One month from now, I’ll be at NECC. Certainly the richest and deepest educational technology conference, probably in the world, NECC offers more to more people about new technologies in education than any other event, and it proves each year to be exhaustingly exhilarating experience — almost a high.
During most years the conference becomes a focal point for the new big thing. Often that new big thing is only a whisper in the program book. Last year it was podcasting, even though mine was the only conference session about the practice. The year before it was blogging, though the only formal mention of it was Will Richardson’s appearance on the keynote stage with Intel CEO Craig Barrett.
I remember when it was handhelds and video production, and even laserdiscs. But last year, even with the furor over podcasting and Apple’s mile long line of attendees, waiting to get into their podcastorama, what truly made the event glow (in my opinion) was RSS, and I mean quite literally glow. Through blogs, podcasts, and wikis, a conversation emerged out of NECC that extended out before the conference, out around the world during the conference, and continued long after the event was over.
We read the blogs, and listened to and watched the podcasts. We interacted in the wikis, but the glue that tied all of it together, giving it the anchor that is NECC, is RSS. Even though I now see about 90% of the hands go up at technology conferences when I ask about the concept, I suspect that RSS’ true and potential influence is still something of a mystery. As I continue to demonstrate how RSS enriches blogging, podcasting, wikis, social bookmarks, search engines, and on and on, audiences are still falling out of their seats with amazement. One media librarian jumped up out of her chair the other day and started speaking in tongues 😉
Still, I suspect that it is a technology that education has yet to wrap itself around. Fact is, you can’t RSS a test. You could RSS a textbook, a teacher, a classroom, an assignment, a research paper or documentary movie, a web search, an expert community, and you can also RSS a conference.
I just did a Google search of the NECC 2006 web site, and also used their site search engine, and found no mention of RSS tags for the conference. I miss this. On the front page of every conference web site and on the cover of every conference program should be the text:
Conference Tags: necc necc06
Imagine if all conference bloggers and podcasters tagged their publications the same, how attendees and those not privileged to attend could attract all of those event descriptions and all those insights and perspectives to their computer display. I shutter with excitement to think about it.
But perhaps, it is more in the spirit of blogging, that we decide, the few and the far-between of the edublogging community, across Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, and South America, how we’ll tag our publications. That said, I want to suggest the tags above, necc, so that we can aggregate all NECC conversations and necc06 for conversations pertaining to the San Diego event.
What do you think?
Botter, Jacob. “Blogging and Recording – All at Once.” Jacob Botter’s Photostream – flickr. 10 Nov 2005. 6 Jun 2006 .
And just you make sure you do blog about it, for the benefit of those of us who don’t get to attend in the flesh !-)
I’ll be bloggin’ my buns off 😉
I am planning on blogging NECC and agree on consistent tags. Have you notified any of the organizers on this?
Don’t forget to include your flickr tags!
Unfortunately, I don’t get to go this year so I’ll be attending virtually through all the blogs, wikis, podcasts, photographs, and whatever new communications techniques come up next.
This is a wonderful idea, I met you Dave (virtually at least) as I sat in front of my computer here in Australia searching for updates on Necc in 2005. From that one moment I met you and your blog/podcast, and so many more. Then I created my own site and weblog and to this day have learnt so much from you and the other edubloggers of the globe.
Once again I am dissapointed to not be at NECC this year. However, I know that if you guys keep the blogging, podcasting etc happening I will at least feel like I am in touch. I plan to be there next year if all goes to plan. Keep up the great work and I look forward to reading and commenting and perhaps posting on my site. Actually I might blog from a virtual attenders perspective. Could be an interesting project to see how much value there is in a colleague blogging for those unable to attend?!?!?
What do you think?
Comments on blogging and tagging accepted, especially the notion of tagging consistency. NECC sound a grand event and every year NZers head there to catch a glimpse and get lost in the size and variety. For really rich, significantly transformative and very well proven educational professional development/learning through ICT though, you should head to ULearn in NZ. It is small (less than 1500), intimate and very very focused on practical pedagogy and whole school change to enable and engage the 21st Century learner. Like you, we celebrate it as “certainly the richest and deepest educational technology conference, probably in the world”. CU there?
I wanted to go so very badly, however our small school does not have the budget to send me to NECC. I hope it will come back to the East Coast soon so I can make it on my nickel. I will rely on you and the other bloggers to learn from you as you attend the conference.
Thanks for the feedback. This year, we have enabled a wireless network in all the session rooms (in addition to the hardwire speaker stations) to facilitate blogging and other interactivity. This tip about tagging for RSS is exactly the kind of stuff I hope to hear. Now that the need has been heard — I need the how-to. Maybe someone will write to me (hint-hint: devoniuk@iste.org) and confirm that we just need our programmers to add tags to the code.
See you at NECC!
For the second year in a row I will get to attend thank to a great support staff in my district. I will try to keep up with this to encourage others to integrate tech into more elementary classroom.
I will try to keep up with this too. I am so lucky to attend the conference, once more. I have had great support from my Tech department in my school district. I will strive for getting more teahcers involved with technology in the classroom.
Thanks for sharing
I’d prefer reading in my native language, because my knowledge of your languange is no so well. But it was interesting! Look for some my links: