On September 29th, the call for speakers for the 2010 MACUL Conference will be closed, along with your best chance to attend the conference for free!

Each year, MACUL invites educators from all levels to apply to speak at the conference. Whether you’re a Kindergarten teacher that has some great early language websites that you’ve successfully integrated with your teaching, or a college professor using Moodle or Blackboard in creative new ways, MACUL loves to showcase its members! And to say thank you, each and every speaker received a complimentary registration for presenting.

Just visit the Call for Speaker’s page on the MACUL website for more details, or go directly to the Conference Speaker Submission if you already know all the details.

You haven’t heard? You can win a FREE registration to MACUL 2010 in Grand Rapids? How? Just enter the 2009 MACUL Photo Contest. Details are below followed by a video of just how to enter:

2009 MACUL Conference Photo Contest
Please enter your best photo of the MACUL Conference 2009. Entries are limited to conference participants and attendees during Wednesday, March 18, and Thursday March 19. Submit entries before 7:00 AM Friday, March 20. All entries should be submitted online via MACUL Space (www.maculspace.ning.com) with the tag— MACULphoto. Those submitting photos for this contest grant MACUL the option and permission to publish the images on the MACUL website, MACUL Space and in the MACUL Journal. Judges will award prizes for 1st and 2nd place.

• 1st place—Complimentary registration to the 2010 MACUL conference

• 2nd place—50% off the cost of registration to the 2010 MACUL conference

We are looking for a variety of creative photos that capture the excitement and uniqueness of the conference. Enter and display your best pictures!

As promised, here’s the video on just how to do it, or view the LARGE version right here:

Sitting in the Lunchroom at MACUL Conference…
I have only attended two sessions, but feel full of tech already!

Alan November gave an inspiring and thought provoking keynote. He began with a quote from Learning and Technology Tech Forum – This is our students speaking……
“Until you actively USE the technology we live with every single day, you will never understand how to teach us.” Absolutlely.

Love the ideas he shared especially using student videos and Screencasts to have students explain math concepts. This is such an aha! idea. When students explain, in front of camera, they will work harder, pay more attnetion to detail, learn more, and they and others will watch it over and over and over. 4th gradeTeacher in our building just discovered this with a child having difficulty in math. Recorded her explaining long division. On camera, this otherwise shy child was poised, self confident, and LOVED being in front of the camera. They are planning future Math videos.

I also popped in on Steve Dembo and he always delivers a great session. He touched on Twitter but shared even more about the power of your PLN.
He encouraged us to have students create their own search engine using Google custon search engine and school created You Tube using OsTube.

Steve reminds us that we are all innovators and to share what you do. It is not enough to take a new tool and use it , you must share what you have done, give back. We can all learn from each other.

On to the afternoon sessions…

Well, I made it down to COBO for the Kickoff Reception Wednesday night…you know, the time when you can go through the exhibit area and check things out.  I made contact with a few people along the way.

I saw Ron, and talked to him a while about TechCamp at Berrien RESA as well as some of the projects he has going on at Kent ISD.  He serves in a region with almost 400 schools…he’s busy!

Laura and I compared swag.  She had me beat with a smiley face beach ball and a fuzzy topped pen.  I have to be more aggressive!  I did get a very nice notebook from Dawn at netTrekker, though.  Thanks, Dawn!

Speaking of which, Joe and Dawn and I discussed the possibilities of an ISD or RESA collaborating with the local districts to get netTrekker for every student, not just the access that teachers have through LearnPort.

I took a pretty good look at the netbooks that are on the REMC Bid.  They are cool…I like the one that folds into a tablet with the carry handle for students.

It’s fun to see all the interactive whiteboards that are out there.  They all look amazing with new features and software that make them so…interactive.  When they first came out, using a pen on the board as a mouse was mind-blowing.  Now it’s the software bundled with the hardware that makes them worth using.

As the conference progresses, make sure you stop by and catch a glimpse of some great products that make teaching with technology even better.

You wanted Back Channels, and MACUL has delivered!

Take a moment to check out the video below to see just how the official MACUL Space or Twitter Back Channels can help you connect in real time with other conference attendees. Share information about a session (while sitting in on the session), help cheer someone up that’s halfway through a mind-numbing lecture on the significance of packet shaping, or just see what a friend is up to on the other end of the conference center.

You can also view a nice large full size version of the MACUL Back Channel video by clicking on the link here.

Feel free to use the MACUL Space chat, or MACUL Twitter Feeds to keep yourself connected and share thoughts while at the conference, just remember your best Internet etiquette

I must have come across RSS at a MACUL Conference…how else would I have stumbled across it?  It seems like I’ve been reading feeds for years, but surely it hasn’t been that long.  Google Reader was announced in the fall of 2005, but I was still with Bloglines before they were bought by Ask Jeeves in February 2005 (Remember Jeeves?) So that’s at least 4 years…well, I guess around 40 in Internet-years, so it’s been a while.

If you don’t know what RSS is, and even if you do, RSS in Plain English is an awesome video explaining everything.  (Here’s another one…Google Reader in Plain English.)

Now…40 years later…I can’t imagine not using RSS every day to follow news and events in ed tech and beyond. A person in my position is kinda expected to know what’s new and exciting…and Googling new and exciting on a daily basis does not return many usable results.  I have to get more specific info from sources I know will be relevant.  So, I subscribe to feeds about gadgets, web tools, and tech news as well as LOLcats, Star Wars, and Venn diagrams.

I also use RSS feeds to keep track of who is updating my wiki, or what’s happening in some of the classrooms around the county. or the latest activity on one of the world’s greatest social networks dedicated to educational technology.

All told, as of right now, I have 67 subscriptions in my Google Reader.  (No, I don’t read them all everyday…and really, that’s not that many…)  Like Lee Lefever suggested in the video, I could go out to 67 sites on a regular basis to find out what’s new (Boo!).  However, thanks to RSS I have all that info spilling in to my office everyday!

Beware when you see me at MACUL. It’s been said I knock people unconscious. Not intentionally but I just can’t seem to help myself. I’m really a nice person (really). It’s not my winning personality (although I’ve been told I have one of those) that seems to knock people flat on their face when meeting me. It’s my “70-lb” backpack that I tote around everywhere I go. Here’s a word of advice. If you’re standing next to me and we are deep in conversation and you hear someone call my name…DUCK! As soon as I turn around, my extremely large and heavy backpack will gain momentum within the turn, and before you know it, you’ll become close friends with the carpet at COBO Hall, (Did you know it says “COBO” all over it?).

I tend to carry more things than your average geek would ever need, even if they were stranded on a desert island. I’m always afraid of being with out something so I carry everything. My favorite gadgets that you will find weighing me down are the iTouch, Flip video, Kodak Zi6, a USB flash (it seems I have an entire family of these), my cell phone with unlimited text, calls, web, camera, video, and an espresso machine, (not really but wouldn’t that be cool?), and a digital camera. I also carry my laptop (HP 17-inch screen), an extension cord, and a variety of cables just in case anyone is without.  So when you see me around MACUL, don’t be afraid to come up and say HI! Just be prepared to duck at any given moment though and don’t say I didn’t warn you! Maybe I should get one of those rolly-thingys.

“It takes as much energy to wish as it does to plan.”
-Eleanor Roosevelt

By my estimates, the total number of miles walked by participants by the end of each MACUL conference equals 2.75 times the distance from the earth to the moon.  I mean, really, there’s a ton of walking! Unfortunately, much of it would be considered aimless wandering and meandering by participants who aren’t sure where they’re going.  I’m not talking about being lost, I’m talking about people with no destination.

In order to get the most out of attending the MACUL conference, you really need to spend some quality time planning your strategy.  Cobo Hall is too large for you to make it up as you go along.  You’ll never see what you want to see!

“He who fails to plan, plans to fail.”
-Source unknown

There are many resources and strategies for laying out your plan.  Here are a few from me:

Take a look at the Program Book before the conference.
It’s on the web, right here, a full two weeks before the conference.  You don’t want the first time opening it be during Thursday’s keynote.  It’s like opening a good book, once you start you’ll have a hard time putting it down.  Then you’ll miss Alan November…and he’s pretty funny.  Come back to the Program Book often and narrow down your session choices.

Use the At-a-Glance Schedule…or whatever it’s called.
The Program Book is very important, but it can be unwieldy as you’re moving from session to session.  So…once you get to the conference, dig down into your Green Bag (or maybe they’ll be Black this year.  w00t!) and dig out the single sheet that shows a matrix of all the sessions for each day and where they’re located.  Since you’ve been looking closely at the Program Book, you should be ready to circle the sessions your planning on attending.

Backup! Backup! Backup!
Without a doubt you’ll find, that for whatever reason, a session you chose to attend isn’t going to be one of the ones you’re actually going to attend.  Maybe it’s a BYOL session and it’s full.  Perhaps you discover that you already know the topic.  Whatever.  Now what are you going do?  This isn’t the time for last-second decision making!  During your planning, pick one or even two “backup sessions” per time slot.  That way, when Option #1 falls to pieces, you’re ready to act!

• If you’re really on top of things, you’ll try to identify backup sessions that are close by your first choice.  Otherwise, you’ll waste all your time hoofing it from D3-19 to Michigan Hall.  (Not gonna happen.)

“I love it when a plan comes together.”
-John “Hannibal” Smith

I’m sure there are other strategies and tips that seasoned attendees could add (and please do btw), but this is a great place to begin.  With a little thought beforehand you can maximize your experience.

My tech transformation occurred two years ago. I feel transformed as a person and as a teacher and I know my students are the ones benefiting the most. I have always loved tech and I was looking for ways to integrate technology into my second grade classroom.

As part of our school’s newly formed Tech Committee I was sent to the MACUL conference in Detroit in 2007. I enjoyed all that I saw, but I hadn’t found that hook I was looking for. Then I attended a session titled “Wikis, Blogs and Podcasts.” The presenters were two teachers from Hudsonville, my side of the state. Diane Rich and Julie Myrmel showed these amazing tools and how they have used them in their classroom. This was it! I had found it. I took pages and pages of notes and left very excited. I hated the idea of the drive home as it delayed my chance to get on my laptop. When I did get home, I got right to work. My blog and wiki were set up and ready for the students when they arrived on Monday morning. This class of second graders was as excited as I was and I will say we did some amazing things with our wiki and blog.

I couldn’t wait to attend MACUL in 2008. I brought a group of my 2nd graders to the MACUL Student Technology Showcase to share our Claymation videos and met incredible educators through this experience.

I found amazing sessions and left with many, many great ideas. One session was on Favorite Web 2.0 Tools and was presented by Steve Dembo of Discovery Education. He showed Twitter. Now I didn’t completely understand it, but I wanted to try it. Once I got going I realized what a valuable tool this is! People were sharing all of this wonderful Web 2.0 knowledge and I wanted to be part of it. I learned something new everyday. I have found friends from all over the world and my network keeps growing. When I have a question, need help or an idea, I send out a tweet and my PLN delivers. Twitter has opened up the world to me and my students. We are reading and commenting on blogs written by students in New Zealand and Australia, we are viewing Voice Threads created by students in Virginia and Nebraska and we are participating in two Collaborative wikis. None of this would have been possible without Twitter and MACUL.

The third part of my transformation is due to the MACUL Space ning. I joined after the 2008 conference and found another great PLN of educators excited about and using technology. MACUL space is a valuable resource for sharing ideas and asking questions. It is right up there with Twitter as an important communication tool and resource.

I am equally excited (dare I say geeked?) about this year’s MACUL Conference in Detroit. I am presenting a session on Wikis and feel honored to be one of the Conference Bloggers.

I wonder how this year’s conference will transform me and my teaching? I can’t wait to find out!

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?