Since we were quite busy with all kinds of receptions, ceremonies, and our own presentations I didn’t get a chance to get to many other concurrent sessions. The school board members I traveled with did get to a few however and were particularly impressed with Green Fingerprints: Leaving our Mark on the Planet by Marina Light from the Center for Digital Education.
As one of the panel to help decide which sessions were accepted to T+L this year I remember the group discussing the need for this topic to be a part of this year’s conference and in the future. I was glad to hear our school board members caught this one and are now motivated to start encouraging more programs in conservation and environmental issues at our school. We do a good job with this but I believe we have some new ideas that we can use here. I encourage everyone to start by placing a reminder in their email signature – something like “Please consider the environment before printing this email” and see if that makes a difference in your paper consumption.

For the first six years of my career I taught instrumental music and music theory and always used technology a bit with my students – tech was my hobby at that time. Now, the roles have reversed with technology being what I do and music is a hobby. So I am always excited to hear the winners of the MENC/T+L Student Electronic Music Composition Talent Search. We were lucky enough a few years ago to have a student win in the middle school category which I know was very exciting for her and her parents. Take a listen to their compositions and read their stories below at:

http://www.menc.org/news/view/2008-nsba-student-electronic-music-composition-talent-search-winners

Congratulations to all of them and encourage your music students and teachers to get involved with this program!

Nifty end-of-conference preso just now — plenty of hands-on time, a G-Cast cel phone ==> podcast demo that seems promising for folks without lots of podcasting gear, and interesting use of pbwiki to generate ideas and pages for discussion.

Great table conversations about the need for professional development vision, funding, personnel to enact Web 2.0 / tech-integration / literacy-redefinition efforts. At our table, we had a Board Member, a Chief Tech Officer from a district, and me, a non-profit professional developer.

Presenters used PBWiki to host the conversation about social – legal – ethical issues around using Web 2.0 in our districts / schools. We surfaced a bunch of the core issues, and commented on them on sub-pages. Wonder what a next step with that particular Wiki, and our thinking, would have been?

Call me crazy, but I still want to see a rockin’ match between a Wiki’s core functionality — ability to spin off pages, links, and edits — and a topic in a for-educators’ workshop. Maybe I need to try to develop one. Anyone out there got suggestions for using a Wiki super-well with adults, say in a professional development context?

David Warlick, in his Thursday morning presentation, challenged attendees to redefine literacy for the uncertain future. Sounding pretty Big6-ish at first, he suggested literacy was about finding, evaluating, and applying/contextualizing info; then inferring/building meaning and organizing it into personal digital libraries.

Fun happened when he opined that we educators need to “Stop integrating technology – start integrating literacy and teaching kids to teach themselves.”

Loved the tag-cloud comparisons, using Tag Crowd, of FDR’s Day That Shall Live in Infamy and Churchill’s Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat speeches — two stirring 20th c. come-to-war speeches. Why *are* those tag clouds — keyword-frequencies — so different looking? Have at it, Social Studies and English teachers…

Had a great time with Moodle on Wednesday @ NSBA T+L Seattle 2008. Got to co-present a session (”Taking It to the Next Level Online with Moodle”), with Nicole Yemothy of Kent School District (WA) — attendees seemed to enjoy seeing how Nicole’s using Moodle with 7th grade students in a science class, plus the overview of Moodle hosted in a Moodle course. Deep dive: Moodle’s “Choice” activity continues to be a winner, in terms of

*eliciting students’ prior understanding*
*letting students choose project or topic ideas*
*doing formative assessment after experiencing content*

Then attended Randy Orwin’s “Moodle Magic…” session 2pm — great setup: thin-client Linux network giving us all online access; entry Moodle Feedback survey on who we are and what we know about Moodle; and tons of information on Moodle modules and functionality, Web 2.0 and open-source software in general. Well-deserved applause ended this great session.

Last evening’s TLN Special event at the Experience Music Project was fun and interesting. Being from the Greater Cleveland area I figured the EMP would be a second rate copy of our Rock & Roll Hall of Fame. Well…I was (let me get it out)…wrong.
What a cool place with lots of exhibits the Rock Hall does not have. I have had theory that there is a strong correlation between technology people and musical ability and I think I’m dead on! Looking at the band that played Monday night and all of the people in the “jam rooms” at the EMP I think we should just start doing some online jamming and take it to the top of the charts! I don’t know who the guys were I was jamming with but I think we could have played all night. Mary Ann discovered some new talents on the drum pads. I think the Who may have finally found a replacement for Keith Moon.
I was disappointed the gift shop was not open. I was ready to boost the economy and spend spend spend!!!
I know we will be off to Denver next year and I am wondering where we might end up for the TLN Special Event. Maybe the EMP has a travelling exhibit we can hijack!

Looking back on today’s T+L activities I wonder why I’m not asleep standing up, sitting down, or in a fetal position. The day started at 7:00 a.m. when I met with a number of folks to discuss Green Computing as a part of the new CoSN Green Computing initiative. This is one of the really cool parts of T+L. It seems that each year I get invited to participate in some sort of discussion group that could have far reaching outcomes. I think we all need to consider what we can do to reduce power consumption, packaging, trash, and to address the responsible disposal of technology equipment.
I finally got some time to wander around the vendor exhibits. I gathered some info on some products I was interested in but did not see everything I was looking for. Oh well, I will make some other arrangements when I get back home.
A highlight for me was attending the TLN Luncheon where this year’s Salute Districts and other awards are given out. We were on the 35th floor of the Sheraton. What a view! Ann Flynn mentioned that this part of the conference is always like a family reunion (only better) because past Salute districts attend. It is nice to always see old friends at this event.
We wrapped up the day time activities at the day’s featured speaker session with Joe Caruso. Joe had some inspirational stories, and some stories, and some more stories…and wrapped it up with……some stories!
Now I am relaxing a bit before I catch the bus to the TLN Special Event at the Experience Music Project. Hey…the Phillies just won the World Series!

It seems we’ve got some more fans out there in the blogosphere (we’re not Britney Spears or anything, but we can still feel the love). Check out these folks who are also blogging the conference:

Generation Yes tells us that they’re coming to the conference with a team and exhibiting here as well.

TechLab talks about the 20 to Watch.

And IQity is here and sponsoring tonight’s special event at the conference. If you’re here, be sure to put on your 70s best and join us to celebrate!

It was a busy Tuesday at T+L. I started of by going to a session presented by a crew from Rex Mill Middle School titled “High Tech Classrooms that Motivate and Challenge Digital Natives”. This high energy bunch kept us engaged and entertained. This was a great wake up session! It is nice to see a school full of innovative and passionate teachers using technology in great ways. “Don’t remediate…accelerate!” was a battle cry!
Since my fellow bloggers have commented on Paul Saffos keynote I won’t say anymore about that! I always love the opening General Session since we have an opportunity to see some student work during the film awards. It is nice to also see the first of the Video Salute Districts. It looks like there are some great things happening in the Avoca District in Illinois.
Later I attended a session about E-Discovery. Email and document retention is a hot topic in my district. One thing I learned in this session is that it is a confusing topic no matter what State you work in.
My last attended session was a CoSN CTO Forum – “Leveraging Banned Technologies to Create Ubiquitous Learning Environments.” It could be wrapped up with a quote from my old buddy Scott McCleod (who was not there…just quoted) “Technology cannot be stopped and students will be served.”

The REAL end of the day was the Excellence Fair. Mary Ann and I were trying to remember how many of these we have done in a row and we came up with 8. This is always an activity we look forward too. We get a chance to meet teachers, administrators, board members, and technology advocates from all over the country. We ended the session exhausted but pleased that so many people stopped by to hear our professional development story. They asked great questions and we took away some new ideas and some new acquaintances.

Great day at T+L. I learned a lot. Folks from McRel provided very interesting questions to be posed when considering how integrated technology is into the teaching and learning system and provided a whole new framework for me when considering how to do a good analysis of whatever it is you’re studying in a school.

Had some new personal insights into how to use the wonderful tools provided through PD 360 when using the Joyce and Showers model of professional development and had a great conversation with the rep of the company. The PD 360 is a terrific vehicle through which to provide the theory and demonstration components in a good professional development model, which are often the costliest parts of an effort.

And Paul Saffo’s remarks about kids posting on their resumes that they”re masters in a video game being evidence they can manage a budget, move people in the right direction, etc. made me want to try that video game and also gave me a whole new perspective on gaming. I need to get out more often! The world is changing and I am seeing huge evidence of that right here. Probably the biggest learning of all.