I’m home from NCETC (hh) — and home for the year. My bag is unpacked and stuffed away in my closet (first time in months). My dog recognizes me again, and Brenda actually sat and watched a little TV with me last night. My laptop is still stowed away in its bag, and it may stay there for another day. I’m ready to relax, and to fill my days with some reading and writing, a little programming, some lunches with Brenda, holiday shopping, a few movies, no pizzas, lots of cholesterol walks, and I could just go on! I’d better enjoy this, because late winter looks like wall of pain — and lots of fantastic opportunities to work with educators from Virginia to Shanghai, and interesting points in between.
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| Posted by OBXRECRE8N in his blog entry, Video Games as Learning Engines |
NCETC was great, though more than a little exhausting with four workshops and seven breakout sessions. I tried two new presentations. One on video games and education really seemed to excite people — even a handful who came in as skeptics, admitted afterward that they had a lot to think about. The session still needs some refinement, but I think it’s a keeper.
I also did a new session on wikis. I’ve often done quick demos of wikis, and quite often provided wiki pages for attendees to use to record their notes for everyone to access. But this was the first time I’d done a complete session or workshop on the topic. I have to say that I was surprised at the level of excitement and the light bulb ideals I saw floating in the air. One of the breakouts did get a bit sidetracked by Wikipedia. Many still think that wikis are about Wikipedia.
I also did some changes in my Web 2.0 session. I don’t know if other Web 2.0 presenters are struggling with this, but it seems that the audiences’ knowledge and experiences with these tools is broadening — and handling that is difficult. In one of the wiki sessions I had people who didn’t know what a wiki is, and people who wanted me to demonstrate how to install a wiki engine on your web server.
Anyway, it’s been a fabulous year of teaching and learning!
technorati tags:warlick, education, technology, conference, ncetc, ncetc06
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I just wanted to thank you.
Thank you for encouraging, explaining, valuing, inspiring and motivating me to start two things. A blog & a wiki. I think I’ve even managed to add your blog to my blogroll as it is one of my personal favourites. (Hope that’s ok).
As a teaching professional, I am so grateful that we have people like you and the Cool Cat Teacher leading the way in this technology rich field we have the pleasure of being immersed in!
Thanks again.
David, I have attended many of your sessions over the last few years including one at NECC in San Diego. You always seem ahead of the rest of us. Sometimes I have walked away confused and not sure what you were talking about only to have the subject come along later and have my lightbulb go on. “Oh! That’s what David was talking about 6 months ago”
I loved your session on video games. I have three children in their twenties who are avid gamers. They have tried to explain what they loved about games for years and I never understood. I went home Wednesday night and actually had a very exciting discussion with my 23 yr. old about your session. Like many times before, you are at the leading edge of something very exciting.
Thanks.
Great resource. Thanks. I’ve been reading you periodically for over a year now. In reference to wikis I’ve tried several. I settled on a hosted site at Wiki.com at the start of this year, but I was deeply concerned about privacy issues in an open hosted environment. I knew the wiki at Wiki.com worked for my class, but I simply couldn’t allow it to be public like that. I learned this was MindTouch’s software and it’s open source (it wasn’t until recently I even knew what open source was–it’s not something scary). I tried getting my school’s tech specialist to install it and that was simply too much for the poor guy. I contacted MindTouch and they invited me to try their software appliance (MindTouch Deki). It runs in a ‘virtual machine’. My students, actually my entire school, are really enjoying it. It was really easy to get running on a computer in the computer lab. I actually did it myself. I felt pretty techie. My good friend is in a different school than mine (and district) and because he couldn’t get permission to run MindTouch Deki on a computer at the school he is running it on his personal laptop! My students are using it for group projects, journaling, and a kind of private/safe myspace for the students. We have plans for cross curriculum technology integration in the immediate future. You can download it yourself here: http://www.mindtouch.com/evaluation, but it requires a password. You can login with “deki” and the password “beta”. Thanks for the work and please keep it up. Hopefully I can catch one of your workshops.