The constructivist celebration

The highlight has been sitting with some wonderful educators: Dr. Scott McLeod, Wes Fryer, Chris Champion, and Linda Nitsche. They were all great fun and we had some wonderful discussions together.

Here are some thoughts after sitting here today at The Sidwell Friends School here in Washington DC. (The Embassy homes are all along the drive here.)

From earlier today during Gary Stager's intro:
1. Software is very important. What you can do with the software determines what you have learned. Hardware is not as important.
2. Build your own sketchpad. Use the computer for what it can't do already for true learning and critical thinking.
3. Elements of an effective project
Purpose, time, personally meaningful, and complex but including serendipity. Connected to disciplines and people. Requires discipline. We still have many kids with VERY superficial understandings of computers
4. Substantial problems are the kind where students can't sleep at night that they continue to think about.
5. Ask yourself:
Who does the project satisfy? What can they do with what they learned? Look at projects through the lens of an audience.
A good prompt is worth a thousand words. 4 elements for a good prompt: a good prompt, challenge, problem or motivation - appropriate materials, sufficient time, supportive culture (including expertise).
6. Look at a project like an artist. Is it: beautiful, thoughtful, personally meaningful, sophisticated, whimsical, sharable with a respect for the audience, moves you, enduring?
7. Focus on knowledge construction and not reproduction.

During the day we played with some wonderful programs: InspireData (great for changing data around and creating some very wonderful venn diagrams as well as changing the parameters and looking at the actual specifics of each data point.) I also played with Transform and Animation-ish. Need more time to play with these but seem to be some cool programs. Maybe will get my son to play with these and let me know what he thinks.

The live blog and ustream of the event can be found on Wes Fryer's blog.

If you have a chance to go to the Constructivist Consortium or a Constructivist Celebration, you should go. It definitely was worth the time in playing and talking to others.

Tags: Constructivist Consortium

Edubloggercon

As excited I am about attending NECC, I am very excited about Edubloggercon. I am looking forward to being re-energized with people that I follow, listen, and talk to. Many of these are on the forefront of educational change. I admire the work they do and look forward to meeting and discussing with them. I am also looking forward to finally meeting those with which I have communicated frequently or infrequently but have never met. Mostly:

Candace Hackett Shively - who has tirelessly dealt with site reviews for Teacher's First that need more work
Vicki Davis - I have followed Vicki for the last 2 1/2 years when I started reading her blog. Since that point, she has helped many educators with web 2.0 tools and I consider one of the biggest cheerleaders for those of us in the trenches trying to make change.
There are so many others that I will include in links later. There are also many others that I have met before who continue to shape my journey. All of them collectively make the journey worthwhile.

Tags: NECC09, Edubloggercon

Getting ready for NECC

I can't believe I leave in about 4 days (spending a little time with my SIL before heading to the conference.) My session description can be found here.

Accomplished:

1. Printed my NECC planner. If I could clone myself, I could actually be in all the places at the same time.
2. Printed all hotel info.
3. Added all other events that I have to my planner.
   
4. Decided where I could carve out some free time in the planner for sanity.
5. Added more information and a discussion to my NECC ning page.

Still to finish:

1. Finishing touches on the powerpoint for the session.
2. Tweaks to the background for bulletin board.
3. Packing up all the assorted materials (handouts, business cards, clips to hang up the background...)
4. Creating a packing list (while I am thinking about it all...)

After the training last week on the ITSI portal from the Concord Consortium, I feel a little rushed. The training however was great and worth the time. Met some great people and had fun and laughs.

Looking forward to meeting up with other educators and sharing!

Tags: ITSI, concord consortium, NECC, wiki, wikicentral