Monday, June 29, 2009

NECC 2009: Session Notes

A Ripple Effect: 21st Century Innovations that Matter
Cheryl Lemke

Adolescent learning: peers, school, home, distributed resources, work, networked publics (a networked space where the public meets). —B. Barron, 2006

We need to create environments where we can work and learn peer-to-peer with our students because that is where they go to learn what interests them. Students need to see the value-added that the teacher offers.

94% of adolescents are involved in online gaming. —Pew

Multi-tasking is a myth. Our brains have an executive function that allows us to only think about things serially. Students, though, are faster than adults because they are younger (our brain processing speed peaks at between 20 and 30. When you move from one task to another, there is a slight delay and loss of time. There is, however, background tasking (e.g., listening to music). When students are engaged in difficult to cognitively process content, we should decrease the need for background tasking and multi-tasking. Drill and practice builds automaticity that leads to a greater ability to do background tasking while engaged in processing new content. Our students are giving us their “continuous partial attention” (Linda Stark).

http://www.positech.co.uk/democracy2/ : This is a game that allows users to try and keep a country alive. It considers elections, economics, etc.

If you grant students choice, on average, their grades will increase by a full grade.

On average there’s less than 10 seconds of sustained discussion in the average classroom. Instead, there is teach-talk followed by student-talk, followed by teacher-talk.

http://voicethread.com: This is a nice tool for working with video, stills, audio, and text/drawings.

http://flowingdata.com/: This is a tool that assists in visualizing data (e.g., Twitter posts about Obama during the Inaugeration, growth of Wal-Mart). http://gapminder.org is a similar program that allows you to track demographic features over time.

http://scratch.mit.edu/: This tool is good for teaching students about gaming and gaming environments from a design perspective.


Tammy Worcester
Tammy’s Favorite Technology Tips, Tricks, and Tools


  • http://vozme.com: Users type in text and the application reads it aloud.
  • http://vocaroo.com: Allows you to record your voice. It results in an embed code.
  • http://jamstudio.com: Allows users to very easily create music loops.
  • http://fur.ly: Allows you to shorten multiple URLs into one. This creates a website that would be great for creating webquests or smaller Delicious sites.
  • http://www.imaginationcubed.com: This is a free online basic version of KidPix. More than one individual can work on the whiteboard at a time and you can email the project to others. The email includes the real-time drawing, not just the finished product.
  • http://jing.com or http://skitch.com: Allows you to do screen captures and make edits (e.g., adding arrows and text). You can also record voice and screen changes (like with Snapz Pro X).
  • http://kickyoutube.com: Allows you to download YouTube videos for later use. Just add “kick” in the YouTube URL and choose (from the bar on the top) the format in which you want to download. Then, click the green “Download” button. Next, right-click over the “Down” button to download the video to your hard drive.
  • http://classtools.net (Random Name Picker): Picks a name from a list you provide. The application includes an embed code so you can have the program run whenever you wish to use it (e.g., from the class blog).
  • http://taggalaxy.com: Looks in Flickr to find any images relating to the tag you select. You could create your own tag and hen look at the image (a globe) with just your pictures.
  • Firefox Shortcuts: Use Apple-L to move to the URL bar. To create a shortcut, go to the search box for the website (e.g., Amazon) and right click and create a shortcut (e.g., type az twilight and it will look for
  • “Twlight” in Amazon).

Dr. Christopher Moersch
Teaching 2.0: Challenging the Interactive Generation
http://lotiguyspeaks.blogspot.com

  • H-E-A-T (high-order thinking, engaged learning, authenticity, technology use
  • There are three parts to every learning activity: content, process, and product
  • http://www.lotilounge.com: Allows schools to take the LoTi digital-age survey
  • “What gets measured gets improved.”
  • http://wordle.net: Allows analysis of textual passages.

Tom March
WebQuests 2.0: A Richer Web Improves a Good Idea

  • http://clipmarks.com: Allows you to copy/paste from multiple webpages therefore creating a pool of resources related to a personally-selected topic.
  • http://diigo.com: Allows you to highlight, ask questions, and comment on individual websites.
  • http://pageflakes.com: This is an alternative to iGoogle. It provides you with an assigned web address instead of having it just be available after logging in. The site allows you to subscribe to multiple RSS feeds in the form of tabs at the top of the page. This would be good to allow students to take turns reviewing individual webquests.
  • http://vue.org: This is an online version of Inspiration.
  • CEQ•ALL ("Seek All")—Choice, Effort, Quality, Attitude, Labor of Love (A taxonomy for this century); Set-up educational opportunities that allow students to make choices, requires hard work/effort, the teacher makes him/herself available for ensuring quality of student work/learning, allows students to feel good about themselves by having a good attitude, and teachers and students must put a labor of love into their work.
Vendor Notes

Global Fever (a vendor that provides curriculum relating to the environment) created a collection of rich resources using ComicLife. Their sample pages all use ComicLife and can serve as excellent examples.

Kids.gov: Like Thinkfinity, this is a central location for accessing several website. Its function is to bring together government sites intended for use by children.

From Banned to Planned: Cell Phones in Schools
Hall Davidson

http://discoveryedspeakersbureau.com/node/119

Poll Everywhere
: Allows you to have students take a quick poll using their phones.

Suggestions for ways teachers are using cell phones in the classroom are avilable at http://k12cellphoneprojects.wikispaces.com another resource is http://www.cellphonesinlearning.com.

Voicethread
: A tool for creating projects like HyperStudio, but it allows you to add audio recorded directly from your cell phone.

Davidson suggests we rename "cell phones." In some countries they call it a hand phone and keitai ("a snug, intimate technosocial tethering"). Cell phones are different from other technologies because they are both input and output devices.

"Classroom management is less of an issues when engaged learning is taking place."

Qik: This site allows you to broadcast live from a cell phone. It will also allows you to embed code into blogs or Google Earth.

Shazam
: It allows you to hold-up your cell phone to a song and the phone can decode the name of the song.

Cell phones can read bar codes (bar code readers are freely available online) and they can create bar codes from text/pictures (QR code generators).

Amazon bought a company that does object recognition (e.g., you can take a picture of someone's shoes, send it to Amazon, and Amazon with offer it for purchase).

Davidson has placed Fatherlee's paperwork for using cell phones in the classroom on his website (see above). It includes a letter home to parents, instructions for designing cell-phone educational activities, and a tech-survey for parents to ensure students aren't being charged for their in-class work.