Four weeks on and thoughts of NECC 2009 keep percolating through my head. What has stayed with me? What will I be acting upon? What will be the next move into the classroom? Who will be enlisted to try new stuff? What characteristics do they need to   . . .  just give it a go in an educationally sound context!

What has stuck?

Think as far ahead as you can. I am limited by what I don’t know. The more I know the more I know I don’t know!

I know we need to be engaging our students and I know technology can support that. Things are moving so fast as soon as I imagine things they are passe.

We have the opportunity to create powerful and meaningful learning environments. Environments where;

• Feedback is timely, targeted and valued;
• Adversity is used to grow learning;
• Exploration and experimentation are the norm; and
• Learning is recognised as being non-linear.

It’s not the where of learning that matters it is the how.

• Every student should have a computing device in their pocket and be taught how to use it effectively and responsibly. (APPs be they for google or ipod/iphone are powerful and a growing number have amazing educational potential.)
• Mobile devices provide opportunities for students to be online and to have access to information and be learning anytime, anyplace, anywhere.
• Are schools and classrooms as we know them appropriate learning spaces for today’s students?

Knowledge needs to be deep rather than broad and once you have explored a concept in depth only then do you realise fully how little you really know.

Being able to do a Boolean Search is an amazing thing and the Google advanced search capability makes it so easy to fine tune the information being gathered.

Digital text is challenging because:

• Potentially overwhelming with amount of content available.
• Where do we start?
• How do we determine what is relevant?
• Forces us to look for significance by using primary sources as much as possible.
• Analyse and hypothesise about  . . . Am I being manipulated?
• What’s worth reading?
• Read deeply and develop the skill of synthesis

Realise and understand that originality is NOT derivative.

Web 2.0 tools are powerful motivators and provide novel opportunities for student learning, constructing and creating knowledge as well as making available effective and exciting self assessment tools.

Teachers need to let go of their need to control students and student learning, they need to use their understanding of pedagogy and knowledge of curriculum outcomes to become co-learners, co-constructors and co-creators of knowledge along with their students. They need to develop with their students a purpose for learning; authentic tasks, problem or project based learning opportunities where they see what they are doing is relevant and worthwhile.

Parents in the digital age should be in their kids’ faces and in their spaces.

Walking through the Exhibit Hall the other day we met these two teachers from Chicago. They were really excited because the girl on the right had just won a Promethean Classroom.

She was over the moon! She was so enthusiastic about winning Promethean because she was aware of the company’s all encompassing philosophy of sharing knowledge and creating rather than controlling knowledge and shutting the world out.

What an amazing site.

500 exhibitors with 50 new ones this year. It takes a day to walk and talk with even just a fraction of the exhibitors whose product is of interest.

The Conference Centre is vast here are some stats for NECC 2009 (courtesy ISTE Daily Leader).

• 10 000 particpants from 60 countries across the world.
• 62 New Zealanders are here and they have the largest contingent of International visitors.
• 6 000 danishes were served in one hour at the continental breakfast.
• 5 300 unique users are on the wireless network at any one time.
• 90 mb of bandwith is being used consistently.
• 102 wireless internet access points.
• 31 buses are running every hour between 6.30 am and 7.45 pm.
• 1 cat inhabits the exhibit hall.

This is an amazing conference and it hasn’t even started yet. The pre-conference workshops are so comprehensive and across such a wide range of areas. Which one to choose?

I don’t know much about wiki’s so did that yesterday. Now I know a whole lot more. Still only really a beginner.

Edubloggercon was on as an unconference yesterday and it was great. Kim was at the smashup (sorry) smackdown session and said it was like a religious experience. Her blog explains that.

The unconference sessions we attended explored one to one laptop use,  the use of the ipod touch as a mobile device and the educational apps for that. There is a comprehensive list of educational apps being published by Sue Wells and Lyn on Classroom 2.0 look out for it.

Google has amazing tools and apps and stuff so much more than emails and searching. I use gmail and search using Google.

After today’s session I do it so much better and am beginning to understand the depth of the functionality of Google.

And we can’t access it in its fullness through our network!!