Thing 13: Attending a Conference In My P.J.’s

Actually, this 2009 conference was attended not in p.j.’s but in my shorts, at home,  on a beautiful 4th of July afternoon, and that was clearly the value of this online/anytime delivery option!  There is so much to be gained from most conferences from the convergence of people and ideas and the time to share both, that the online conference may never replace the real time conference, but certainly there is a need and a place for both.  The value will be – as is true of so much of Web 2.0 – that so many, many more people can “attend” and get the information.

I “attended” four sessions of about 15 – 20 minutes each.  They were all quite good,  but because they were online, I always had the option of abandoning a poor one – a choice I’d be reluctant to make at a live conference.  I attended two directed at administrators and two intended for elementary school classroom teachers.  Using ebooks As Motivation for Pupil’s Writing by Colvin Hill, a primary teacher near Manchester, England, was a step-by-step how-to for using myebook.com as an easy way to encourage and publish the art, research and writing of these very young students as they learned about Ancient Greece together. I learned something new in learning about this program, and his presentation was worthwhile.  I might be able to use this as I read with classes.

Drew Buddie is IT director at his school in England, and his presentation describes how he took a class of very reluctant middle grade learners and achieved wonderful success as he used Web. 2.0 to teach The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton. His basic tools were Stupiflix and GoogleEarth, and his presentation shows the way he encouraged exploration and writing in students who typically were not engaged. As with Mr. Hill,  Mr. Buddie’s main points were the ease of using this technology and its effectiveness at engaging students.

In his presentation targeting administrators, Vermont principal Drew Wells argues that effective leadership as a principal is effective 21st century leadership in technology.  His presentation compares the ISTE standards for administration with the national standards for principals.

My favorite of the presentations I viewed was by New Hampshire’s Bill Carozza, principal of Harold Martin Elementary School. Entitled Embracing Web 2.0, he stresses the ability we educators have now through Web 2.0 to share, connect and create as opposed to the static capabilities of web pages, search engines, surfing and email available through Web 1.0.  He gives several examples of how he is using Web 2.0: Skyping for parent conferences, his blog for parents and his blog for teachers; his Twitters to both groups, using Google docs for faculty and board minutes, using podcasting for a monthly podcast to his school families (I watched his one for July, and it’s a wordy but pleasant fireside chat).  I learned from him that I should choose just one thing in Web 2.0 technology, use it,master it, talk about it, find my supporters for it and “feed them.”  This man is dynamic and interesting; I’ve added his blog to my RSS reader.

Wonderful presentations; I love that they are short.  The speakers cut to the chase.