Teach42

UPDATE - You can find copies of the presentation slides and resources here: The New Permanent Record, Making RSS Work For You, Going Mobile

*PHEW*

I’m not exactly what you’d call a ’seasoned’ presenter.  I mean, I’ve done quite a bit of presenting for teachers at my old school, and I did teach for years (which is basically presenting for students on a daily basis).  But there’s a big different in my mind between that stuff and presenting for teachers at conferences.  I’ve only done about 10 of those.  And there’s an even bigger difference beteween normal presenting and doing a keynote, which I’m a complete newbie at.  I know, I know, it’s all psychological and in my head, but it certainly seems like a big difference to me.  Regardless, when I got asked to do a keynote and two other presentations at the Connecting and Learning Conference in Holland, MIchigan, it was a pretty darn big deal to me.  And stressed me out more than just a little bit!

So the past few weeks I’ve been doing a ton of research and learning a whole lot of new stuff, but I haven’t really shared too much of it because my focus has been on figuring out how to fit it all in to the presentations.  I gotta admit, some of the stuff I’ve found has really blown me away though.  If you subscribe to my del.icio.us account, you’ve probably seen the flurry of activity, and maybe caught a few new ones yourself.

The keynote presentation was called The New Permanent Record.  In a nutshell, it took a realistic look at what kids are doing online, the long term effects of their actions and what we as educators can do about it.  I think it might have come off a little more ‘gloom and doom’ than I wanted, but I was really hoping that it would be like a splash of ice cold water that wakes people up a bit.  One thing I did while preparing the presentation was study the Holland, MIchigan ‘metro’ on Xanga.  Unbelievably, I found out that over 100 different people (mostly teenagers) updated their profile within a 90 minute timespan.  Think about that one.  Over one person changing their profile per minute in a town the size of Holland.  And that’s just on Xanga.  The point is, the issue is much more widespread than people truly believe and it’s a larger problem than just a few kids posting photos of themselves with beer cans

The presentation went well was actually webcast by the WorldBridge’s crew.  I’m not sure how many people popped on to listen to it, but I saw people from Belgium, Moroco, Canada and Australia in there!  That was incredibly cool, big thanks to Jeff Flynn for putting that together!  I’m hoping that they got a recording of it so I can listen to it later.

The second presentation I did was called Going Mobile and focused on using disruptive technologies in the classroom.  Wait, let me rephrase, CONSTRUCTIVELY using disruptive technologies in the classroom (I got yer back, Wes)!  The presentation revolved around two ideas:  1) There’s a heck of alot of educational things you can do with a PSP or Cell phone and 2) Schools could save a whole lot of money if they took advantage of the technology students are currently hiding in their backpacks.  It’s a fun presentation, an extended version of the one I did for EdTech Connect.  I’ve found some incredible resources using mobile technology, and I get the feeling I barely scratched the surface!

The last presentation was a little tough. I was asked to prepare at least one presentation that would really challenge people.  People who already had their own blogs and aggregators and wanted to know what else they could be doing.  So I created a presentation called Making RSS Work For You.  It featured highlights from the bazillions of sites that now offer RSS feeds, showed some of the more innovative ways it’s being used, and then some ideas for integrating unusual RSS feeds in your own site.  However, when I asked how many people had their own blog, about 10 people raised their hands.  That was out of around 80 or 90.  Then, when I asked how many knew what RSS was, I got three hands raised halfway up.  Yikes.  Not exactly an ideal audience for an advanced RSS session!  So, the advanced presentation quickly turned into an introductory session.  I did my best, but I think I went over most peoples’ heads.  I definitely could have done a lot better on that one had I been better prepared for that eventuality.  Regardless, I got some really nice comments after this one and it definitely struck a chord with some people.  I’m gonna chalk it up under the ‘pretty successful learning experiences’ column.

I did also get to attend a few sessions.  I got to attend about half of Jim Wenzloff’s "It’s not your father’s Internet" presentation.  Amongst other things, I learned about an incredibly cool site called Protopage.  Think OS X’s Dashboard (or Konfabulator for you Windows folks) but web based.  Very interesting and on my "To play with" list.  He was also way more bold than me.  Had the guts to put the words "RSS" and "Ajax" on the same slide in his Powerpoint!  Heh, I limited myself to just RSS. 

For the final session of the day, I hung out with Kristin Furdak, the Michigan DEN manager, as she did a hands on session about Bloglines and iTunes.  It’s always tough to have the last slot in the day, but the class was really into it.  She gave the group plenty of ‘play’ time and everyone got a really good start into the world of aggregation.  If you want to do an intro to either of those tools, her presentation is definitely a great place to start.  She was planning on ending early, but most people wound up staying late!  It was a great chance to let everything soak in after an incredibly busy day.

Big ups to Andy Mann for putting this whole thing together.  I heard nothing but good stuff from everybody, and from my own perspective everything when incredibly well.  Amazingly, I didn’t hear about a single tech issue from any of the attendees.  Pretty amazing considering the number of desktops and laptops involved!  A great one day conference that I was honored to be a part of.

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