If you have to go to a professional development conference on a Saturday, the Geo Tech Conference isn't bad. Chad Pregracke, the keynote speaker, was fabulous. He is the founder of Living Lands & Waters. His non-profit cleans up rivers and has expanded into conservation education. Although I had a few feelings of inadequacy after listening to what he'd done with his life, hearing Mr. Pregracke speak was well worth my time.
Ringing Up Mobile Phones was the first session I attended. Vicky Allen from at&t was the speaker. Ms. Allen offered many suggestions on how to incorporate cell phones in the classroom. She suggested many useful sites and programs which can all be found on her wiki: http://vickiwiki.pbworks.com/. The most exciting idea she shared was filmonthefly.ning.com. A PBS station in Orange County, CA challenges people to make educational videos entirely on their mobile phones. Participants sign up on the website and the contest organizers text a topic to them on a certain day at a certain time. The participants then make a video on their phone. Past topics include Earth Day and Pi Day. I was inspired to have my students make mobile phone videos about the fall of the Soviet Union--more in another blog. While I enjoyed all the information, the most interesting part of the session was hearing about the cell phone policies in some schools. Yes, my school has a cell phone policy, but the administrators will not be upset with me or a student if the student uses their cell phone in the classroom for educational purposes. Some teachers do not feel they can allow students to use cell phones in the classroom without getting in trouble with the administration.
The second session I attended was Getting Inside the Black Box. The black box is the students' mind. The presenter, Matt Kloser, seemed to be an expert in assessment. This session had little to do with technology and more to do with formative assessment. Mr. Kloser did touch briefly on technology in discussing the effectiveness of learner response systems. He argued learner response systems were only effective when coupled with peer instruction. Kloser described the process of peer instruction as follows: the teacher asks a difficult question and has each learner respond, the results are shown but the correct answer is not given, students work with peers to re-evaluate their answers, all students answer the question again, and finally the correct answer is given. The number of correct answers on the second attempt increases dramatically. This does sound like it could be a useful technique with the learner response systems. I do not agree with Kloser that this is the only way they are effective. Kloser argues the learner response system does not allow teachers to see the thought process of students; therefore, it is not valuable formative assessment. While I can't see the student process at arriving at the answer, I do know if the student can arrive at the correct answer. Furthermore, Kloser is a math/science person where "the process" is more important.
Setting Up a Personal Learning Network was the third session I attended. Paul Wood from Bishop Dunne was the presenter. Most of the session was about how to use Twitter. This was valuable as I've never really understood why I would want to have a Twitter account. I still haven't created one, but I now know there is more on Twitter than the inane ramblings of Demi Moore and John Mayer. Mr. Wood was also very knowledgeable about scholars in educational technology, recommending several blogs and wikis. More information can be found at Paul Wood's wiki: http://paulrwood.wikispaces.com.
The last session I attended was On the Silk Road: Traveling the Trade Routes with GIS. Something to do with mapping the Silk Road with a program I do not own and would have to buy. A valuable idea but I think there are free software programs that could do something similar.
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