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
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.
I went to Ben’s 
