Video conference with the grade 7’s

Mr. McCreesh’s class, today you provided me with the opportunity to answer questions live from the conference. I am sorry to disappoint, but I will not be bringing back souveneirs for everyone. It was nice to hear from everyone and you all had great questions. Thank you to Matthew for pointing out that you had to be a Blogger member to leave a comment. I have since fixed that. Anyone should now be able to leave a comment without having to create a Blogger account. Please try it out.

The challenge that I have for you now is; how best can we use this technology? We have access to a great communication tool as was exemplified by out 5000 km conversation. Who do you want to talk to around the world? I was introduced to a great website today. It is called ePals. We can have conversations with other students from around the world. Go check it out.

Exploring the Exhibitor's Hall

Today was such a busy, crazy day. We started out with a visit to the exhibitor’s hall. There are over 500 booth on the giant convention hall. Exhibitors representing every educational technology company you can think of. I was looking for three things in particular. I wanted to learn more about interactive whiteboard technology, wanted to learn more about classroom microphone and speaker systems and I wanted to learn about instant feedback “clicker” technology. Plus I wanted to win free stuff. I can report that I was not a winner.

The four companies that had interactive whiteboard technology were Promethean, Smart Technologies, Mimio and Ebeam. All four were very cool and I wish I could just buy all of them. Promethean and Smartboards require that you buy and mount a complete board in your classroom, where the Mimio and the Ebeam had portable sensor technology that allows you to turn any regular whiteboard into an interactive whiteboard. I was most impressed with Mimio because it was very versatile and you can move it from room to room and it is really easy to calibrate in seconds. You could even move it from different whiteboards within the room with great ease. The Ebeam had similar capabilities but it was more suited to business meetings rather than in a classroom.

There was only one speaker/microphone system. It was called FrontRow. Very simple and practical. However, very expensive. There were too many companies to list selling the instant feedback “clickers”. There was not much difference between the various companies. I am just going to look into which one will ship for the cheapest (if we decide to buy a set).

A really cool bonus was I got to take my picture with the star of the Brain Pop educational series
The exhibitor’s hall was very overwhelming. There was so much to see and learn about. I will have to go back tomorrow morning before I head to the airport.

The March of the Peabody Ducks

Mrs. O’Meara’s class, your request of me to take pictures of the ducks at the Peabody really provided me with a great experience. After my sessions today, I headed over to the Peabody Hotel. In the main lobby were the ducks (pictured here). I arrived about 15 minutes before the official march back up to their “duck” palace on floor R. I watched as the keeper of the ducks laid out the red carpet and as people lined the path. Precisely at 5pm the ducks were escorted down the red carpet by the honourary duck master. Very regal indeed!

Mr. MacLean trying a Web 2.0 application

Animoto is a Web 2.0 application that allows you to enter in photos, organize them, pick some music and it creates a funky video for you. I took the pictures that the participants took during our assignment time mixed in some screen captures from the websites that we played with. Animoto did all the cool transitions and music. Super easy and super fun!!!

What's Next? How Classrooms Will Change and Why...

Good morning everyone,

Back in the sessions. Today I am in an all day session with a series of presenters on how the classroom is changing. We started right of the bat with a really cool tool called "Classroom Response System" which is a radio frequency tool where each of us students was given a "clicker". The presenter then took us through a series of multiple choice questions to which we could enter our answer. Within seconds, the presenter was then able to show us a graph of our answers using an LCD projector. An excellent example of instant formative assessment.

We then moved into a great conversation around statistics of technology use by our current students. The main message was that students have a greater access to online resources. How do we use this access to teach? The following quote was used as a conversation starter:

"How do we tap into this MySpace mind, but in the context of an educational atmosphere that addresses world-readiness skills?"

How many of our Rosser students use a social online tool? Examples being WebKinz, Club Penguin, MySpace and/or Facebook.

Comic relief was then provided with this YouTube video

During our "break" our assignment was to take pictures of people at the conference using technology. Upon our return, we were treated to another video that set up a conversation about the urgency to ensure that we are meeting the needs of our current generation of students.

We were then introduced to a number of web2.0 tools that are education friendly. This was followed up with some "Hands on Time" using this Wiki.

There is just too many cool online applications to describe here. The one that we played with the most was Voicethread.

Southern Hospitality

HOT!!!

Tonight, after the conference sessions, we were treated to a evening at BB King's. This is a Blues Club that serves traditional southern food. I enjoy hot food so the meal was spectacular. I had HOT wings and then a canjun blackened chicken pasta dish that made the hot wings seem mild.

The entertainment was phenomenal. The band, "The BB King Allstars" is the house band and the two lead singers could SANG. Some people sing but these two SANG. Hmmph....it was the kind of music that makes you shake your head and shout out "sing it sister".

I truly felt like I had experienced the south.

Congrats to div 3 who sent a number of questions. I will do my best to answer them.

1. No, I will not be going to Disney World. There will just not be enough time. However, I will try to sneak over to the gift shop to pick up some little token for my children. My daughters are Disney Princess crazy, so I will score big on this account.

2. The conference is all about web pages and computers, so I really haven't had a chance to explore other things here yet. Other than the Blues Club. Tomorrow, after the conference sessions, we might go to the "Ripley's Believe It of Not" museum. The building was built upside down. Believe it or not?


3. I have not seen any indigenous animals at this point. I am told that there are pelicans here. I figure they are more on the many coastal regions of Florida. I have heard about resident ducks that live in the lobby of the Peabody Hotel. I am going by there tomorrow on my way to the conference to check them out.

4. I am going to take some more pictures tomorrow of the land around the conference centers. To be honest. If it is not a road, a parking lot, or a resort then it is a swamp. The old saying "if you believe that...I have some swamp land in Florida to sell you" really does come from the fact that most of Orlando, and even Florida for that matter is swamp land.

5. I will be better able to answer the great question about the differences between our school and the ones here after I visit the Middle School on Friday.

Great questions guys...keep them coming.

Rick Reece Teaches Mr. MacLean about Web Page Styles

Rick Reece's session had participants from 5 different countries, including Turkey (Wow...I thought I travelled a long way).

The main idea of the workshop is how to design pages using styles rather than tables...Oh no...I had always used tables so I had to be a fearless learner.

Rick gave us an opportunity to play with a raw web page that just had data. We learnt how to move things around using what is called "div" tags. It was actually way easier than I thought it would be. I also learnt that this is a much cleaner way to organize your web pages because "styles" allow you to change the appearance of sections of the web page rather than specific items. In addition, the coolest thing I learnt was how to use Absolute Positioning Divisions. This allows you to put an image or text anyplace on your web page and then no matter the browser people use, the image will stay in the place you want it to, even if you layer it over another image.

The most important thing that I learnt was to organize your data for your web page before hand and just enter the data, then use the styles to make the appearance you want to. The trick for me now, is to figure out how to use integrate this information into our current web page formats.

A special note for Mrs. Schwarz: I have linked this BLOG to the front page of our website

Rick has been kind enough to post the handouts that we worked with on his web page starting Feb 1st, 2008