Today, I attended NECC virtually. I really wanted to be there, but I was glad to be able to connect from home.
Thanks to Alice Mercer’s CoveritLive , Bud Hunt’s Chatterous and Mogulus, Kelly Dumont and Vicki Davis, and Scott Merrick’s Ustream, Steve Dembo’s EduStream, I was able to listen in and interact with some of the events from today. Thanks to all of you who took the time and extra effort to invite us in virtually. It was appreciated. I hope I get to do the same for others sometime soon.
Although the sessions were great, my favorite part is when I saw Mark Wagner’s message somewhere about meeting up in the Blogger’s Cafe. Thanks to Bud Hunt, I joined the stream there and watched learning happening in the best way. Not only were they playing with Mogulus and CamTwist, it was great to see Darren Kuropatwa trying to join in virtually. I don’t think he succeeded, but the learning was great. Thanks to Jeff Utecht for his refections on the whole day and the event at the Blogger’s Cafe. I even gained new inspiration to jailbreak my iPhone.
Thanks to all who made my virtual attendance possible. I miss you all! Enjoy the conference.
21st Century Learning seems to be a very popular educational buzzword these days. Some people have asked me to define 21st Century learning, and I have to supply a short and very inadequate definition about connected, collaborative, natural learning with passion. It doesn’t begin to address the broader definition of what my learning has become in the past few years. Maybe a good way to define it is to provide some examples coming out of NECC 2008 (the largest National Educational Technology Conference of all) this year. Unfortunately, I won’t be there in person. Even though I would love to be there, at least I can participate virtually. Here are some opportunities. I hope you’ll join me.
The Edustream.tv Home Page - A place to watch some live broadcasts of various sessions at NECC. This is awesome! Come visit, chat, and learn together.
Watch the conversation about NECC on Twitter on a tool called Summerize. Join Twitter and add some of the people you see tweeting about NECC on Summerize to engage in the conversation.
Come (virtually) to the Blogger’s Cafe to attend some of the sessions at the “unconference”.
Join with all the educators at Saturday’s EdubloggerCon - wish I could be there in person to meet people, but I won’t miss out on the learning. This was the best part of last year’s conference for me.
Follow the blog conversations and the images (from Flickr) at the conference aggregator, Hitchhikr and Technorati’s blog, photo, and video search.
Subscribe to what people are bookmarking about NECC08 on Delicious, a social bookmarking tool.
This is just a small sample of how conferences and learning have changed in just a few short years. This is 21st century learning, connecting with people of similar passions to connect, collaborate, learn, and create. Please join me.
I was tagged several months ago by Jennifer Wagner on a meme started by Barry Bachenheime based on NPR’s This I Believe. I’ve probably broken all the rules by taking so long to respond, but time just slipped away. I thought it was such a good one that I decided to follow up on it, even though it’s long overdue. Thanks, Jen, for the push. Here goes…
I believe that students should have plenty of opportunities to learn in an environment that celebrates individuality, uniqueness, and respect.
I believe that caring for classroom animals, playing with blocks, exploring bubbles, singing, dancing, and watching plants grow are necessary components of a Kindergarten classroom. What has happened lately?
I believe that students should have multiple ways to demonstrate their learning, whether in text, mixed media, video, or audio.
