Academic Aesthetic

Last session of the day, and believe it or not I’m not attending the one on unitedstreaming. It’s worth seeing, but I experienced the same session at the PETE&C conference a while back.

With unitedstreaming out of the picture, it was almost a toss up as to which session I should see, but I finally picked one.

NASA’s got a bunch of projects at their NASA Quest website. Some of it’s a little dinky on the content (coloring pages), but other parts are a little more robust (design an aircraft). They even have Spanish and Chinese language versions – which I didn’t expect from a government site.

At this point the presenter (Valerie Hawkins) is continuing with a walkthrough. She’s shown us that the NASA Quest page is diverse in features, but the back row was crowded when she started and now I’m the only one in it. (I would be sitting closer to the front with the rest of the remaining 25 or so teachers, but I’m making use of the power outlet back here.)

My guess is that there’s nothing wrong with the presentation, but as the last session of the day it’s cursed to have a large percentage of walk-outs. The same thing’s probably happening in all the sessions, and it will most likely be even worse tomorrow.

I promised myself this morning that I wouldn’t attend any sessions that mentioned the words “PowerPoint, “Office,” or “Inspiration.” Not because the programs are bad, but because conferences like this are often beyond saturated with sessions that show how to use those programs. I want something more.

So now I’m sitting here waiting for this session about PowerPoint (Presented by Jeanne Noorisa and Marsye Kaplan) to start. Why? Because it’s about making books. Now that’s just cool.

Hm, this is the first session I’ve been to all day that actually has a handout. Using three sessions isn’t much of a sample size, but it seems like we’re moving from dead tree handouts to digital ones – a welcome change.

This session’s al about “talking books,” which are more or less digital presentations that include text, images, and audio components. They’re created to help students that have mental, physical, or motivational reasons why they can’t always enjoy paper books.

With those requirements in place, the rest is totally up to you. You don’t even have to make the book yourself, since your students can create their own books to enjoy. I’m imagining my students creating a story, then having each kid illustrate a different page which they will then read into a microphone.

Hm, she’s focussing mostly on Windows. I’m not surprised, since that’s what most people use. This stuff will all work with Mac anyway.

Ah, she’s touching on copyright – there’s a copyright law amendment that allows teachers to make multimedia copies of books for students with disabilities. If your students fit into that category then remixing an existing book is fair game.

Tricks to make the books better:

• Time delays to prevent “happy clickers” from fast forwarding to the end of the book.
• A back button so students can read previous pages.
• Include pictures to go with the words to help beginning readers. (She used a program called “Boardmaker Plus,” but I found a website called Phrasr that does something similar.

More Talking Books:
(I’ll add these later)

Resources:

• Pics for Learning
• AP Multimedia Archive
• Ditto
• Google Image Search
• Classroom Clipart
• Kids Image Search Tools
• Free Foto
• Free Images
• Microsoft Clip Art Gallery

… what, no Flickr: Creative Commons or YoToPhoto?

The last time I attended this conference was two years ago, and things have changed a lot since then. Most notable is the fact that MICCA is taking up a lot less real estate.

Back then they took up three floors, with the sessions on the 2nd floor, administration, registration, souvenirs, etc. on the 1st floor, and the vendors all regulated to the basement. Now, except for registration and a small art exhibit, we’re all on the 2nd floor.

If I hadn’t been here two years ago when the building was so crowded it was hard to find a seat, I wouldn’t have noticed. I have a good idea why MICCA shrank, but I won’t get into that right now.

The good news is I got to see all the vendors during lunch, and I didn’t even have to skip a session to do it. This bodes well for me tomorrow, as it means people will be less likely to skip out of my session to play with the Macs that Apple has set up.

Sally DeVincentis is a vendor, but she was a Special Education teacher for 25 years. With a background like that she’s got my interest. (This is why I love this WiFi connection. In less than a minute I looked up her business and linked in her website.)

The key to this session seems to be “Visual Literacy,” a skill that begins to develop before verbal literacy.

Ok, we’re 12 minutes in and she’s still talking about theory. I know a lot about this already, but I’m not faulting her for this – I’m sure most of the people in this room are learning this for the first time.

“TV is a student’s FIRST professional teacher.” As much cash as we spend on learning how students think and learn, advertising companies spend much, much more. What can we learn from them?

• Tell a story.
• Bombard with visuals.
• Make it relevant to the viewer’s life. (Personalize it!)
• Limit the words.
• Provide multi-sensory cues.
• Go from the concrete to the abstract.

The theories are done, now she’s showing the products. While she says she’d like us to like her products, she does mention that we can do similar activities on our own without their software.

The first program has a library of digital pictures that can be organized so that every student has their own gallery, but you can add your own. It has a section that will let students edit photos in your gallery, but the coolest part is where students can create a book using their gallery.

The result is a digital product that has the page turns animated as it speaks to students in a distorted computer voice. You can also print the book so students can take it home.

Aaaaah! She’s showing off all of the transitions it can put into a slide show. I know she’s deliberately showing the variety, but how many people who use this product will do the same thing? Bad, bad, bad design.

The session’s winding down. I think I got a few ideas out of this, but I’m still hoping the other sessions speak to me more.

I’m at what will be my first session of the day: “Making Better Readers with Digital Photography.” Once again I’m in range of a strong WiFi signal, but this time it’s password protected so I’ll have to save this summary for later. As an added bonus I’m even close to a wall outlet! (No more putting my laptop to sleep between each burst of writing. Curse you, old battery!)

I hope the network isn’t encrypted when I present tomorrow, or at the very least I hope they share the password with me. I have a “Plan B” worked into my presentation just in case, but I’d much prefer to do everything live.

UPDATE: The password protection’s been dropped. Boo-ya!

I’m hoping to get a few good things out of this one although they’ll have to close the giant picture window behind the projector screen. Even if we could see the visual aides with this much light in the room, we’d all be looking out the window instead. (You can see the National Aquarium from here.)

Today’s Keynote is unusual for me. Rather than having just one person standing in front of a PowerPoint presentation we have several individuals (Linda Roberts, Senator Patrick J. Hogan, Dr. Karen B. Salmon, Jim Potter, and Sterlind S. Burke, Sr.) discussing “21st century skills.”

They’re having some microphone problems, but it’s not too bad.

Jim Potter has a few good sound bits, including “We need a balance between perspiration and inspiration,” and “We don’t know what we don’t know.”

Dr. Salmon started a 1:1 laptop program where the students could take their computers home at the end of the day. The 1:1 initiative is seeping into Maryland, and so far it’s working.

Sterlind Burke says we need to focus on ethics and how the technology can be used IN the curriculum, not just AS a curriculum. I’m on board with both points.

Senator Hogan makes a point about how most U.S. Senators know very little about how technology works and thus how it can affect education.

“Technology in service of curriculum”

Four key elements for the 21st century schools, according to Potter:
1. Administrative Support (including the community)
2. Facilities Planning (help students access anything, any time.)
3. Professional Development
4. Students! (Oh yeah, did we forget that part?)

Burke again – “All of these bells and whistles will be scary for County Commissioners. We need to answer the question of ‘What’s in it for me?'”

Potter answers – Better tech ed. will lead to better jobs, which lead to better salaries, which lead to a better economy. (On the down side, this is not an overnight change.)

I’m about to head over to the Baltimore Convention Center or day 1 of MICCA. I’m presenting on blogging, but not until tomorrow. Today I’m just going to see what I can see and blog about it.

If they have wireless access I’ll post from there. If not, I’ll post when I get home.

UPDATE: I’m sitting in the room for the Keynote speaker. Obviously, MICCA has WiFi. Life is good, or at least it will be until my battery dies.