OK, we’re approaching the MACUL conference so It’s about time I start blogging about my favorite part of the conference, the Guerrilla Sessions. This will mark the third official year they’ve happened, but the first year hardly counts as only one session actually happened. Last year was much better. There were many sessions on a variety of topics.

So, what is a Guerrilla Session? The idea was spawned as almost a joke by the great folks on the Geek!Ed! podcast. The basic idea was for educators to show up and give unscheduled presentations in unused rooms. The MACUL board decided to formalize it a bit and have actually set up a room complete with projector for the sessions. There has been a sign-up sheet for people or groups to use the space, you’ll probably be able to find it near the registration booth.

What sort of things show up as Guerrilla Sessions? They come in a few varieties. Abstracts for official talks are due fairly early in the fall and quite often a new tool will emerge that would make a great MACUL presentation, but it’s too late to submit the idea. Or possibly, it is an idea more suited to an informal session, like the XO-Laptop meet up from last year. Another type of talk is one that MACUL might not want to officially endorse. Last year I gave a presentation on how to exercise my right to Fair Use of commercial DVDs.

Why do I like these sessions so much? It’s really because it gives me more of a chance to meet with and talk to total strangers. The sessions tend to be much less formal and much more open discussions. The regular sessions are pretty much the old model in education of “Sage on the Stage” while the guerrilla sessions tend to have more interaction between the presenter and the audience or are more like round table discussions.

Personally, I come to MACUL year after year less for the formal sessions and more for the interactions and networking with like minded educators. The guerrilla sessions are pretty much tailor made for this purpose.

Yes, I’m blogging the Guerrilla sessions again, this is the last time, I promise. (at least for this year). I just left the XO-Laptop meetup. The XO’s were kind of cool, but they weren’t behaving right. They seemed to be having trouble networking with each other. Sherry seemed to think the MACUL network was inhibiting them in some way.

But, far cooler than the XO’s, sorry Sherry, we’re the two Pleo’s Karl brought with him. These little robotic dinosaurs will interact with each other or with people. Here’s a little video clip I shot of them with the iSight camera on my MacBook.

I went to Ben’s MaculSpace Meetup this morning that was held in the Guerrilla Session room (Pullman room at Amway). I got to do one of the things I always look forward to when I go to conferences and that is networking with other like minded educators. We wished we’d recorded the whole thing, it was a great conversation.

The sessions are great, but it’s those “hallway” conversations that often have more power to change the way I teach. It’s the connections and conversations that make this really worth while. I guess that’s why I really like social networking sites like the one Ben has set up over at maculspace.ning.com If you haven’t already, you should come over and check it out.

Guerrilla Sessions are a great place for this sort of interaction. These sessions will be much less formal and should actually look more like the model of education we keep talking about rather then the Sage on the Stage model we have in the regular sessions.

To that end, I’ve also put up a picture of the Sign-Up sheet for tomorrow. So far it looks like we have:

• Show Me The Money – Grant Writing at 8:25
• Steal Back Fair Use: Copy small segments or whole DVD’s for your own or educational use. at 10:00
• 11:30 Still Looks Open
• XO Laptops: Check it out – 1:15

MACUL is just a couple weeks away and I can’t wait. Last year one of the things I was looking forward to most were the Guerrilla Sessions. It looked like they wouldn’t happen and then there was some internet buzz and the MACUL Borad found a room for the first Guerrilla Sessions. I was excited.

Unfortunately there ended up only being one impromptu session and I missed it. The folks from the Geek!ED! podcast did one where they recorded live at MACUL. I would have been there, but I was presenting a hands-on session at the same time.

I still really like the idea of Guerrilla Sessions. Basically, these sessions could be on the cutting edge of new technologies, so new they didn’t really exist before the session submission deadline. Or maybe they’re a bit geeky/technical, or maybe a little too short for a full one hour session, or maybe the presenter has good ideas but was a bit intimidated by the quality of MACUL presentations and consequently didn’t write a session proposal.

This year I have ideas and I plan on doing at least one Guerrilla Session, maybe two. One I’m planning on for sure is:

How do I, as an educator, exercise my fair use rights with DVDs? There are times when I need a small section of a DVD that I legally own for use in my classroom. I can, of course, cue up the DVD to the proper section, but this is cumbersome and wastes valuable teaching time. It is much more effective to extract just the small section I need.

I’ll be shooting for a good time on Friday for this one, keep your eye out if you’re interested. Does anyone else have any plans?

Well, after a bit of discussion, and a bit of structure, the Gorilla sessions are a go. They won’t be nearly as spontaneous and impromptu as they were envisioned, which is a little unfortunate, but I had a flash of an idea for a Gorilla session about the new social networking tool called Ning. I can’t take credit for finding Ning, as I’ve been reading about it over on Steve Dembo’s blog, Teach42. Steve by the way will be giving some awesome presentations this year, so make sure to check one of them out.

Imagine having the ability to quickly, and easily, set up your very own social network complete with blogging, forums, tagging, and full customization of how it looks and works. Ning has all the social and collaborative aspects of MySpace, but provides all of the controls, moderation, and privacy that an educator might need to use in lots of different school settings. I’m considering getting some time in the Gorilla sessions room to talk about how how engaging your very own classroom-branded social network would be for students. A homework help network, focused study groups, or a student created resource and research site are just a few of the possibilities.