Instructify

Through the magic of the interweb, you can watch Bill Ferris’ and Jason Don Forsythe’s  presentation at the LEARN NC 2009 Fall Interactive Conference. “Technology integration with Instructify,” along with the other eight terrific sessions, is available right now on the conference’s session archives page.

Really, you ought to catch the other sessions, too — there’s stuff on project-based learning, putting together a professional development plan, blended learning, and lots more. All videos include a replay of the conference’s ongoing live chat, with all the supplemental links, ideas, and witty banter therin.

Technology integration with Instructify (19:49)

LEARN NC Fall Interactive Conference 2009 — Session archives

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Attend LEARN NC’s 2009 interactive conference virtually

BY BILL FERRIS

It’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas parent-teacher conference season. For a few parents, this is just a formality, the latest conversation in a year-long dialogue. Of course, a lot of parents will be meeting you for the first time, leading to all the hazards of first-time interactions — awkwardness, shyness, and occasionally, tension.

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BY BILL FERRIS

This is a friendly reminder that you can still sign up for the free LEARN NC 2009 Interactive Conference, to be held on Thursday, October 1. The morning face-to-face session is full, but we’ve got plenty of room in the afternoon from 1-5 p.m. And tune in at 3 p.m. to see yours truly and contributor Jason Don Forsythe presenting on various productivity tools for teachers.

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LEARN NC 2009 Interactive Conference
Discover. Teach. Share.

Thursday, October 1st
1 p.m. to 5 p.m.

LEARN NC, the organization that makes Instructify possible, will hold its 2009 conference on October 1. North Carolina All educators can attend the conference for free online.

Though the face-to-face morning session is full, you can log in virtually and get lots of great information during the afternoon.

What to expect

In addition to a presentation from Instructify writers Bill Ferris and Jason Don Forsythe, you’ll see sessions on sharing free resources, technology integration, professional development strategies, and more. Interact with fellow educators via web conference software, Twitter, and the online back channel. Virtual participants may join for the entire afternoon or for whatever portion of the conference is convenient. For a full rundown, please see the conference agenda.

Who should attend?

Teachers, media specialists, technology coordinators, professional development coordinators, administrators, and other leaders in curriculum and instruction will all benefit from this conference. Whether you are teaching students in the classroom, or working at the school or system level developing curriculum and delivering professional development, the LEARN NC conference will provide new ideas and identify opportunities for collaboration to help you make the best use of your scarcest resource… time!

Cost

Free.

Technical Requirements

Minimal.  If you’ve never participated in a virtual conference before, there’s nothing to fear.  The only hardware you’ll need is a computer with speakers, and the only software you’ll need is a current version of Flash Media Player.  We’ll provide you with all you need to test your set-up in advance of the conference so that connecting is a cinch.

Register

Register for the LEARN NC 2009 Interactive Conference and discover, teach and share with LEARN NC.

Six Ways to Transform your Presentation
I’m still learning the whole presentation thing. I’ve probably made every classic presentation mistake, from mumbling to mistaking my PowerPoint slide show for an outline. Stepcase Lifehack has a great list of presentation tips for n00bs like me. Number one: ditch PowerPoint. I tried this for my last presentation and found it very liberating. This info will help you prepare a conference presentation, make your daily teaching more engaging, or come in handy for the forensics team.

26 Must-Have Free Fonts
Have you deleted Comic Sans from your computer yet? If not, I’ll wait here while you do that. Good. Now that that overused typeface is out of your life forever, what will you use for your bulletin boards and newsletters? Presidia Creative brings you 26 free fonts that will make your art projects and handouts look more slick. You’ll never need Comic Sans again.

Five Best Free Data Recovery Tools
Nothing places hard drives in more peril than finals week. At this time of year, the vengeful god Murphy inflicts horrible maladies upon the data of students and teachers worldwide for not heeding his law. Fortunately, atonement is within reach. Lifehacker has a rundown of five data-recovery tools that can bring Little Johnny’s term paper back to life just in time for him to print it out so his dog can eat it. -BILL FERRIS

Photo credit: Photocapy on Flickr.

In these very difficult economic times, education is feeling the pinch. In my district alone, we’ve had to trim nearly $15 million from the budget over the past two years. The unfortunate thing is when funds get tight, opportunities for professional development go by the wayside. 1105Media is trying to change that.

1105 MEDIA provides integrated business-to-business information and media. They are also the company responsible for putting on many technology conferences throughout the country, including the Florida Educational Technology Conference held in Orlando each January. FETC is one of the largest and longest-running conventions of its kind. FETC brings together educators from all over the world to talk about everything technology. Up until now, you had to spend quite a bit of cash to get to enjoy the offerings at FETC. This is about to change.

On April 23 from 11 a.m. until 7 p.m. EST, the award-winning producers of FETC and T.H.E. Journal invite you to participate in a FREE virtual conference for K-12 educators and technology staff exploring the most pressing issues related to 21st Century Skills. The FETC Virtual Conference and Expo 2009 promises to be almost as good as attending a conference in person. There will be a keynote speaker, from Dr. Steven Paine, State Superintendent of West Virginia Department of Education, and many other break-out sessions to attend…all virtually. “No travel expenses. No line. No out-of-office downtime. It’s 100 percent online and interactive.” There will also be a virtual exhibit hall where you can check out the vendors’ products, enter drawings, and be able to pick up their information.

Registration is required ahead of time. You can access the registration site by clicking here.

I would also strongly suggest checking out the demo, which gives you an inside look at the conference and how this whole thing is going to work.

Be sure to clear your calendar on April 23, 2009 from 11 a.m. until  7 p.m. EST for what should be an excellent professional development opportunity.

I’m at the NCTIES conference in Raleigh. The intro session featured Vicki Davis of the Cool Cat Teacher Blog. Renowned for using nifty tools in her teaching, she shared a great philosophy for integrating technology into your classroom: focus on what you want to DO, and THEN pick your tools. Deciding you want a blog because that’s what everybody else is doing isn’t going to lead to a good learning experience for students.

In my first morning session, Wilson Diaz from Chapel Hill High School talked about how using the Google suite of apps (Docs, Groups, Calendar, etc.) helped him with both parents and students. He hit all the high points, such as using Google Docs for collaboration and such. However, he also noted that by using Google as a class information tool, it stopped parents from calling him with the same old questions. You know the ones — “If I only knew Little Johnny was having problems, I  could have done something sooner!” or “Little Suzy told me she didn’t have any homework.” And so on.

In addition, Diaz said he uses Google to post assignments and due dates. That means, for example, if a kid loses a worksheet, he or she can download it immediately, rather than wait until after school to stop by the teacher’s room. It was a nice presentation on how to use a series of tools to eliminate headaches from the teaching process.

Overall, I enjoy NCTIES because it’s more hopeful than other conferences. It focuses on possibilities rather than problems. Don’t get me wrong, people discuss problems here all the time, but the solutions — usually creative and incorporating technology in ways that will engage students — sound like opportunities rather than obstacles. -BILL FERRIS

Sometimes I think about how the internet has become such a dominant presence in our lives and how it’s changed everything about how we communicate with each other around the world, and I get scared. I mean, I once used Skype in order to have a quick meeting with a professor who was in China, and it was like we weren’t even half the world away from each other. We were just looking at each other and talking about normal stuff like we would in person. With all of these new web-based technologies, sometimes I worry that we will never ever have to leave our houses again in order to do the things we do everyday. That’s the scary part. What if the internet turns us all into reclusive hermits who never have to leave the house because we can teach our classes, attend our meetings, and meet our friends for lunch over the internet?!?!

Contributing to my paranoia and hysteria is Dimdim, a web-based conferencing tool that makes it easy to not only have a web conversation, but also allows you to show pictures, PowerPoints, PDFs, live screens, and even video as part of your conversation. With Dimdim, you don’t even need a desktop client like Skype or Outlook, and it’s totally free. Basically, it is so advanced and so effective, you may never have to leave your house again.

Dimdim is a great site to use to set up a “virtual classroom” and share class materials on the web, or even to gather colleagues from around the world for a quick meeting. Just remember that even though the internet has made it so that we don’t have to go outside anymore, you should step out and see the sun every once in a while. -LAUREN FROHNE

Dimdim

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For those of you who use PowerPoint (or are willing to, when it’s useful), you might consider creating a series of short slide shows that can run in automated mode as your students are entering your classroom. I’ve been doing this for several years now at conference presentations, and it works really well to get the audience engaged and warmed up as they come in and find seats. They actually start talking to each other about the session topic!

I use a combination of these kinds of things for my conference pre-presentation shows:

1. Questions and answers (a la movie trivia quizzes while you’re waiting for a movie to start)
2. Quotes related to the presentation
3. Questions without answers that make people think about issues that will be raised
4. Facts, figures, charts, or other simple data I want to reinforce

Teachers can use this to remind students of content from the previous class, or as a way to introduce content in the current class. Or perhaps as an additional reminder to students about upcoming tests or papers.

You can set up any slide show in Power Point to run automatically, and you can determine the amount of time each slide will display before the next one appears. -ELIZABETH A. EVANS

Elizabeth A. Evans works for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s Information Technology Services.

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If you read Instructify every day, it’s safe to say you like finding nifty tools for your classroom. Believe it or not, there are more places than this one to find out about these resources (wait, don’t leave! Come back!).

Vicki Davis, owner of the Cool Cat Teacher Blog, is one such teacher who enjoys spreading the word about useful ed-technology. This Thursday, August 28 at 8 p.m., you can talk to her live and sort-of-in-person via Second Life in her presentation, “New School Year: Cool Tools Here.” Davis will share some of the tools and tips she (and hopefully you too) will use this coming year.

Davis’ session is part of “The Future Is Already Here,” a series of interactive professional development sessions from USDLC (you might remember their session, “BANNED in the Bookhenge” from earlier this year). The series is designed to give teachers a chance to hear from and talk with outstanding teachers who integrate technology such as Web 2.0, 1:1 computing, robotics, or serious gaming / 3D Web into their everyday teaching.

If you’re not sure about this whole social networking through Second Life thing, you can still take part through Internet radio and chat at  www.Literacy2Learn.org. USDLC plans more of these events throughout the year, so keep checking back. Isn’t it nice to know there are so many places to find out about great tech resources for teachers? All I ask is that you don’t forget about Instructify. -BILL FERRIS

Cool Cat Teacher Blog

The Future Is Already Here

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You’ve finally gotten a laptop to work with, and maybe you’ve started to use it in the classroom. Now you’re going to conferences, and you’ve heard about people “blogging” and using laptops at conferencing, but you’re wondering how to do this, and why?

First, think of blogging as a more efficient and effective way to take and share notes from your conference experience. Next, you don’t have to have or keep a blog to more effectively share what you learn. Now that we have that out of the way let’s think about this some more. You are probably being sent to that conference so that you can learn lots of new stuff, and then come back and share what you learn with others. Traditionally, you’d take handwritten notes, but unless you take shorthand, even minimal touch typing skills (I’m only a 35-50 wpm gal myself) are much more efficient than hand-writing notes. Give up the note pad, and use your laptop. In electronic form your notes can go to the whole district, and save you the awkwardness of reading your chicken scratch notes at your department meeting.

Now for the how part. I recommend this great article on blogging conferences from the TED site. As they point out, “Even if you don’t blog, it’s worth reading before your next conference, for tips on getting the most out of your time in the audience.” Here are some highlights:

1. Set up your documents in advance, and type in background links (their website, blog, who they work for, etc.) and the name of the presenter before the session.
2. Arrive early and have your physical setup (the back or somewhere near an outlet. My tip is to bring a good surge protector with a long cord - mine is eight feet long). Keep your laptop fully charged and plugged in whenever possible, so that it is ready to go should you not have power access.
3. Check in with others who are blogging or using laptops, to share notes and fill in any gaps.

But what should you use to take notes? Start with your word processing software of choice. If you are not publishing on the Web but will be emailing the notes, what I often do at district meetings is take notes in Power Point. This forces you to summarize, because if it won’t fit on one slide without reducing the font below 24 point, you are probably writing too much. Whatever you use, save often (most blogging editors have a way to save without publishing).

How do you share the information if you don’t have a blog of your own? Use your school/district LMS, email it, put a wiki page up, or put it on a Pageflake.

Now, if you are working on a blog, and expecting wifi at your conference, you may be disappointed. Some convention centers like to charge for access, some conferences (especially education technology ones) have been having their wifi overwhelmed by all of us coming in with our spiffy new wifi laptops. Do not count on having online access all the time, be prepared to type in Word now, and post and share later. -ALICE MERCER

How to blog a confeence via TED

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You may have had the opportunity to read this earlier piece on Scott Elias and how to improve Power Point presentations. Dean Shareski adds his two-cents to the discussion in YouTube - PowerPoint Extreme Makeover, which gives concrete before-and-after examples with a few helpful tips.

The highlights:

1. More high-quality visuals: use a picture to not just illustrate but to tell the story;
2. Don’t try to make your PowerPoint stand alone, your delivery counts;
3. Don’t show the text you are reading in your narration;
4. Make the text you use stand out using contrast and fonts;
5. Get a remote clicker.

Stop killing your audience’s attention and start making killer presentations with these helpful tips. -ALICE MERCER

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You may have heard your students talking about questing or getting their epic mounts or selling bars of gold on the auction house. If you have, you’re probably dealing with a World of Warcraft player.

As a long-standing gamer and a doctoral student interested in virtual worlds and games and their potential use for teaching, I was thrilled to learn that a recent issue of Science magazine called for participation in a unique conference – one that would take place within the massively multiplayer online game, World of Warcraft (WoW). For three days in May, participants in the Convergence of the Real and the Virtual conference created characters and joined players from around the world to participate in scholarly discussions about the game while hanging out in a virtual world.

The conference was comprised of three sessions: one about the possibilities for research within the game, one about the relationship between the game and the “real world,” and one about the future of such virtual worlds.

I was particularly drawn to the second session because it featured both Constance Steinkuehler who researches the potential for learning and literacy in games, and Julian Dibbell, who researches cultural and sociological aspects of games. These scholars are two of my most favorite within this community. This particular session shed some light on the learning potential in games.

Steinkuehler believes there’s serious learning and knowledge creation that occurs as a result of playing WoW. For instance one conference participant related a story about how his son wanted to find a specific pet within the game (yes, players can have virtual pets in the game) and spent several hours researching how to find and obtain such a pet. This example uniquely illustrates the development of critical thinking, research skills, and strategic planning - indispensable skills in high school, college and beyond. Other threads of discussion in this session included the notions of:

1. How real is a friend in WoW?
2. Are the relationships that are formed in-game meaningful?
3. Is the social space of the game completely different from real life, or does it simply mimic real life?
4. Can leadership be learned in WoW?
5. Can skills developed within the game world transfer to the real world?

If you are interested in learning more about the potential for learning in games, I recommend you start with Steinkuehler’s work. After all, 10 million people play WoW; and some of them might be your students! -LAURA CHRISTOPHERSON

Spring is conference season. That means getting out of class, baked chicken hotel luncheons, and another free tote bag to stuff into your closet. If it turns out the conference was overbooked and the chicken overdone, take solace that the event won’t be a total wash if you convert your tote into a messenger bag.

Flickr user duganj has created a step-by-step photo tutorial on how to transform those ubiquitous canvas bags from swag into swank. You’ll need a tote bag (you’ve probably got hundreds from various conferences) and sewing skills and supplies, or at least access to the home ec room. It’s a great way to carry around homework or your laptop, and you’ll know you at least got something useful out of your latest conference. -BILL FERRIS

HOW TO - Tote Bag to Messenger bag via Make
Convert a tote to a messenger bag via Lifehacker

As if you don’t already have a tough time getting students to read, schools keep banning the books kids actually like. Young adult literature is a frequently challenged genre, probably due to the fact that the teenaged protagonists often act like, you know, teenagers.

If you’re passionate about kids being able to access books they love, you’ll want to check out BANNED in the Bookhenge on Monday, March 31. In the young adult lit corner will be Frances Bradburn, Chair of the American Library Association’s first Printz Committee. She’ll speak about censorship, intellectual freedom, and how to advocate for banned and challenged young adult books.

BANNED in the Bookhenge is a virtual conference that will take place in NC State University’s Bookhenge in Second Life (if you’re unfamiliar with Second Life, it’s a 3D online virtual world that’s both cool and well beyond the scope of this article). If you’re not ready to jump into Second Life’s virtual playground, you can still listen in via Internet radio.

Getting kids excited about books is part of a teacher’s job. Help make sure they’ll be able to read the books they enjoy. -BILL FERRIS

BANNED in the Bookhenge

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