy) I facilitated a fabulous interactive videoconference offered by the Vanderbilt Virtual School, a program about classical music featuring a chamber orchestra called Alias. Wonderful. Marvelous. Underappreciated and underutilized by the tens of thousands of classrooms across the nation that might have benefited from the chance to ask questions of professional classical musicians: The agony.

This week, my kids are all creating holiday cards for homeless folks and retirement village residents who may otherwise not receive anything loving or celebratory from friends or relatives, since--guess what--there are a lot of our fellow humans in the world who have neither. This will be facilitated by technology (.jpg files created in Powerpoint and the freeware Drawing for Children program) and by the local radio station Mix 92.9. I only hope they will utilize our kids' work even though some of it may not fit their "Christmas" mold. Our kids, in our eclectic, diverse, odd, inclusive, wonderful, one-of-a-kind independent school, will be creating "Holiday" cards. Sure, many will be Christmas cards, but we will provide Kwanzaa, Diwali, Hanukkah, and other cards as well. By the end of the week we'll have over 300 of them that I'll print and deliver to the station. Wish us luck. In the long run, of course, it's all about the process, now, isn't it?

Today I also witnessed and archived some fabulous presentations from the freshman class at the School for Math and Science at Vanderbilt, using ustream.tv, and I hope that those experiences will inform my presentations in San Antonio come summer, at NECC2008. Wish me luck.

Peace to you and yours as we barrel into the holiday season. Remember balance, and strive, ever, for that.

Second Life Cross-post

Check out my Second Life blog for news of an important event Wednesday night "inworld." Educators who aren't aware of the surging interest in SL as a pedagogical tool might be well served to open up a portion of their peripheral vision to the increasingly well-documented successes of the platform.

A quick googling of "'Second Life' 'Education'" might be a good starting place. Here, I've done it for you, saving you one more click :)

I was at the Conference on Information Technology Monday, cruising around gathering information for my Vanderbilt podcast, and though some of the hundreds of sessions available drew pretty good crowds, I have to say the only standing room only sessions I peeked into were those on Second Life (and one very interesting one on a 3D software platform for crime scene forensics education. I helped out a little in a session by John Miller, from Tacoma State College in Washington, about his NESIM (Nursing Education Simulation) Second Life site, and it was both fun and stimulating, not to mention enthusiastically embraced by the (yes, standing-room-only) attendees. That'll be the focus of my next podcast, due out in two weeks, with audio from the session and possibly even some video.

If all this picques your interest and you have a couple hours Saturday morning, there is a workshop inside Second Life for beginning educators hosted by Elven Institute, an association of real-world librarians. More info at the Elven Institute website.

Cheerio, ya'll.

Got the Winter Crud but...

Lying flat on my back with a chest cold today but it does give me a chance to catch up, inbetween nappies. I've been most active in my Second Life blogging lately. So much happening there, not a great deal happening here. Excepting, well, hmmmm...

Awaiting word on the proposal applications for NECC2008 in San Antonio. I put in three: two for the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt and one for Second Life. The first two are similar, one a session with IVC and one a poster session with IVC capability. I've done several of the former but none of the latter and I'm hoping that if one is accepted over the other that the poster goes through. I didn't even make it to the poster floor last year in Atlanta but I recall from the year before that it can be a busy place; plus it'll be a challenge for me to put together something in a new (two hour!) format. I'm so proud of the work that's going on at the school that I'd love to get the chance to share it out face to face with fellow educators: It's a big task to implement a program that brings 100 public school high school students, 25 from each grade level (the ultimate goal), to a university research campus one day a week. The fact that such a small staff makes it happen is nothing short of remarkable. The use of Moodle as a LMS (Learning Management System) is going well, and everyone's learning, even the young and stellar faculty!

It's also delivering some great audio for my podcast, Snacks4theBrain!. If you haven't caught the last one, featuring portions of an interactive videoconference between School freshmen and the director of the National Ice Core Laboratory, do so post haste...

I've blogged about the SL 3-hour workshop presentation proposal but if you missed that you can find its meat, carved up and served to the reviewers' table by 9 chefs from 9 different states in the country, at the SLedupotential wiki.

Finally, my lovely wife has just completed a huge fundraising event for and at my school, and you can see something about that at artclectic.org, the event's website. Due to the work of many volunteers it was immensely successful (and I should say that it is a testament to her capable and untiring work all year long that it even happened!), raising let's-just-say a bundle of discretionary funding for my school, including funding for teacher professional development and for its exemplary need-based scholarship program. artclectic (no caps) is also what my school director likes to say a "friendraiser," this year achieving great mention and excellent review in the local press and nothing but superlative comments from everyone I talked to. For me, it was a chance to see artists who are both world-class artists and wonderful human beings, some of whom I consider friends from the long association over the years Lee Ann's been making artclectic tick. To watch the little ones move through the stunning gallery on Education Day, especially, was both heartwarming and encouraging. I've been working on a video from that day, and when it's done I'll share it here!

Sigh, going back to sleep now...

"sledupotential"

If you're not aware of what's going on with Second Life, the huge online MUVE (Multi-User Virtual Environment), you may be surprised to know that educational opportunities abound. I maintain a fairly oft-accessed blog about education in Second Life and usually keep my posts about that area of interest at the "Oh Second Life" blog. However, I want to encourage anyone interested to visit a wiki I set up over this past weekend, one I'm calling "sledupotential."

Since ISTE's annual NECC (National Educational Computing Conference) issued a call for proposals this past month, I've been wondering what sort of offering I might make for the 2008 conference in San Antonio. I've been going to these things since 2000, and I began presenting at the 2002 conference in San Antonio, helping design and deliver a half-day session on Interactive Videoconferencing put on for the then "Office" of Science Outreach at Vanderbilt University. Since then (with the exception of one year, NECC in Seattle, when I spent my time attending rather than presenting workshops) I have presented on various topics in New Orleans, San Diego, and Atlanta, missing only Chicago in 2001 and Philadelphia in 2005. See a history of past NECCs here.

These conferences have provided some of the most pivotal experiences in my adult learning life, as well as helping me establish collegial bonds and friendships of long duration; and I look forward to the conference every year. This year may be a landmark, though.

I'm going collaborative. Seriously collaborative.

See the wiki, which explains the process better than I can here. "sledupential" promises to be the most learning-loaded and thought-provoking session I've ever had the privilege of helping facilitate. I'm smiling now, smiling wide: Maybe it has something to do with the nine other colleagues from all over the country (haven't gone international yet but chances are we will be so by the end of the day) who have signed on as co-presenters. Maybe it has to do with the way this idea developed from a more-or-less casual chat at an ISTE "social" in Second Life.

Maybe I'm just crazy!

Time, as it always does, will tell. :)