2008 MACUL Conference Blog

Congrats to all of my fellow bloggers for doing a great job covering this year’s conference. Special thanks goes to Ben Rimes for his leadership during this project.

It has been really nice to go back and read about sessions I couldn’t attend. I spent a huge chunk of yesterday afternoon using the stuff Hall Davidson presented on Google Earth even though I was presenting at the same time. I went to Ben Rimes’ GE session and took what I learned there and combined it with Hall’s links. Want to catch fish on Hutchins Lake in Fennville? Find the KMZ file here.

A handful of us covered the conference as “official” bloggers but we have 100s of potential bloggers. The beauty of a blog is that it is a two-way street. Now is your chance to share your favorite sessions and cool ideas you took away from the conference.

Whose session we haven’t discussed deserves some recognition? Let your voice be heard.

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?

• Second Life
• Facebook
• Twitter
• Google Docs
• PBwiki
• Ning
• Del.icio.us

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.

Andy Losik’s blog is one of my dirty little secrets. Quite often I steal a lot of what I’m doing in my classroom from his website, and thankfully, he’s ok with that. Before he started in with all of the good stuff, Andy gave us a little history of his educational career and made a point that everything we have at our fingertips on the web wasn’t even possible just 5 years ago. And then he followed it up with one of my favorite videos about girls flexing their technology muscle.

Download Video: Posted by interwrite at TeacherTube.com.

Andy then gave a nice little overview of his blog, how he uses it with his classes, and gave some ideas about using a blogs admin features to hide certain posts for projects that you repeat each year, giving parents a safe place to put links and resources, basically simple things that the everyday teacher can do; which is what I’m all about. Make it simple, and make it quick.

And then he gave us his presentation website…..WOW! We didn’t get through nearly half of it, but thanks to the whiz-bang magic of the Internet, I’m going to share all of the resources from his presentation page right here on the conference blog. And the most beautiful thing; almost all of Andy’s resources are FREE!

WEBKids 2.0 Resources

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.

If you’re interested in videoconferencing, and you’re also into Web 2.0, you might want to attend the TWICE session: Collaborations Around the Planet: Social Networking for Videoconferencing. Every year TWICE offers sessions in a room equipment with H.323 videoconferencing and this year will be packed with interesting sessions. I’ll write about them later. But for now, consider this. Collaborations Around the Planet is a new site developed by TWICE in partnership with Polycom. You might call it a social networking mashup. It’s a friends network and directory built on the Read Around the Planet registration system. This means now you can find friends and videoconferencing colleagues as well as manage your participation in projects like Read Around the Planet and Michigan Week. All in one site! During this session you’ll learn all about the site, and we’ll also connect to a school to see their RAP presentation and interact with them. So be sure to stop by the TWICE room sometime during the conference! (We’ll know later what room it will be in.)

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 see that Patrick Crispen’s previous presentation was covered well by Joe, Jim, and Melissa.  I’m eager to hear how he’ll continue his coverage of Google in this session, “Keeping Up with the Googlebots: What’s New at Google.“

Well…Patrick says we’re skipping PP and just doing the presentation live.  Hooray!

By clicking on Advanced Search you can choose the type of Usage Rights as one of the search criteria for a particular resource.  That’s a good thing for teachers to know…you don’t have to ask permission for the stuff you use.  This takes into account copyright laws and ensures you’re not breaking the law!

To help your searching, Google very quietly has started to incorporate “Ask Jeeves” type answers to their search queries.  Meaning…you can type a question directly into Google…Google Question and Answers is the name of this trick.  Watch for this to become more popular.

Besides the map and satellite views in Google Maps, you can get live traffic data from at least 25 major U.S. cities.  The data is basically live and in real time.  Detroit is included so take a look before you head home today!

If you yourself want to keep track of what Google is up to, check out Google Labs for the latest and greatest new tools.  For example, Google Music Trends displays what people are listening to right now on their computers.  Why?  I’m not sure, but many times these “labs” ideas become mainstream tools.

What else is Google doing?  If you find a business, you can type your phone number into your browser and Google will call the company for you.  Why?  In order to make the company think they’re getting a call from Google, instead of taking down your contact information.  Thanks, Google.  Patrick reminded us that Google’s #1 rule is “Don’t be evil.”

What can be done with Google in the classroom?
Google Book Search  Allows you to search inside of books.  You can’t read the whole book, but if they’re not under copyright you can download the book in its entirety.

Hand in hand with Google Book Search is Google Scholar.  This service searches journal articles…you’ll get the article’s abstract.  You’ll still have to get it from your local or university library, but it goes way beyond ERIC.

Google Notebook is their answer to the 3 x 5 cards you used to use for research.  (You have to have a Google Account in order to use it.)  Google Notebook allows users to take information from a web page and “click it” into their Google Notebook.  Besides just the information, the notebook entry includes the URL where the information originated.  It doesn’t give the date and time, but you can add that yourself by editing the entry.  Another cool thing is that the Notebook can be shared…meaning it can be shared among a group of students collaborating on a project.  Having used Google Notebook a bit myself, this is a great tool!  Definitely try it out!

Patrick is showing us Google Docs, which includes a free online word processor and spreadsheet application.  You can save the documents in a number of formats, including MS Word.  In addition, you can upload your own MS Word document to Google Docs and share it with any number of users.  It’s a great collaborative tool…it can be edited live and in real time by all collaborators.

The audience, in a very full room, really enjoyed Patrick’s presentation.  Who doesn’t like to see a new idea that can be used in the classroom?  Patrick reminds us that all his presentations  (there are a lot) are available online and should be stolen used by everyone.

OK, Steve Demob is going to be another one of those speakers I look for at these meetings. Steve went through about 20 or 30 different websites while highlighting his Top 10 Free Web 2.0 Sites. All his links are available at 10freesites.pbwiki.com, so I won’t list them all here.

Here are some of the cool new things I learned:

• Jumpcut - A free online video creation/editing site now allows you to do the Ken Burns Effect with your photos
• Picnik - This is a free online image editor. I’ve heard of it before, but I’ve never used it. I will now. It does all the basic editing you need. You can upload photos or you can pull them directly from the web (including your Flickr). When you’re done editing you can save them, email them, dump them to Flickr, or send them to a number of places that will print them out for you.
• Vyew - Webinars free on the web. You can use your browser to host a webinar. The participants, who only need a browser, can watch your presentations or you can share a real time screen cast. There is a chat window available and you can share audio by having participants call into a phone number. Up to 100 people can call into the free version!

Steve talked about a lot of stuff more than I will mention here. His list of 10 Free Sites is great and you should give it a look.

So…I think it’s really cool that Ramit Sethi, the VP of Marketing for PBwiki, has come all the way here to give us the latest on what PBwiki is all about. I think it demonstrates some commitment from them that they want to reach out to educators.

What’s a wiki? It’s a web site where you can easily collaborate and share information. The most notable example is Wikipedia. Ramit showed us a comparison between common web tools…blogs, forums, and wikis.

• Blogs…One to many. One writer to an audience of many.
• Forums…Many to many, but there may be a repetition of content.
• Wikis…Many to many, but it’s always current.

The PBwiki team spent a considerable amount of time talking with educators to determine how educators use wikis. Why are they so hot?

• They’re easy to make…no technical skills or tech savvy personnel needed.
• Links! You can connect to many other pages of your own.
• Allows students to collaborate…essays, peer editing, comments on students work, teachers can keep an eye on what’s going on.

But what are the concerns for K12 education?

• Security
  In PBwiki you have to be logged in to contribute to the wiki or see any personal information.
• Safety/privacy
  Again, you must be logged in to view private information (and even some of that isn’t available).
• Accountability
  They’re working on a system to improve accountability…who is logged in and when/where are they?
• $$$ Money
  The access controls for PBwiki cost some money. Otherwise the cost is free!

They took the suggestions of educators and listened. Teachers hate ads, so they removed them on educational blogs. They want students to be engaged, so they continue to add features. They also want it to be easy, so they made a new WYSIWYG editor. They’re trying to listen to their hundreds of users and incorporating their suggestions.

Ramit showed us some of the little tools called Plugins that allow extra content to be added to your wiki. For example, add an online calendar or a Flickr slide show. Very cool. There is a lot of flexibility to types of content you can add.

For those of you who use PBwiki (or just wikis in general!) and tell others in workshops, PBwiki offers Presenter Packs which include

• a PDF handout with general PBwiki information
• a T-shirt of your choice
• a PowerPoint presentation to use in your workshop/session
• and three PBwiki upgrades (worth $750)

That’s awesome!…they’re really trying to support educators and their efforts to spread (PB pun!) the news.

What’s coming next?

• Videos and case studies to assist teachers in the use of wikis.
• Better sharing and linking. Ramit told us how you can make a portfolio of the content that has been published. It hasn’t been publicized well, but it could be a great tool for sharing.
• Educational Advisory Board

Again, I’m really impressed by the approachability of Ramit, and through him, PBwiki. These guys (actually five guys and a gal) are really trying to get it right and to create a useful tool for educators as well as the web community in general. Keep in mind…Ramit wasn’t down in the vendor area and wasn’t pushing his product (you get the Presenter Pack no matter what type of wiki you’re focusing on), but instead is extending a hand to teachers to help create meaningful online content and collaborative activities.

I encourage anyone who is interested in exploring wikis or who are already using wikis to explore PBwiki. For the latest PBwiki news, check out their blog, The Daily Peanut.

I was fortunate enough last Friday morning to interview Jim Wenzloff, one of our featured speakers at the 2007 MACUL conference. As a member of MACUL, and a Michigan educator, Jim brings a wealth of creative and collaborative learning experiences to the conference. As an instructional technology consultant for the Macomb ISD, Jim gets to experience first hand the joy and excitement that teachers new to the tools of school 2.0 feel when they start to explore new social networking and open source tools.

Passionate about the read/write web and making connections between classrooms through the use of collaborative software and websites, Jim is always seeking new ways to push his own understanding as he is a true life-long learner. In the interview you’ll have a chance to hear how excited Jim is about the future of technology in education, especially as more and more classrooms find ways to collaborate online. Make sure to check out Jim’s featured presentation, It’s Not Your Father’s Internet, an exploration of just how quickly and radically the web has changed in the relatively short amount of time it’s been used in education.

Jim Wenzloff’s Teaser Podcast