Upcoming Week in Philly @ISTE19

Here's my week! Come find me for a hug and an LFB album download card!

educatorstechnology.com, y'all

Ya'll,

I have a link for ya.


http://www.educatorstechnology.com/2017/09/32-educational-websites-organized-by.html

This is pretty stunning if you run a computer lab or you are a classroom teacher who wants to amp up your tech in the classroom. I stumbled upon it a week or so ago and, otherwise focused, simply pasted its url into a new blogpost so I'd have the draft to share it. Why is it worth visiting? First, just look at this quote from its "About" frame:

Coming to you from the wonderful Nova Scotian city, Halifax (Canada), Educational Technology and Mobile Learning is an educational blog dedicated to curating, reviewing and sharing EdTech tools and mobile apps. The purpose is to help teachers and educators effectively integrate digital technologies into their day-to-day teaching, learning and professional development. For any questions regarding the blog website or the published content , please contact EdTech admin, editor and blog owner, Med Kharbach at: info@educatorstechnology.com.

Med Kharbach is a doctoral researcher and a former teacher with 10 years of classroom teaching experience. Med's research interests include: discourse analysis, language learning, linguistics, Internet linguistics, critical linguistics, new (emerging) literacies, critical pedagogy, and educational technology.

How can you deny that you are tickled to learn about a regularly maintained, smartly written, and timely collection of collections. Just view the homepage via the screengrab below and Favorite, Subscribe, Bookmark, and RSS feed at will.

Finally, it's homebased at freakin' Halifax, Nova Scotia. Whaaaaaaaaaaat?

Stellar.

Reflections on ISTE 2016 in Denver, Colorado

It's been my annual habit since 2005 to reflect upon the goings-on at the annual conference of the International Society for Technology in Education. This year I am continuing the tradition. The following will be a rambling, first person, eyewitness account of events in Denver that'll mix the personal with the professional, opinion with fact, and observation with reflection. I'm making this stuff up, as are we all.

During this year's conference, I...

1. experienced my final day as Associate Virtualization Engineer at MNPS Virtual School, a story in itself,
2. led the most successful Virtual Environments Playground ever, and saw the partnership with the Games & Simulations Network function like clockwork to share learning, playing, and teaching in innovative ways,
3. made several real connections that will help bolster my severely reduced income and lead me to help promote technology in education in meaningful ways,
4. explored Denver, mostly its world-class food, with my peeps;

First:

This year's "moneyshot" from the annual meeting of ISTE VEN

Above, witness a special group of thought-leader educators who have more fun than most. The Playground on Tuesday, 2-5pm, was arguably the very best ever. See my June 21 post for that schedule. In addition to the ongoing "main stage" presentations, the tables saw consistent conversations and demonstrations that were unfailingly informational, upbeat, and helpful. Mary Howard, center above, bugged me a couple times, "What are you actually doing? You're just wandering around looking important." I guess it looked like that, but wrangling the mainstage to make sure we stayed on schedule, taking pics (with Rosie Vojtek's iPhone mostly), and Periscoping as much of the events as I could kept me busy. The layout of the Playground had two main stages, one at either end of the space, with flatpanels for presentation. This year we chose not to compete with on another with concurrent events, alternating presenters for each PLN. I was able during the keynote talk by Cynthia Colongne to bring her talk up in on the flatpanel down at the distant far end, Periscoping it up at the main stage, connecting my iPad down at the far display with a Periscope viewer on the iPad. Mash-up heaven, y'all.

Okay, here we go, more or less linearly:
Day 1, Thursday: I arrived in Denver's airport around two hours late on Thursday, June 23. It was wicked hot below us from Nashville to Denver, and we had repeatedly hit microbursts of heat along the way, resulting in the poor young mother next to me totally freaking out each time. The worst was yet to come, as our Southwest pilot made not one, not two, but three landing attempts, hitting ugly turbulence and pulling out each time. We never really got close enough to really call them landing attempts. Maybe "descent attempts" would be closer to the right nomenclature. At any rate, after the 3rd failed attempt he announced that we didn't' have enough fuel to circle in the hopes that we would wait out the turbulence, and that we were on the way to Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Landing safely there we sat on the sunny tarmac of this tiny airport with the door open as we refueled, four other planes ahead of us in that queue. Once we had achieved a full load of jet fuel, we taxied, took off, and landed safely in Denver with little turbulence at all.

I took the train to Baggage Claim, got luggage without incident, and caught another train into downtown Denver, where my bro-in-law, Jim, picked me up outside of Union Station. Soon we were at my first Denver gnosh, fish tacos at The Pioneer, near his home. Soon after that we drove the 6 blocks or so home, to Grey Gables:

Grey Gables, est. 1887

Grey Gables, circa 1889

This was Elizabeth Iliff's (founder of Iliff School of Theology, later DU) home and is right off Observatory Park in lovely South Denver. More on that later. We stayed up a while and retired.






Day2, Friday: I woke up early, taking Ginger, the beautiful Golden Retriever,

off on a walk through the neighborhood before heading off into the first 1 mile walk of many to come. I took off west toward the University of Denver and past it, to to the DU light rail station. Walking through that campus was a joy every time. It's beautiful, and also empty of students this week, so I pretty much had it all to myself every time I walked or biked through it. Later I played around with Periscope, 'scoping several "Walking Ginger in Denver" episodes. Kinda fun. I was using those walks to practice for the 'scoping I would do at the ISTE conference. Check out all my Periscopes.

I bought my ticket from the vendor machine at the University of Denver light rail stop, hopped aboard, and went to the CCC, the Colorado Convention Center.

Spire and stands at the DU soccer field

I had arrived.

I couldn't get into the CCC yet, so I strolled around downtown for a while, landing in Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company for the first lunch, delicious clam chowder and a Caesar salad. Yum.

Coming out of lunch, I ran into my dear friend Kecia Ray, who was hosting ISTE for an unprecedented fourth year in a row. She was with Dallas Dance, a fellow board member, and after hugs and chat we parted, but not before Kecia had offered access to her penthouse room for breaks and where I could be able to stash gear I didn't want to be hauling around all day during the conference. She's the best. I took advantage of this offer several times, and it helped both my back and my feet, all of which always suffer at these things--miles to walk every day, not even taking into consideration getting to and from the train station!

I think I'll go ahead and post this, continuing later! I'm off to explore the environs with my bro-in-law. More later!

Day 3, Saturday:  I was up early and at the train station and took a minute to take my first pano of the trip, uploading it to Facebook. I was amazed to see that when it was posted it wasn't the short and wide still version, but when I viewed it on my phone it was actually interactively 3D!

In, registered, and with my Presenter ribbon mounted on my nametag, I got my first hug from Louise Maine, who was working the greeting station. I resolved to chronicle those hugs and of course stopped doing so after a dozen or so, but here's the starter list from that botched effort, copied from iPhone Notes:

Louise Maine

Kathy Schrock

Jill Brown

Lee Zeitz

Steve Hargadon

Barbara Bray

Vickie Davis

Coleen Kimball

Gordon Dahlby

Susan Larson

Kecia Ray

Jan Zanetis

Will Richardson

Mary Howard

Andy Wheelock

Sandy Wagner

Jessica Medaille

Cathy Cavanaugh

Barbara Seaton

and, and, and...

  That's the point of this conference, actually--hug collection. There were many, many more. You know who you are!

First stop, Hack Education! This "unconference" has blossomed from "EduBlogger Con" which was initiated in 2010, the brainchild of the stellar edublogger Steve Hargadon. From 8:30 to 4pm the pre-conference Saturday of ISTE, hundreds of thought leaders meet and many of them propose discussion topics. These are posted on the walls and attendees then commit to one of them by initialing the sheet, votes are counted, and however many discussions there are meeting spaces for are announced, and discussions ensue. Lunch break. Another session. and another session. This year there was an additional space for every proposed leader whose session was not chosen, where they could go and have the topic/discussion for whomever showed up. Here's a pano of the room (note the topics on the wall), and I periscoped the opening remarks, which you can view here.

I ran over to Bubba Gump's again, this time with Andy Wheelock, my brother-from-another-mother (I have several of those, don'tcha know). Then we headed back and I dived into a three hour paid session led by the amazing Will Richardson. This session:

Creating a Modern Vision for Teaching and Learning With Technology (WH022)

[Explore and create : Workshop]

Saturday, June 25, 12:30–3:30 pm
Hyatt Regency Hyatt Regency Capitol Ballroom 7

Will Richardson  
All too often, educators implement technology into their classrooms and schools without a clear, compelling vision for its use. As a result, little or nothing really changes in terms of the learning interaction for students. We'll take a look at how to build a vision that transforms, not just digitizes, learning.

Will pretty much held forth for the entire 3 hours, and I could have done 3 more. The core of the session was that we need to align our beliefs about what powerful learning is with our practices. Here's a graphic that I put together from Will's work that he shared to help hammer the point (with apologies for the unclosed quote):

I have just simply had too much fun in Denver with my in-laws and my honey. I do promise I'll be completing this thang next week, the week of July 11! I have copious notes and my memory box is still working pretty darned well. For now, last night the Denver Rockies demolished the Philadelphia Phillies 11-2 on a beautiful, if a bit sweaty, evening at Coors Field. Here are two panos:

I promise!

Day 4 (Day 1), Sunday:

This was the first official day of the conference!

I tooled in on the train and went right in, visiting the Expo floor. What a complete zoo! It always is, and this year was no exception. I

PLACEHOLDER--WILL BE CONTINUED AND UPDATED UNTIL COMPLETE!

Reflections on ISTE 2016 in Denver, Colorado

It's been my annual habit since 2005 to reflect upon the goings-on at the annual conference of the International Society for Technology in Education. This year I am continuing the tradition. The following will be a rambling, first person, eyewitness account of events in Denver that'll mix the personal with the professional, opinion with fact, and observation with reflection. I'm making this stuff up, as are we all.

During this year's conference, I...

1. experienced my final day as Associate Virtualization Engineer at MNPS Virtual School, a story in itself,
2. led the most successful Virtual Environments Playground ever, and saw the partnership with the Games & Simulations Network function like clockwork to share learning, playing, and teaching in innovative ways,
3. made several real connections that will help bolster my severely reduced income and lead me to help promote technology in education in meaningful ways,
4. explored Denver, mostly its world-class food, with my peeps;

First:

This year's "moneyshot" from the annual meeting of ISTE VEN

Above, witness a special group of thought-leader educators who have more fun than most. The Playground on Tuesday, 2-5pm, was arguably the very best ever. See my June 21 post for that schedule. In addition to the ongoing "main stage" presentations, the tables saw consistent conversations and demonstrations that were unfailingly informational, upbeat, and helpful. Mary Howard, center above, bugged me a couple times, "What are you actually doing? You're just wandering around looking important." I guess it looked like that, but wrangling the mainstage to make sure we stayed on schedule, taking pics (with Rosie Vojtek's iPhone mostly), and Periscoping as much of the events as I could kept me busy. The layout of the Playground had two main stages, one at either end of the space, with flatpanels for presentation. This year we chose not to compete with on another with concurrent events, alternating presenters for each PLN. I was able during the keynote talk by Cynthia Colongne to bring her talk up in on the flatpanel down at the distant far end, Periscoping it up at the main stage, connecting my iPad down at the far display with a Periscope viewer on the iPad. Mash-up heaven, y'all.

Okay, here we go, more or less linearly:
Day 1, Thursday: I arrived in Denver's airport around two hours late on Thursday, June 23. It was wicked hot below us from Nashville to Denver, and we had repeatedly hit microbursts of heat along the way, resulting in the poor young mother next to me totally freaking out each time. The worst was yet to come, as our Southwest pilot made not one, not two, but three landing attempts, hitting ugly turbulence and pulling out each time. We never really got close enough to really call them landing attempts. Maybe "descent attempts" would be closer to the right nomenclature. At any rate, after the 3rd failed attempt he announced that we didn't' have enough fuel to circle in the hopes that we would wait out the turbulence, and that we were on the way to Cheyenne, Wyoming.

Landing safely there we sat on the sunny tarmac of this tiny airport with the door open as we refueled, four other planes ahead of us in that queue. Once we had achieved a full load of jet fuel, we taxied, took off, and landed safely in Denver with little turbulence at all.

I took the train to Baggage Claim, got luggage without incident, and caught another train into downtown Denver, where my bro-in-law, Jim, picked me up outside of Union Station. Soon we were at my first Denver gnosh, fish tacos at The Pioneer, near his home. Soon after that we drove the 6 blocks or so home, to Grey Gables:

Grey Gables, est. 1887

Grey Gables, circa 1889

This was Elizabeth Iliff's (founder of Iliff School of Theology, later DU) home and is right off Observatory Park in lovely South Denver. More on that later. We stayed up a while and retired.






Day2, Friday: I woke up early, taking Ginger, the beautiful Golden Retriever,

off on a walk through the neighborhood before heading off into the first 1 mile walk of many to come. I took off west toward the University of Denver and past it, to to the DU light rail station. Walking through that campus was a joy every time. It's beautiful, and also empty of students this week, so I pretty much had it all to myself every time I walked or biked through it. Later I played around with Periscope, 'scoping several "Walking Ginger in Denver" episodes. Kinda fun. I was using those walks to practice for the 'scoping I would do at the ISTE conference. Check out all my Periscopes.

I bought my ticket from the vendor machine at the University of Denver light rail stop, hopped aboard, and went to the CCC, the Colorado Convention Center.

Spire and stands at the DU soccer field

I had arrived.

I couldn't get into the CCC yet, so I strolled around downtown for a while, landing in Bubba Gump's Shrimp Company for the first lunch, delicious clam chowder and a Caesar salad. Yum.

Coming out of lunch, I ran into my dear friend Kecia Ray, who was hosting ISTE for an unprecedented fourth year in a row. She was with Dallas Dance, a fellow board member, and after hugs and chat we parted, but not before Kecia had offered access to her penthouse room for breaks and where I could be able to stash gear I didn't want to be hauling around all day during the conference. She's the best. I took advantage of this offer several times, and it helped both my back and my feet, all of which always suffer at these things--miles to walk every day, not even taking into consideration getting to and from the train station!

I think I'll go ahead and post this, continuing later! I'm off to explore the environs with my bro-in-law. More later!

Day 3, Saturday:  I was up early and at the train station and took a minute to take my first pano of the trip, uploading it to Facebook. I was amazed to see that when it was posted it wasn't the short and wide still version, but when I viewed it on my phone it was actually interactively 3D!

In, registered, and with my Presenter ribbon mounted on my nametag, I got my first hug from Louise Maine, who was working the greeting station. I resolved to chronicle those hugs and of course stopped doing so after a dozen or so, but here's the starter list from that botched effort, copied from iPhone Notes:

Louise Maine

Kathy Schrock

Jill Brown

Lee Zeitz

Steve Hargadon

Barbara Bray

Vickie Davis

Coleen Kimball

Gordon Dahlby

Susan Larson

Kecia Ray

Jan Zanetis

Will Richardson

Mary Howard

Andy Wheelock

Sandy Wagner

Jessica Medaille

Cathy Cavanaugh

Barbara Seaton

and, and, and...

  That's the point of this conference, actually--hug collection. There were many, many more. You know who you are!

First stop, Hack Education! This "unconference" has blossomed from "EduBlogger Con" which was initiated in 2010, the brainchild of the stellar edublogger Steve Hargadon. From 8:30 to 4pm the pre-conference Saturday of ISTE, hundreds of thought leaders meet and many of them propose discussion topics. These are posted on the walls and attendees then commit to one of them by initialing the sheet, votes are counted, and however many discussions there are meeting spaces for are announced, and discussions ensue. Lunch break. Another session. and another session. This year there was an additional space for every proposed leader whose session was not chosen, where they could go and have the topic/discussion for whomever showed up. Here's a pano of the room (note the topics on the wall), and I periscoped the opening remarks, which you can view here.

I ran over to Bubba Gump's again, this time with Andy Wheelock, my brother-from-another-mother (I have several of those, don'tcha know). Then we headed back and I dived into a three hour paid session led by the amazing Will Richardson. This session:

Creating a Modern Vision for Teaching and Learning With Technology (WH022)

[Explore and create : Workshop]

Saturday, June 25, 12:30–3:30 pm
Hyatt Regency Hyatt Regency Capitol Ballroom 7

Will Richardson  
All too often, educators implement technology into their classrooms and schools without a clear, compelling vision for its use. As a result, little or nothing really changes in terms of the learning interaction for students. We'll take a look at how to build a vision that transforms, not just digitizes, learning.

Will pretty much held forth for the entire 3 hours, and I could have done 3 more. The core of the session was that we need to align our beliefs about what powerful learning is with our practices. Here's a graphic that I put together from Will's work that he shared to help hammer the point (with apologies for the unclosed quote):

I have just simply had too much fun in Denver with my in-laws and my honey. I do promise I'll be completing this thang next week, the week of July 11! I have copious notes and my memory box is still working pretty darned well. For now, last night the Denver Rockies demolished the Philadelphia Phillies 11-2 on a beautiful, if a bit sweaty, evening at Coors Field. Here are two panos:

I promise!

PLACEHOLDER--WILL BE CONTINUED AND UPDATED UNTIL COMPLETE!

Mr. Winkle Wakes

Via Facebook this morning I had to reshare a link from Scott McLeod, one leading to an amazing single webpage, a wiki page, actually, compiled by the fabulous Alec Couros, entitled

90+ Videos for Tech. & Media Literacy. 

This page deserves some visitation and exploration. It's a veritable treasure trove of interesting, stimulating, inspirational content. I plan explore it often over the coming weeks, and I hope that you will, too; if, that is, you have any interest in education. My Friday morning gift to you comes from the "Conversation Starters" section and if you share this with others in your PLN I'm wagering it will start some conversations. From Mathew Needleman, "Mr. Winkle Wakes." Indeed:

Twitter #K12perfectschool to Contribute!

I started a project [hears the Bee Gees "I Started a Joke"] on twitter that I'm hoping gains some legs and provides some interesting diversion from the eternal discussions about "school reform."

Here's the gist: Assuming that prominent futurist/thinker Alvin Toffler was correct when he recently said in an interview:

Edutopia.org: You've been writing about our educational system for decades. What's the most pressing need in public education right now?

Alvin Toffler: Shut down the public education system. just how do we proceed to do that? Well, I don't know, but I do know that Twitter holds some interesting promise as a dialog facilitator, so I thought to myself, why not see?

The image below is the beginning of what will hopefully be a response to my call for educators on Twitter to contribute little pieces of how they envision a changed landscape of the way we teach and learn. Do you have ideas? Open up your Twitter, type the hashtag "#k12perfectschool" and have at it. I'll be noting my ideas along the way. The goal?

After we get 2010 tweets I'll dig in and summarize. Maybe we'll have something of a starting point. Maybe we won't. It'll be interesting, at least, and will be a valiant effort to end-run the timeless and endless talk about reforming a system that is so fundamentally wrong and so clearly failing to invent one that is fundamentally right and that works.

Watch PBS TV TONIGHT for "Digital Nation"--check local listings

I had the opportunity today to preview the show online. This one will be controversial, ya'll, and I'd love to start a discussion here. Watch it, because you will most certainly be called upon for an opinion by parents and administrators...

From PBS email:

Last March, we launched a Web site to start a conversation about how
digital technology is changing almost every aspect of modern culture -
from how we think and learn to how we build relationships and even
conduct warfare. We asked for your feedback, and you shared your
stories that helped to shape our 90-minute documentary which airs
Tuesday, February 2, at 9pm ET on PBS (check local listings).

This program is guaranteed to make you think, to question your understanding of and use of technology, and to cause a big stir in educational technology. Very well done, I initially report. Controversial? You bet.

I had seen some of it early on, and we hosted a presentation by the producers--thanks to ISTE member and colleague Malinda McCormick--at the Second Life Playground at NECC09 in Washington, DC last summer. But watching the show in its finished format is even more powerful, incredibly so. What is your response? What does this mean to our work? I'll ask you the same thing I would ask any of my students: What are the creators of this media intending to communicate? Share here.

The Dalai Lama Makes a Joke

Or does he? Happy snow day. I'm getting some work done from home today, but I'm also "paying more attention at [my] inner values." Thank you, David Orban...

Co-dependence Tech Help?

I have to point you to this. Scott McCleod hard at work creating controversy and heated dialog. His post at his "Dangerously Irrelevant" blog, entitled "Are our training efforts helping educators or enabling codependence?" is worth a read and a response. Tell 'im that other Scott sent ya. Here's a teaser:

As someone who does a lot of training and professional development for school administrators, I wonder how much I’m facilitating codependence. In many job sectors, employees are expected to keep up with relevant technologies or risk job loss. When do we require that of K-12 and postsecondary educators? At what point do we say to them “No, we’re not training you how to use this. It’s easy enough for you to learn on your own. And if you don’t, we’ll find someone else who can.”

Read more...

Draxtor Despres Shares a Beautiful Mashup

This is a really moving mashup of Virtual Environments (the platform for the interview), social media, and real life filmmaking. Don't miss its 5:41 minutes of brilliance. Heck, watch it here, but then go over to the original site to comment. You'll want to favorite his work, "conversations about Art, Technology, and Social Justice."

I love the tagline on his profile: "Unless otherwise obvious, all music written and performed by Bernhard Drax (thanks Uncle Bernie)."

Kathy Shrock's Guide for Educators

I've been doing some snooping around for resources lately, and I revisited tonight a link at the Discovery Education site to friend Kathy Schrock's resource page. If you knew about it or think you did and haven't visited it for a while, or if you don't know about it, visit now. Her Upcoming Presentations page indicates her current focus is in the area of "Information Overload," something all of us could stand to pay attention to. Her Slide Shows for Teaching page contains dozens of her presentations for your own review and inspiration.

Kathy is truly a maven in her field, having led many of us into it to begin with. Enjoy what she has to share and enjoy it often.

On to the second full week of school!

10 Ways Your Job Will Change

This is an example of why Twitter might be a good tool to add to your professional arsenal: This morning, while I worked out on my step machine and listened to Steve Earle's new Townes Van Zandt album  on my computer (thank you, Jim and Amy!), one of my network, a Dell executive who goes by the name "ShiftParadigm," tweeted, simply:

ShiftParadigmReading the Way We Will Work: Ten Ways Your Job Will Change (from Time magazine). Think mine has already changed. http://bit.ly/7hGjn

I spent the next 45 minutes reading the article, and, yes, that's a long read, but it is truly interesting. Here's a quote:

Rob Carter, chief information officer at FedEx, thinks the best training for anyone who wants to succeed in 10 years is the online game World of Warcraft. Carter says WoW, as its 10 million devotees worldwide call it, offers a peek into the workplace of the future. Each team faces a fast-paced, complicated series of obstacles called quests, and each player, via his online avatar, must contribute to resolving them or else lose his place on the team. The player who contributes most gets to lead the team — until someone else contributes more.

Read the whole 11 screen article.

Ah, technology. Just do it.
-- 

ETAN Letter, If You Please?

Despite Federal funding being raised to all-time highs in the current flurry of economic stimulus, the 650 million dollar level its at is still just a wee fraction when we're talking about trillions of dollars budgeted for education. This thwarts congressional will, as indicated in the letter below:We can make a difference. Please visit the EdTech Action Network and take a few minutes to customize the beginning of the lobby-created letter the Network will deliver to our congresspeople. It's important...

Here's the letter you'll be sending. A personalized introduction at its top might catch the eye of at least staff members! I'm including mine in bold as an example...

Sure, the following is a lobby-created template, but it explains issues in much more cogent terms than I can muster. I hope you will take a minute to read it. As a 13 year elementary education technology teacher at a Nashville independent school who is sending his 8th grader son to an MNPS school next year for the first time, I am writing to share my opinion about the funding for the Enhancing Education Through Technology (EETT) program that was included in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.  Both the House and Senate passed bills included $1 billion for the EETT program, and yet the final bill reduced this commitment by 35 percent to $650 million.  I am very disappointed that this program suffered such a funding decrease during conference deliberations.

As an educator, I certainly appreciate and applaud the unprecedented investment in education that is included in the economic recovery package. The EETT program provides economic stimulus to our local communities through the creation and retention of high skilled jobs, stimulates the business sector and at the same time provides our students with the skills they need to compete in the global workforce.  

 

President Obama has spoken many times about the need to bring computers and modern technologies and skills to our nation’s classrooms.  I hope that as the FY10 appropriations processes continue you will make the EETT program a top funding priority.