I presented my session, Elementary Wiki Wonderland on Friday morning. I wanted to share the links to my presentation wiki and class wiki. I was thrilled with the amazing teachers I met who are as excited about wikis and Web tools as I am. It is so fun to share! The MACUL conference is where I learned about wikis from Julie Myrmel and Diane Rich in Hudsonville two years ago and I am happy to be able to share this with others. My presentation wiki also has information on how I use Blogs in my classroom as well as blogging resources. Be sure to check out the Wiki and Blog links to see how other educators around the world are using these tools with their students, as well as the Web 2.0 Tools page. I will continue to add to the presentation wiki. I plan to create tutorials on how to add users to your wiki and how to use the manage wiki settings. I am happy to answer questions, feel free to email me or contact me through the MACUL space ning (and while you are there, Join the MACUL space ning. It is another great way to connect with amazing eductors in Michigan.)
I think it was last year (maybe it was two years ago) that Kevin Clark introduced me to ScribeFire. It’s a blogging extension for Firefox. I find it is incredibly useful during conferences. First off, you can use it in a split screen mode, so you can still surf on the top half while taking notes in the bottom half.
More importantly though is that it saves work locally and then publishes to your blog once you’ve finished. I’ve sat through too many conferences where the wireless was either too slow or too unreliable for me to rely on an application in the cloud. Nothing’s worse then spending a bunch of time working on a post and having it get lost due to poor internet access. With ScribeFire this isn’t a problem.
Other cool features include:
- Easy tagging with check boxes for tags you’ve used in the past
- Enable pings through all the normal channels
- Post to del.icio.us with the same tags
- Easily add Technorati Tags
If you blog, or even just want to take notes during sessions I highly recommend this Firefox extension. Now, if I could just figure out how to have one window that would have the live chat from MACULSpace, ScribeFire, and still be able to surf… But then I’d wish I had a bigger screen 
I attended my first MACUL Conference in 2002 and have attended each year since. I went the first year as a participant only; I got the feel for MACUL and benefited greatly from what I experienced and learned. The following year, and each year thereafter, I have come to the conference as a presenter. I like sharing and helping others learn and grow, and having a “presenter mindset” keeps me always on the hunt for new ways of using technology for teaching and learning.
Some of the most important MACUL experiences that have shaped me professionally include:
- Purchasing a Snagit/Camtasia bundle from the vendor area in 2002. I began screen casting long before it became a fad. People still come up to me and tell me they recognize my voice from the CD I published back in 2003! I’m still using Camtasia (and Jing) on a regular basis.
- Receiving a MACUL grant in 2004 for a digital storytelling project. I presented at the MACUL conference with a teacher from my district to share what we did and how digital storytelling positively impacts student writing. I developed a website to go with it, and people from all over the world still visit and use the teaching materials, especially to show the student examples.
- Hearing about the power of blogging from Will Richardson and David Warlick at Macul 2005. I created my own blog, Yes Tech! in Nov 2006 and have found that it helps me to be a reflective practitioner.
- Attending a Steve Dembo “Top 10 Web 2.0 Tools” session in 2007 opened my eyes to many new tools: Twitter, Wikispaces, and Flickr, to name a few.
- Getting to know & networking with other like-minded educators at social events on Thursday nights! The face-to-face meetings have continued, thanks to MACUL Space.
What are your favorite MACUL memories?
It’s officially one week since MACUL 2008 closed it’s doors, but the conversations are still going strong, thanks in part to the terrific work from the MACUL Conference Bloggers! This year alone we amassed over 80 posts about the conference, dozens of comments, and have sparked several conversations (both online and face to face) about extending and enhancing the conference experience. Too often, I receive thanks for putting it all together, but I’m always quick to protest that it’s not me who deserves the accolades, but rather the teachers, tech-integrators, and all around incredible people that blogged at this year’s conference.
If you were a conference attendee and gave a little bit of your time to blog about the conference and included the tag “macul08“, my deepest thanks to you for helping provide a connected learning experience for us all. And of course, those educators that put in their time and effort several months in advance to blog here on the MACUL Conference Blog, please accept my most sincere appreciation and gratitude for going above and beyond your normal duties to provide both conference attendees and those following along from home such excellent coverage of the MACUL 2008 Conference in Grand Rapids! All of the bloggers did a fantastic job of paving the way for great discussions coming out of this year’s conference.
Just in case you wanted a recap of your favorite blogger’s posts, or if you want to thank them personally with a comment, just click on one of the blogger’s names and you can see all of the hard work they put into the MACUL Conference Blog.
Image: ‘THANK YOU‘
www.flickr.com/photos/45581782@N00/2086641
Michael McVey is a new professor Eastern Michigan University who began teaching a class, Web 2.0 Tools in Education, or something similar. He basically threw a huge number of Web 2.0 tools at his students to see which would stick and which would be thrown away. Everything was done in an online environment and he discovered that some work, and of course, some don’t.
Michael’s take on Web 2.0:
Recipients become Communicators…
How did they begin? Started by using Flickr…everyone understands photo sharing. What else did they use?
One of the first assignments was to create a social network on Ning. As they set up their social network, they were also researching sites and tagging them in del.icio.us. This then created a common pool of information to reference.
They used Doodle to schedule meeting times. They also dessiminated information by podcasting with Gcast…also used podOmatic.
Every student was required to set up a blog on Blogger, which Michael subscribed to via Bloglines. Bloglines is a aggregator that collects and keeps track of new entries to the blogs (and other sites) you subscribe to. Because students were connected to each other and the writing/sharing that was going on, their own writing was positively affected.
Students also stayed connected via Twitter. Wrote collaboratively with Google Docs and PBwiki.
Michael really enjoyed watching how deep and thoughtful student writing and ideas became.
What were some of the conclusions? (Oh…he’s going too fast.) Obviously, some good and some not as good. Probably won’t use Twitter again…it didn’t really help with collaboration.
Good job, Michael. You have a lot of first hand experience that benefitted the rest of us. The last session on Friday is probably the worst time to have your presentation, but there were lots of folks and everyone stayed until the end.
The great philosopher Jimmy Buffett tells us, “There is a fine line between Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.” I guess this post would qualify as one that rides the fine line between self-promotion, a preview, and an invite to a virtual visit.
I will be presenting on Friday morning at 10:00 am in the DeVos Place Grand Gallery Room E. The focus of my talk will be on web 2.0 tools specifically useful with PK-2 students.
Here are my session goals: 1) to give attendees tools and ideas that can be applied the first day they return to their classrooms and 2) to share some of my experiences with these tools that all come “kid approved”.
The hour will be split into sections with one featuring “teacher tools” and the other showcasing “student tools”. All resources are free and available online.
Please check out my list of session links as a preview or as a “virtual visit” if you are unable to attend.
I always look forward to meeting lots of other MACULers. Hope to see you on Friday.
This was the first year that MACUL had a official “tag” for the conference. A “tag” is a keyword that is adding to a blog posting or photo that helps people search for photos or blog entries about that topic. This year bloggers and photographers were asked to add the tag macul07 if they created a podcast, posted photos or wrote a blog entry about MACUL. Guess what? It worked. If you got to Flickr.com and search under tags for macul07 you will find 70 pictures that were taken at the conference. A search of Technorati.com. You will find all most 90 blogs entries. Not huge numbers, but it is a start.
At MACUL 2008, I’m sure the numbers will get higher as more people learn to use tags. Tags are a great way for groups and individuals to share information.
Jim
macul07
macul08
This was a FANTASTIC session. I see Steve Dickie already evaluated the session, but I would like to reiterate how good the session was. I was impressed that I learned about three new sites that I was not aware of. Now I can’t wait to play and see how the sites work. We put on a 5 county wide tech academy every summer and I can see the possibility of making this a full day session with teachers actually learning how to use them and brainstorming the best ways to use them with students.
I will name them off as several people have asked about the session since they were not able to attend!
http://top10freesites.pbwiki.com
1.bloglines.com (using RSS, store all your blogs in one place)
2.del.icio.us (social bookmarking system)
3.Flickr.com (photo storage and much more! Create trading cards, memory games. It finds flickr photos with the same titles and puts them into the memory game)
There are Creative commons licenses that allows you to use the photos- gives the ways you can use it legally.)
4. Picnik http://picnik.com (This is so cool! This is new to me. Find pictures from Flickr to edit that you have the right to edit.)
5. www.jumpcut.com (Will let you store videos online privately. You can also do some simple editing)
6. Gcast http://gcast.com (Safe site. Upload your audio to gCast and it will create a flash player with your podcast. You can do modcasting by adding audio from your phone. Call 1-88-65-GCAST and use your pin.)
7. Garageband.com (Has nothing to so with the Apple program. Steve said if you can download the audio you can use it in your Podcast. Just state where you can got the audio)
8. pbwiki.com and wikispaces (Both good free wiki creation sites)
9. Google Docs and spreadsheets (Multiple people work on a document or spreadsheet at the same time. I have been using this since it was Writely and it saves so much time!)
10. vyew.com free webex software (share your screen online and notes online)
I’m trying not to get too excited about the possibility of more bandwidth at the MACUL conference this year because I don’t want to jinx it! But Merit is providing high speed Internet and Internet2 connectivity to the conference this year. This means the videoconferences will have 1Mb quality instead of the 256K we had last year. Some of the places TWICE is connecting to are Internet2, so I expect great quality from the videoconference sessions.
I think it will mean much better Internet access for attendees, presenters, workshops, and bloggers too.
So be sure to pop by the TWICE room (W2-66) and see what high end videoconferencing can look like.
Hot off the heels of yesterday’s fantastic discussion, and implementation, of the Guerrilla Sessions idea, comes a tiny little request to all of those educators, techies, and writers that will be blogging at this year’s conference. IF you happen to be blogging at the conference as a presenter, attendee, or a keynote speaker, please use the following words to tag your blog posts, so that it’s easier to find them using Technorati or other blog search engines:
macul07
macul precon
There, now wasn’t that the tiny little request I said it would be? By using the macul07 or macul precon tags, we can help those searching on aggregation sites or blog search engines find conversations, discussions, and thoughts shared on blogs throughout the Internet as soon as they are published. What does that mean? If you go to Technorati and do a search for “macul07″ in tags you’ll find a small, but growing number of conversations about the conference at a number of different blogs.
Once you get to the conference, feel free to tag your posts with whatever tags make sense, but please consider also tagging everything with “macul07″ as well. And if you’re not sure how to tag your post, simply mention the word MACUL or MACUL07 somewhere in the body of your post and Technorati will pick it up
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