New Snacks4theBrain! Podcast Features NECC2007!

Hey! Just finished posting episode number 58 of Snacks4theBrain! and thought it might be good to let everyone know here. The 20 min. podcast features snippets from Peggy Sheehy, Kathy Schrock, and Chris Dede--all three of whom presented stellar talks at the National Educational Computing Conference in Atlanta, Georgia (Chris's excerpt is from his keynote the subsequent "online learning institute" tagged onto the tail end of NECC). Go visit the S4theB! blog to listen and learn more.

Oh, for those monitoring for news of the new podcast "uber-device" to which I alluded in my Windows Podcasting talk at NECC, the current news is that its release is set for October of this year. As soon as I have leave to let out more I promise I'll do so right here (though you'll probably hear of it elsewhere as well--it's too big an innovation to escape large press).

If you haven't already, check out and keep an eye on the developments that will blossom over at the Web 2.0 in Education's week-long workshop at the University School of Nashville next week.

Second Life NECC 2007 Birds of a Feather Video!!!

It's at the Scott in Second Life blog. Have at it! Oh heck, let's repost it here!

Thank you Zsuzsa Thomsen! You ROCK! I SAW you with that videocam. You did a great job of grabbing pieces of the hour and a half fun-fest that Jeremy and I did before he lost every electronic connection he had when his power went out from the San Antonio thunderstorm. It's always something!!!

Big Announcement for Attendees of My NECC Windows Podcasting Tools Session!

(part of the audience!)

I had so much fun sharesharing yesterday for the ~240 dedicated teachers, administrators, and technologists who packed my Windows Podcasting: Tools, Tips, and StraTegies for Success (ISTE dropped my internal cap on the last word in its title but I thought it was cute, don't you?) and want to thank you all for being there. Please feel free to add my feed to your RSS aggregator of choice for that podcasting device announcement I teased you with!

The winners of the two giveaway FlipVideo devices (THANKS, Simon at puredigital.com!!!) were Bruce Dale, Technical Support Specialist at Rabun County Schools in Tiger, Georgia and Brenda Thompson, teacher at Madison County School District in Flora, Mississippi. Congrats!

Seven other lucky winners took home items from FTC Publishing and some random other things from my office, including a Works Suite package and a 2003 Britannica Encyclopedia on CD (the boobie prize, to be sure but most likely a bonafide antique worth keeping). I want to sincerely apologize for the pandemonium that accompanied the prize drawing process (if you can call it that) but folks, I had NO IDEA that my session would be such a sellout, and had a process prepared for drawing prizes from a pool of certainly no more than 100...

Here's the announcement I want to make today: I have 100 magnatunes.com (remember, the cutting-edge independent music distributor website offering free music to podcasters?) to give away, courtesy of the generous John Buckman at Magnatune. You have to trust that I'll work out a good way to pick the first 100 emails I received in the mad rush to win yesterday, and winners will receive an email with an attachment to save that will have a gift card number to use on the website for up to 10 dollars worth of music. Most full albums at Magnatune average a price of 8 dollars, and John's hope is you'll "get" the unique service ethic there and come on back when you want new music that hasn't been filtered by the (all caps) MUSIC INDUSTRY musicmill.

Again, thanks so much and check back for more pictures here!

Okay, I'm Done!

Led what turned out to be a FABULOUS Birds of a Feather session with Jeremy Koester from San Antonio yesterafternoon. Followup from that experience will mostly be at the Second Life blog, but I can assure you a fun time was had by all (well, "most" anyway!).

I fnally feel like my "Windows Podcasting: Tips, Tricks, and sTragegies for Success" session today is fleshed out enough with talking points and resources for me to talk non-stop for 50 minutes without making a complete fool of myself. Going to take a walk through the conference center after uploading those resources to the ISTE site.

Most of what I'm sharing is now on my new de.licio.us page, so if you're busy elsewise feel free to learn from there!

Had planned to give away two flipvideo recorders but since they haven't arrived from the company yet that plan may be thwarted. I do have some books and other fun stuff from a commercial company that contacted me to offer them, as well as a Griffin iMic and perhaps a few other things, so come buy if you are feeling lucky!

Day1, Saturday, the Edubloggercon "Unconference"

Made it down for the start of the edubloggercon "unconference," a jewel of an experience that was so inspirational it may as well have been the entire motivation for my driving down here. The morning session saw me chatting with Vicki Davis, a premier blogger who's CoolCatTeacher blog is a great resource for everyone. The room was full of active conversations as bloggers paired up to "interview" one another in order to flesh out the profiles on the edubloggercon site.

The session broke out into smaller ones and I gravitated to the Second Life session where I got to meet in person many of the amazing new friends I'm meeting in my avatar as "Scottmerrick Oh" inworld. We made some great progress, I think, toward gelling as a group to further investigate how SL can be used in the service of learning. See "Scott Merrick in Second Life" blog for more on that! Will be blogging there a bit later this evening, after finding some food.

That session was called to order by organizer Steve Hargadon and we merged two planned sessions into one called Schools of the Future, led by one of my personal heroes, David Warlick. Wow. I took video the whole time and though I'm sure David will podcast it, I'm working on making that video available. I'm a diehard supporter of audo podcasting, for a number of reasons, but this is one you might want to watch, just to see the engagement and the passion in the eyes of the 40 or 50 teachers in that room. There's hope....

Over lunch break I didn't eat but sat with those who did, catching up with email and formatting some of the video I took with my flipvideo device from puredigital.com. This device is one our tech coordinators at my school are experimenting with this summer, and I'm tellin' you, it's stellar.

After lunch break I caught Rushton Hurley's "Videos and Engaging Learning: session, learning and sharing alot. Rushton's working to save education one instruction video at a time at his unique and cleanly conceived NextVista.org. Join in. Help. Submit your own less-than-five-minute videos to the completely free teacher resource.

Tomorrow it's the grant writing session early a.m. then seat-dropping pamphlets and the like for the Keynote featuring Andrew Zoli, young educational futurist. Then the reception at the Georgia State Aquarium, the largest aquarium in the country, and helping welcome people to the Second Life section of that reception. All's good!

Monday it's a bunch of sessions; the Second Life "playground," showing it to the masses; a photoshoot for ISTE publicity, the SL Birds of a Feather session. That's as far ahead as I can think at the moment, though I'm thinking all the time about my session presentation on Windows podcasting tools come Tuesday...

Things are Heating Up for the Summer

I recently added a "Scott Merrick in Second Life" blog, just what I need, another blog to keep up with. But I feel it's important to parse off my interest in what's going on in Second Life from what's going on "irl" (in real life). Seriously, I think I need to find some new organizational software/program to help me prioritize everything I'm interested in--family, both my paying jobs, learning about teaching, teaching about learning, teaching, my NECC podcasting presentation, the new Computer Sciences department that is forming at my school, interactive videoconferencing, my summer workshop design and implementation (more on that later), distance learning, listening to music, playing music, reading, writing, and more: and that's just in my first life!

So visit the SL blog for what's going on there--there's a lot happening at NECC2007 in both first life and second. I'll keep track of each at its appropriate blog. Sheesh!

NECC 2007 Presentation! Come to Atlanta!

Hey, just updating about my NECC2007 presentation acceptance! NECC is the International Society for Technology in Education's annual get-together of over 10,000 teachers, techies, and school administrators and it's always rewarding to go. This year I'll be all over the place, so Skype me "scottmerrick" if you need me but if you really want to see me workin' a room I'll be in a room "tba Mid-May" on Tuesday, 6/26/2007, from 3:30pm– 4:30pm presenting a workshop session called Podcasting with Windows: Tools, Tricks, and sTrategies for Success!

Clever title, eh? The brief marketing blurb ISTE asked for is: Just because we don't have that nifty GarageBand drag and drop stuff doesn't mean we can't podcast! Seasoned podcaster to teachers: You can start today!

And here's the session detail:

Participants will leave with the ability to seek and obtain various freeware or commercial products that work best for them--for their budgets, their software preferences, and their schedules. They will better understand just what podcasting is and how it has developed into a tool many educatonal institutions and school districts are utilizing in ways that could not have been imagined only a couple of years ago. Participants will leave with their curiousity piqued: How can I use this valuable technology to the benefit of my students? my teachers? my parent-base?

Participants with laptops will no doubt begin to access the tools before the session is complete.

A broad survey of tools both commercially available and freely downloadable will be provided, along with URLs and links to reviews and tutorials. These will include podcast aggregators like iPodder Lemon, iTunes, Juice, and many others, plus resources to sites that catalog and review these. Several microphone options will be shared, as well as hardware options for remote (off-computer) recording, such as a Pocket PC, an iPod with Griffin iTalk, and a digital voice recorder; and recording and compression software solutions will be demonstrated, including Audacity and Adobe Audition. The process of mixing a multi-track podcast using one of these tools will be demonstrated (these skills translate well from one piece of software to another).

Details of just how the Windows podcaster can upload a file to a school web server will be touched upon and demonstrated, using ftp protocol, and the process of creating a feed will be demonstrated using the free service at feedburner.com in conjunction with the free blogging service at blogger.com. These processes are the final step in making one’s podcast public and as such are very necessary. A discussion of several “automatic” services that offer to simplify the process will be offered, along with their pertinent URLs.

An educational podcast does not need to be just a spoken message or lecture. One approach to keeping one’s podcast interesting to a broad range of listeners is to include independent music as one of its features. A great deal of good independent music is available to all podcasters, free for use without royalty payments; and those resources will be shared and demonstrated, including the Podsafe Music Network at music.podshow.com and the commercial site magnatune.com (“we are not evil”).

Participants will also leave with target list of useful educational podcasts they can explore on their own to see just how innovative educators all over the world have begun to take the discussion of educational best practices, technology, and reform more public than at any other time in our history.

Examples from my own podcast, currently 46 shows [Make that 52 as of this post!]and going strong, Snacks4theBrain! will be shared as evidence of the successful application of these tools and strategies.

Come see me in Atlanta! Cheers!