Interestingly, I am sitting at home and in the room that I grew up in — Cherryville, NC. It doesn’t look the same. There are doilies and Crystal lamps, elegantly carved furniture, and fluffy curtains. But it fells the same. Of course, we have WiFi. My parents, after all, bought “Pong”, for goodness sake. We went to a fish camp last night and I had fried scollops, shrimp, and hush puppies. We went at 6:35 PM. You want to catch it when the grease is just right. Amazing! 😉
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| Site of the NCAECT Conference |
I’ll drive into Charlotte early this morning and spend the morning at the NCAECT conference. The organizers have been gracious enough to let me wonder around through the various preconference workshops. I’m especially looking forward to spending some time with my friends from the State Department of Public Instruction, Acacia Dixon and Karen Creech, and their session on GEO Caching.
Around lunch time, I’ll head over to the Charlotte airport and fly down to Orlando, Florida for FETC, where I’ll be doing a session tomorrow on the New Shape of Information. This will be about blogs, wikis, RSS, and other stuff. It will be a little more philosophical in nature, but I think that understanding the underpinnings of a new technology is key to implementing it effectively. Blogging and Podcasting are so often approached as isolated technologies, and this is valuable in itself. But It is also important to understand how blogging and podcasting actually connect with other applications making for some uniquely interesting opportunities.
But before that, Tim Wilson will be hosting another NECC’esque Podcast Palooza with Apple this evening. Perhaps I can do another podcast interview of what is certain to be massive crowds of educators waiting to get in.
Then right after my FETC session, I’ll head back to the airport, fly back up to Charlotte, and then do a “Telling the New Story” featured address at NCAECT. I’m really looking forward to that, though I have to work in some time to adapt that presentation to some of the conversations that have been going on concerning Telling the New Story. Here is an RSS feed of this continuing conversation, generated by Technorati:
Continuing the Conversation, Continuing the Story 
I hope to see some of you this week.
Today I was astonished when I took the Question of the Week vote at TechLearning.com
The question “The recent buzz in the computer press and at ed tech conferences is all about Web 2.0 Sometimes called the Read/Write web, Web 2.0 is a platform for collaboration, a place where users don’t just find information, they create and categorize it, using tools like del.icio.us, Wikipedia and syndication. How much do you know about Web 2.0?”
After I answered the question and read the results, YIKES. I made an assumption that most of the people reading TechLearning would be savvy about Web 2.0. I am among 5% of the people comfortable enough to present information to staff for staff development. If somewhat savvy people, reading TechLearning.com, are NOT knowledgeable about Web 2.0, what will it take to explain the New Story. David, you will have your work cut out for you! Keep the conversation going in order that we who are in the classrooms can break out and be enlightened through blogs and podcasts. We will spread the word. Good luck! Cheryl Oakes