#Unplugged Traveler

Well, I'm not completely unplugged because playing with technologies really is a hobby too.  But I am traveling and have no set schedule for posting in December and the beginning of January.  I am having a ton of fun playing with the technologies I have access to, mainly my iPhone.
 
Stay tuned for some of the results and a description of my technology usage in Bolivia.  In the meantime, feel free to join me on my travel adventure.  I'm hanging with some of my favorite people in one on my favorite countries while playing on my iPhone.  What's not to love about that? #unplugged.  Here' s the site.

Prior to departing the US, I set up a Zeen.  It seemed to have a lot of potential, but it's still in beta and I didn't see a mobile app for it.  I decided on Posterous, the same platform I used two years ago.  It was recently acquired by Twitter. I'm experiencing more issues with the site than I did two years ago, but it still seems to work.  One of the pluses for me is that I can type a post without wifi, save it, and publish later when I find wifi.  The wifi spots are far and few between though.  It's an adventure that's requiring some patience and problem solving :)

One Day on Earth 12-12-12

Last year on 11-11-11, my kiddo and I participated in the One Day on Earth 11-11-11 project by shooting and uploading this very short video clip as we walked through our local forested area.  See the 11-11-11 video trailer below.  What will you be doing on 12-12-12?  Consider participating.  The One Day on Earth site explains, "Together, we are showcasing the amazing diversity, conflict, tragedy, and triumph that occurs in one day."

Not sure what to submit? Get inspired here.  I particularly liked the Educational and People and Culture sections. The Educational Toolkit has some ideas for educators.

I should be in a pretty interesting place somewhere in the world on 12-12-12.  This time I'll be sure to record at least a minute to gain access to the final online copy of the film.

My One Day on Earth 11-11-11 post.

Happy filming!

Ed and Tech Play With Web 2.0 Tools Part 3: VoiceThread

VoiceThread is a handy, easy-to-use tool in education with potential for digital storytelling and beyond.  It can be used to hold debates, explain, describe, persuade, etc.  It allows participants to interact on one platform in five different ways: writing, recording audio, doodling, video, or phone.   My online class will soon be experimenting with VoiceThread (VT).  I’ve used it in my College of Ed classes, a middle school classroom, with my adult ESOL classes, and at a personal level for several years now; I continue to see its benefits.

Getting Started and Examples in Education

I presented on VT back in 2007ish and hadn’t returned to the how-to’s since.  I was tickled pink to find that they still have their original (updated) directions. If you don’t get anything else from this post, do yourself a favor today and watch slides 5 and 6! (Use the arrows to access them quickly.) The first avatar still cracks me up.  What a great example of digital storytelling!

Viewable in a lovely world where I never age is my first attempt at a VT. I was surprised when a year after creating it, I returned to it and discovered people from around the world had responded.  It was memorably one of my first “ah ha” moments that this thing called social media, multimedia and digital storytelling had a bright future.  Embedded below is one my kiddo created years ago explaining her learning from a travel experience.

Wondering how to use VT in your content area?  Here are examples from various content areas and age groups aggregated on the VT site.   Search VT within a defined field to see how other educators use them.  For example, in my field I search for ESOL, ESL, EFL, ELL, assessment etc. Michelle Pacansky-Brock is a great resource to follow on Twitter or at Teaching Without Walls as well.

Ways I have used VoiceThread and things that have worked for me

Set-up: A. Use ones already created. (Do a search by browsing on VT.)  B. Make my own that I use either in the classroom or have students respond to.  C.  Guide students in making either a class, group, or individual VTs and in responding to each other.

Instructions/Purpose: It is important to have a clear set of instructions and purpose for the VT assignment. 

Storyboard/Process:  When students create their own VTs, I often have them storyboard their responses first.  This works well in a process oriented assignment.  For ELLs, it gives them the opportunity to use all modes of the language: reading (if they did research on the topic), writing/editing, speaking, and listening.  I provide checklists and grading rubrics with expectations along the way.

Collaboration: I have experimented using VT when working with multiple sections of a class.  I teach two sections of one class, and the students never see each other, but they are able to correspond, discuss questions, etc. via VT.  This also works in online courses when students enter VT from around the world.

Things I have learned as I’ve used VT

Privacy settings: I need to be mindful of students' comfort levels and privacy.  At this point, I do not have any VT that my students have made to share in public because as a class they opted to keep them private for various reasons.

Comfort level: I once had a middle school student who did a phenomenal job on a VT.  He was engaged in a way I hadn’t seen him engaged before.  He put a ton of effort into his VT, from the writing process to recording his voice several times.  When we got ready to share with the class, he hit “delete.” It was beyond his comfort level to share with others.  I think this is important to honor and another great reason if it is a project to be assessing with a rubric and/or checklist along the way.

Recording Issues:  The reality is that the tech doesn’t always work.  With best efforts, particularly in online courses, some students have hardware limitations and experience difficulties recording audio/video.  This is where the writing option comes in handy.

Potential I see in VT beyond what I have done 

Portfolios: VT could be a portfolio for students to showcase their work and reflect. 

Global Collaboration: VT could be exciting to work in a more global way with other classes.

Course Development: It could be fun to add to the same VT with subsequent classes.  This could work great with vocabulary.  Students in Spring term class create VTs for vocabulary on chapter 1 and Fall term create them for chapter 2, etc.

Get started with the free version of VT.  So far with planning, I have been able to use only the free version.  There’s an app for that.  Last year, VT introduced an app.  It’s straightforward to use and allows students yet another way to be mobile with their learning.  

How do you use VT?

Happy VoiceThreading!

Global Education Conference 2012

Interested in topics surrounding global education?  Join the 2012 Global Education Conference from the comfort of your work place or home.  It runs November 12-17th with access to sessions afterward.

Check out the sessions in this brochure.  Follow the hashtag on Twitter #globaled12.

Happy conferencing!  

2011 Global Ed Conference Post

Ways to Use Thinglink in Education

Visual literacy is an emphasis in ESOL. The visual aspect helps language learners develop vocabulary and much, much more.  It is also beneficial for many learners.  As an online instructor who wishes to bring more meaningful visuals into the classroom, I’ve gained a deeper appreciation for visuals for adult learners as well.  There are many online options available to us.

When Tech:  Thinglink Education is one option with a lot of potential.  The ThingLink Education site describes it as an “Easy-to-use editor, teachers can create immersive and engaging experiences by adding tags to any image in a few minutes: Create authentic, valuable, and rich interactive stories around historical events using media (video, sound, photos, written words, etc.) found online. Annotate graphs and timelines. Record an instructional message to students inside an image. Embed interactive images into student blogs. Enable students to curate content inside an image to demonstrate understanding of a topic."  

At ISTE, I received a free upgrade to the educator’s account of Thinglink Education, which took me from 50 pictures to 500.  

Met Ed: It may be no surprise that Pinterest is a great starting place to see the potential in education.  Explore the pictures at Thinglink Education on Pinterest. It will take you a few clicks to be able to interact with the picture in its intended way.  (Wave your cursor over the Thinglink and click on the circles.) I found this interesting one there by Mr. Loret’s World History class that demonstrates how students are using it!  Here's another Thinglink jumping place to gather ideas and examples.
 

 

Above is my first try with Thinglink. (Wave your cursor over the words, and click on the circles.) It’s very basic, but it shows me the potential firsthand.  I made this in Tagul and uploaded it to Thinglink.  I’ll use it to introduce a few options of online timelines my students can explore for an upcoming course.  It only took a few minutes to make.  I can imagine linking to videos I upload to You Tube or audio instructions I make on SoundCloud.  There are many possibilities.  With an assignment on theories of SLA, students could link to credible articles, videos, etc. that discuss and describe the theories.  Students could even have a “debate” starting place with the words “yes” and reasons on one picture and “no” and reasons on another.  They could then debate away, either by recording their voices and linking to Vacaroo or SoundCloud or simply by writing reasons on the picture and debating in person.  Thinglink has an option to invite others to work on a picture collaboratively.  There are a ton more possibilities, ways librarians, musicians, and others are using it too.  This Wired article gives an overview of a few.

Happy Thinglinking! 

Popcorn Maker

This TED Talk with Ryan Merkley called, Online Video--Annotated, Remixed, and Popped,  caught my attention. And I'm glad it did!  Watch the short five minute talk to see why. Ryan describes Mozilla's Popcorn Maker.

Watch Popcorn Maker in action as it pulls in information from across the web and augments to another TED Talk that brought a smile to my face today-- Science Is For Everyone with Beau Lotto and Amy O'Toole.

Give Mozilla Popcorn Maker a try.   It's in beta, but looking promising and pretty simple to use.  In a few minutes I pulled in a You Tube video I created and augmented to it with a map, link and annotations.

Met Ed:  The potential applications for tools like this are numerous in education.  What can be done by the average bear like myself leaves me amazed.  Just think what the students can do given some guidance and purpose.

K12 Online Conference: Learn, Share, and Remix

The K-12 Online Conferences always have an abundance of information and great presentations.  This year's looks like no exception.  The topic is Learn, Share, and Remix . It runs from October 22 - November 2nd.
Here's the schedule.  View the teasers here.

Enjoy now and the recorded sessions and links later.  See former posts about the K-12 Online Conference and more here.

Meograph: A Digital Storytelling Tool

I was pleased when I came across Meograph during my quest to pull together digital storytelling tools and resources.  It's claim is four dimensional storytelling that "combines maps, timelines, links, and multimedia to tell stories in context of where and when.” As with any online information, it is important to note the date that this post is written.  This is particularly true because as I write, Meograph is in beta.  It seems to have tons of potential, and I love the concept in education!

Get past the demo if you are a K-12 educator.  It has some interesting examples, but may not be appropriate for K-12.  Sign up and give it a try. Watch this how-to video to get an overview.   

I created this Meograph in more than a few minutes, but that is often the case the first time around.  If I were to attempt this again, I’d assume it would be much quicker with better results.  Here are some things I learned along the way that may save you time if you make one yourself.  

View Meograph on Google Earth mode in Chrome for more fun. Click on the orange "see more" tabs to view the links that are available.  In order to get the slides to stay in the intended order, you need to be specific with the date/time.  The narration lasts 10 seconds.  I couldn’t get Salar de Uyuni correctly placed on the map, but I thought it was kind of funny how Google Earth placed it because it really is an off the map type of place. Shortly after I published this post, the Meograph team kindly informed me that there is an option to put the exact latitude and longitude in, which could make a good geography lesson. 

Right now, there are two options available for privacy, publishing or not publishing. YouTube is the only way to embed videos, and at this point in history this could be an unfortunate deterant for K-12 (an entirely different important topic).  It's in beta; what can I say, it is one worth trying and following.  It sounds like their team has some ideas for expanding it for educational use.

Met Ed

Again, there is amazing potential in this site and its basic concept.  Maps meet multimedia, digital storytelling and basically any content area + creativity = seize the tech integration moment.  About any concept that includes two or more locations could be used.  This particularly seems relevant for ESOL, English, Social Studies, and any project that involves mapping a person, event, or process.  I can imagine adult ESOL classes mapping their stories.  A science class could write a biography or trace the origins of a discovery. Etc.  As with any project like this planning such as storyboarding and researching, practice, editing, and adequate time are a few important elements.

Happy Meographing!

Does the Spine Matter? Book Spine Poetry Part 2

Book Spine Poetry is simple-fun! See my previous post for evidence.  I stumbled upon it, but it was inevitable that I would do so.  Read on for my related lazy summer library days story that prompted me to take the next step and create.

My Lazy Summer Library Days Story

As a kid I recall sultry summer afternoons that lingered on forever.  Solitude and freedom awaited me in the old train depot that had been “renovated” to accommodate a meager number of books available to the public in the rural town I called home.  I found refuge wiping away cobwebs from book spines and gently blowing off the dust as I randomly selected one with a sense of awe.  Seemingly minutes passed before the librarian softly told her only patron that she needed to close to make it to her evening job. 

Considering the amount of time I had spent gazing at the books, I wandered slowly home carrying only a light knapsack with room to spare.  Much of my time had been spent browsing the spines, daydreaming about what story, adventure, or truth of human nature might be encompassed in those brief titles.  I knew exactly where the larger than life dictionary was located and frequently used it to look up the meanings of words in the titles.  Being that I was only in third grade, most of the books were beyond my reading comprehension level, but the titles allowed me to create my own stories.

Now, skip forward a few decades… “Does the title matter?” one of my students asked me.  This question is like asking a chef if an ingredient is of importance.  Rather than tell, I show. Print is both purposely and haphazardly displayed about both my work and home environments.  Book spines give a quick glimpse of topics of importance to members of my home. 

What’s Your Poem or Story?

Book Spine Poetry has a way of bringing out our stories and creativity.  What’s your story?  What new story comes alive when you combine the books that surround you on a daily basis in a Book Spine Poem?  How can this be used in education?  What could you learn about your students or coworkers by creating and/or participating in a school-wide Book Spine Poetry challenge?  Imagine the possibilities in the bilingual or multilingual classroom! 

Where’s the tech here? 

Well… this one’s got two sides.  There’s the platform needed to share the pictures and the photography involved.  It could be made into a multimedia project, combined with audio or an online presentation tool, etc.  But there is also a downside.  As I searched about my home to create my own poems, most of the recent books I have consumed were located on my tablet… 

Happy Book Spine Poetry creating!

Book Spine Poetry Part I

Do a search for “Book Spine Poetry” and a plethora of examples and sites will be at your fingertips.  Try your own version.  It’s simple-fun!  Nina Katchadourian is a reappearing name you will discover in your search.  Her Sorted Books Project is well worth exploring!  Libraries and bloggers run their own Book Spine Poetry challenges that are fun to browse as well.

Here is my first amateur attempt.  My kiddo and I dusted off a few books in our library, discussed possible poems while sharing a few laughs, and then took some quick shots on the iPhone.  I then spent entirely too long playing with my new Mac version of SnagIt, all-the-while admiring the abilities of professional photographers and imaging the possibilities if only I were willing to invest more time.  Life is in the details is a phrase that comes to mind when Book Spine Poetry is attempted.

I know this much is true…
The world is open,
The sun also rises.
Where the sidewalk ends,
Let the great world spin.
 

The Outsiders:

Little women,
The girl who fell from the sky,
Children of the river,
Invisible man.
Utopia?

The Call of the Wild
Two old women
Walkabout
The chocolate war.
Hatchet.

You can’t go home again
Alive!

Can you guess what genre each of these poems relates to?  Stay tuned for an upcoming post that inspired this creation frenzy and discusses application in educational technology.  Happy Book Spine Poetry creating! 

When Tech Met Ed Changes

Kacey and I have blogged together on When Tech Met Ed for close to two years now.  It’s been a lot of fun as the blogging often extended beyond what is posted to interesting conversations. It’s fun to see the changes in educational technology in this short time by reviewing some of these links as well.

Check out these posts that highlight some of Kacey’s contributions.

Our Co-Presentations and Workshop

• Bringing Writing Alive With Web 2.0 Tools EERC Presentation 
• Blogging as a Springboard: OSU INTO Presentation
• Try Blogging with 180 High School Students.  It Works!

Posts and Collaboration

• Listening and Watching: The Future of Media
• A Web of Reflections and App Picks
• The Versatile Blogger at Year One
• Seedlings Wraps Up Another Great Season
• Digital Curriculum Discussion
• Musings from the Oregon Reading Conference: iPod Touch Session
• Khan Academy Conversation
• 5 Ways to Know You’ve Geeked Out for Tech and Ed
• Explore 21st Century and RSA Animate
• Reflections from Class: Engaging Students with Storyline Online
• Two Ways of Organizing: Evernote and Dropbox
• Collaborative Reflection from Around the World
• A Shout Out a Long Time in Coming
• Dropbox Saves the Day

Links of the “Month” series 2011

• Summer, May, April, March, February

Thanks to Kacey for her contributions. She can be found on Twitter and Google Plus. I’m not sure what the future of When Tech Met Ed holds, but I will continue to explore education and technology here as time allows.  The site will take on a different format and change within the next few months, so thanks for sticking around!  

Summer Camp Experiences Recorded with Weebly, Animoto, and Educreations

Five iPads. Thirteen laptops. Five college staff.  200 high school students at summer camp.  Four days per session with students rotating between laptops and iPads in groups at 25 minutes intervals for two hours. What a way to spend a summer month!  

I held my breath in anticipation as this project unfolded before my eyes.  Weebly was the chosen website platform, and Educreations and Animoto were the primary apps.   PBWorks Wiki was integrated as a storage space to make easy access and viewing of the iPad creations in one place. Dropbox was used to manage pictures. I had used all of these before, but never on this scale or in such a tight time frame, so it was exciting to see this come together.

Purpose and background

The Oregon Migrant Leadership Institute brings high school students (9^th-12^th) for a week camp where they learn leadership skills.  Read about it and view the site they pulled together here.  The writing and technology component served the purpose of allowing participants to document their experiences, practice writing skills, and get some exposure to emerging technologies and resources.

What worked

Staff pulled together:  Plain and simple I had an amazing staff of college students!  Within a few hours of training (the first hour with them looking at me with uncertainty and their eyes glazed over), they arose to the occasion in a huge way.  The photographer set forth to figure out syncing pictures on the laptops in Dropbox and on the iPads.  The iPad experts who had never held iPads before became experts, creating examples and planning lessons.  After the first day, it became apparent we needed more help, so two Weebly/Wiki experts jumped in coordinating the uploading of the iPad creations to a wiki the participants could access and in helping students with writing and design.  Here’s a link to the staff page.

Technologies:  I was pleased with the resulting integration of Weebly, Educreations, Animoto, and PB Works Wiki.  They met the needs of our purpose.  They each have free accounts for educators.  I upgraded to the paid version of the Weebly account, but everything else used was free.  (Animoto is worth applying for the educators’ account.  It only took a few minutes to get it.  There are a lot of added benefits, including longer videos.)  I also love the idea that students can continue to use these tools on their own.  It was exciting to see how these technologies supported our intended purpose and learning.  Weebly has an easy drag and drop website design interface, but it allows for more.  We limited our use of it due to time.  Educreations is a great way to use voice over, practice speaking skills, etc.  Animoto is a quick way to make videos with text, pictures, and videos.  View all of the technologies and resources introduced to the participants here.

Focused participants:  I’ve done this for three years before using blogs and was pleased with the past experiences.  However, integrating all of these technologies stepped it up a notch.  The students had less time (25 minutes compared to 50 in previous years).  Despite having a shorter time, they wrote as much or more!  They used their time wisely when they were on the laptops and seemed excited to create on the iPads. View the Shout Outs here and all of the participant pages here.

Tweeking here and there

Ongoing changes occurred, particularly after week one.  During week one, I realized that Weebly was capable of supporting more students than I had initially expected on one student site.  This led to simplifying and changes in the other sessions.  After day one and repeating the directions four times every 20 minutes, I found myself near exhaustion.  Screencasting with Snagit saved my voice.  I recorded the directions, played them, and stopped and discussed as needed.  It felt a bit odd, but did the trick.  It also freed me up to walk around the room responding to technical questions as the videos were playing.

The staff also brainstormed other ideas with the use of the Voicethread app, but we were limited in time and decided it was best to stick to two main apps.  Voicethread seems to have a lot of potential in having students think more critically though.

Working with high school students in a summer camp experience is rewarding.  It also really, really, really makes me appreciate the work high school and middle school teachers do!  Wow, those kids have energy!

The Teachers Should See This: iMotion HD

I am eleven years old and a guest blogger here.  I often find interesting sites and apps and sometimes want to share them.  I will occasionally post things I think teachers should see. Here is my post that I made about an app called iMotion HD. 

In the summer, it gets too hot outside to take my dog and leave her in the car while we go to the store or wherever we need to go. In the winter it gets too cold. We don’t like putting her in her kennel when we are gone, so we put her in the laundry room. We extended her area into the hallway and bathroom so that she has more room. When we are gone, my mom and I always wonder what she does when she is alone at the house. One day, I decided that we should use iMotion HD on my mom’s iPad to video tape what she was doing. Why not use the camera app? Well the camera app will turn off after a few minutes. iMotion HD is different than the camera app. I will tell you why.

iMotion HD is a stop motion app. It is an app where you program the video to take a picture every second, minute, day, etc. You can also make it take a picture every time you want it to if you are there on the iPad. After you have all the pictures you need, it will put them all together in a video. You can change the speed to be really fast or super slow.

Now I will show you what I did with iMotion HD. I made two different videos. I programmed the app to take a picture every two minutes. In the first video, I left the bathroom door open and only gave my dog one toy. We were gone for about 40 minutes. In the second video, I left the bathroom door open and gave her some more toys. We were gone for about an hour. Then, I compared how active my puppy was in each video. Here is the second video. She wasn’t very active in either of the videos.

There are a lot of things you can  do once you make an iMotion HD video.  My mom has edited them before in a video editor program.  I added music to this one on You Tube.

I hope you liked the post. Try to see what you can make with iMotion HD.

Connected Educator Month

This past week, my online course looked at a few ways of engaging in online professional development networks and conferences.  Through my membership in Classroom 2.0, I received an email from Steve Hargadon describing some exciting opportunities awaiting us in the month of August. 

August is the Connected Educator Month.  It is a U.S. Department of Education Office of Educational Technology's Connective Educators initiative.  Read more about it on the Dept of Ed site here.  Explore the Connected Educator's Initiative and check out the Calendar of Events, Activities!    It's an incredible line up of speakers, forums, webinars, etc. on a wide range of topics related to online educational technology topics. Alan November, Karen Levine, Howard Gardner, Kathy Schrock, etc, etc, etc. are a few of the speakers. Watch this video to see how to navigate the calendar.  August 1, looks like a packed day, but it doesn't stop there.  Follow the #ce12 hashtag on Twitter.

Steve Hargadon describes the 2012 Learning 2.0 Virtual Conference, August 20-24, 2012 and the role it will play in the Connected Educator month. His post also provides links to opportunities to submit proposals to the Library 2.012 conference, October 3 - 5 and the 2012 Global Education Conference, November 12 - 16.  August and beyond hold many opportunities to participate in some free, online learning opportunities. 

Thanks to Steve Hargadon for his work and dedication to spreading the news.  Happy learning!

Connected? Pairing Two TED Talks

As I prep for a class, I am leaving open a choose your own topic of interest week based on ed tech.  This made me think about what topic I would choose if I were given this assignment.  Online gaming, the future of books, online and hybrid courses, social media: there are many topics I love.  I’ve enjoyed following Jane McGonigal’s work on gaming in education (See my past posts as I explored this topic last summer.), and Sherry Turkle’s TED Talk is one of my favorites.  So, in challenging myself to begin my own assignment, I would choose to pair these two talks and explore common and conflicting concepts.

Watch both of these talks and form your own conclusions.  Some interesting lesson plan or discussion, yes discussion, is waiting to be developed by pairing these two talks together.  Hmmm... a Vialogue  or TED Ed would be a fun way to have conversations develop here.

Jane McGonigal: The Game that Can Give You Ten Extra Years of Life

Sherry Turkle: Connected, but Alone?

I’ve gotta go.  I’m off to play a game of Words with Friends with my kiddo and grandpa.

Happy conversing!

ISTE 2012 Highlights

To blog about ISTE or not to blog about ISTE?  That was the question.  It’s fun to share, so here are some of my highlights.  I selected sessions that can be watched or further explored via the links.

The two keynotes I attended were great.  What’s not to love about Sir Ken Robinson, his ideas and sense of humor?  I’ve watched so many of his talks over the past few years that it was nice to be there with him at ISTE.  Dr. Yong Zhao gave an impressive speech as well.  (See below and forward to minute 25 to get to his presentation.)  Here’s a link to these and other ISTE videos.

Google Slam was fun to attend.  I walked away with a few new ideas, particularly with the use of Google Docs and gadgets.  The vocabulary flash card gadget has potential.  Here’s a direct link to explore more.

Kathy Schrock is an engaging presenter who packed her session full of practical ideas.  Here is her presentation on Literacy in the Digital Age.  I particularly liked her section about global literacy.  Concepts such as how people from different countries react differently to the same text, the topic of news bias, and ways to promote global literacy supported by the use of technology was reiterated in other sessions as well.   If you are not familiar with Kathy’s work, take a look.  It’s near impossible to explore her site and not glean a new idea or inspiration.

Annette Lamb also delivered a session, Graphic Inquiry: Dynamic Differentiationand Digital Age Learning, filled to the brim with practical tips. I recommend watching the session here.  Here’s a direct link to her presentation handout and  Get Graphic site, two valuable resources with many applications for ESOL, differentiation best practices, etc.!  Some of her ideas for the use of infographics as a means of critical analysis and inquiry are interesting.  Since I use online comic strips, timelines, etc. in my own teaching, I liked her discussion of students generating both the physical and the online versions.

I could easily write a whole post on the larger ideas from the presentations of Alan November’s session, Empathy: The 21st Century Skill,  David Warlick’s session, Cracking the ‘Native’ Information Experience, Chris Lehmann’s session Beyond Googling: Using Technology To Build A Culture of Inquiry,  and Will Richardson’s session, The Steep Unlearning Curve: Rethinking Schools, Classrooms, and Learning.  Check out their work if you are not familiar with them.   

Renee Hobbs has some useful information on the topic of copyright and fair use laws that I have been exploring lately.  Judith Harris delivered an interesting session called TPACK: Will You Know It When You See It? I was a bit disappointed I didn’t see more, but caught the tail end of the presentation, Educational Blogging: Flattening the Classroom Walls!, by Linda Yollis and Kathleen Morris.  I’ve followed Kathleen’s tweets and work for quite some time.  Their site is  well worth exploring for elementary teachers interested in blogging and global collaboration.

As a fun side note, like many of the attendees, I used my iPad to record notes, capture pictures, etc.  Evernote was my go to app and I enjoyed participating in Today’s Meet backchannel.

There is a lot of useful information out there to explore on the ISTE 2012 conference site.  As I was writing this post, I ran across a few I took the time to watch, such as Cool Collaborative Activities with GoogleTools with TammyWorcester geared toward grades K-5 and The Wonderful World of Wikis with Viki Davis.  Watch recorded sessions and explore more presentation notes here.

Happy learning!