While processing why the experience was different, I began to think about what was different. First was the increased number of people who attended. Rather than being a smaller group of 80, it was a larger group of nearly 200 people. As you scale up a project, you have to wonder what the critical mass is before the conference becomes more unwieldy. Maybe the limit was crossed yesterday. There were fewer sessions in each during each block and there were more who wanted to present. The idea of voting using technology got in the way of just a simple raising of hands scheduling on the fly. As a result, Sylvia Martinez’s session on the reflective teacher researcher was got canceled in mid-day because of a the high demand of another session. It was unfortunate and a conversation that I will personally regret not happening.

A second factor was the venue itself. Like last years, the room was set up in industrial model rows. But what didn’t happen like last year is that the main room was not reconfigured into a larger circle where everyone could be included in the conversation. I don’t think that it was intentional to try to exclude individuals, but rather grew. Instead, their was a closed circle of insiders and a place for lurkers to sit outside the circle. It really felt like junior high all over again. In the second room, the tables remained in straight, industrial period model rows and the conversation seemed to be directed at us. At Web 2.0 smackdown, there was a desire to allow multiple voices to be heard, but the standing room only nature of the space lost the intamicy that we experienced last year. Only in the sessions held in the Second Life space did it resemble an open discussion forum where ideas were freely shared.

Thirdly, there seemed to be a desire to twit out the sessions, create streams (audio and video) of the conversation, and create back channels to facilitate the conversation. At Atlanta, the focus was on having conversations with people without the intrusion of these other methods of communication. For me, it prevented people from being fully engaged and authentic. It happened a few times, such as the Shirky discussion, where there was a stream, but it did interfere with the connections and conversations. The back channel, which took root three days after EBC Atlanta, got in the way.

Lastly, there seemed to be more individuals who came with a personal agenda of self-promotion. There seemed to be more commercial connections and individuals concerned with being there and making a name. As discussed many other places, the presence of Pearson’s film crew added to this feeling.

I do not blame anyone for this. It is part of the growing pains that can occur as more individuals become interested in participating. I hope that all of us who are participating will be inclusive and supportive of others. We have to expand the conversation beyond the echo chamber. There will always be missteps and lessons which care learned. Let’s continue the conversation to make EduBloggerCon DC an event woth attending.

I want to thank Steve Hargadon for all of his efforts to make the event happen. Without his leadership, we would not have something to complain about. But instead of just complaining, why don’t some of us offer to help make this better, become involved in the solution, rather than being part of the problem.

Since this is my first visit to San Antonio, I went to visit the Alamo. While touring through the grounds and revisiting history, an idea emerged in my mind. The Texans were reacting to the shift towards the Centralist government led by Santa Ana. The free form nature of the Blogger’s Cafe is going to be under seige by the scheduled nature of NECC Unplugged. So why don’t we take up arms, retreat into the garrison, and fight for our rights to preserve the informal learning environment that is the Blogger’s Cafe, a place where we can come together and be able to reflect and connect in the ways that we want to or need to. I do not want to be barraged by a continuous stream of more presentations. I want to carve out a space to be able to absorb ideas and make new connections.

I believe that there is a place for NECC Unplugged and people being able to have quick shares. Bur I do believe that the scheduled nature of this venture, while being created for all of the right reasons, is keeping those who may be late to the party, the ability to share.

I guess I am advocating for a rallying call to arms, a reclaiming of the Blogger’s cafe space. LIke Travis, Crockett, and Bowie, and the other Texans, many whose statues are in the hallway right outside of the Blogger’s Cafe,  I am willing to defend the turf from the invasion and instrusion in order to allow for those, who like me, just want a place for informal learning and reflection. Anyone want to join?

Fruits and Vegetables - One has to pay attention to making sure that you get proper nurishment, including fruits and vegetables. Too many fast foods will tire you out.

Exercise - I find that a good walk to and from the convention center to my hotel, even though there are shuttles, clears my mind and allows me to have some quiet, substained thinking.

Cherish people - engage in conversations. The synchronous feedback that thinking and debating with great thinkers helps me learn professionally and grow.

I hope to see connect and converse with you at the conference.

Ryan Bretag alerted me to a post on the Langwitches blog, about paying attention, which I believe is relevant to survive a conference like NECC.

While at NECC, in addition to listening to those EdTech folks who are known on a first name basis (Will, Davids, Wes, Sheryl, Hall, etc.), make sure that you connect with those who are around you. You may find that they may have something to teach you, challenge your thoughts, or allow you to make a connection that did not exist before.

While at NECC, don’t be afraid or scared to share your thoughts and opinions with others. You may teach them something new, challenge their thoughts, or allow them to make connections that they had not been able to make before.

While on the vendor floor, don’t be blinded by the bright lights, loud sounds, and enticements for free stuff. Look to the periphery to see those companies who may not have been able to waste money. They often have solutions which will allow you to meet your goals. This is where I have found many great solutions, including being an early adopter GIS software in NECC-MInneapolis.

Lastly, I have found it important to schedule some down time upon my return, to decompress and detox. This year, with the July 4th three day holiday so close to the closing, will help me have some fun, traditional time with my family when I return.

What I really enjoy is the conversations that I am able to have with teachers and administrators during this time of the year. Since there are no bell schedules, no distractions to all of the essential aspects of school, like meeting with students and other faculty, we are able to have the deep conversations which have a greater chance of affecting change than we are able to have during the course of the school year.

During the first two weeks of “summer vacation”, I have been able to:

Meet with our new eighth grade humanities team. After introductions and hearing what their goals for the use of technology in the classroom are, we were able to have conversations about new technologies and communications tools which may help them meet their goals. They will now have the summer to think, play, and create to determine whether they are the right tools to use.

Have a Technology Refresh with the Division Heads/Principals at our school. I was able to show them the tools we have been using in various projects and conduct interesting and deep conversations on how these tools can be used throughout the various grades/departments in school. While we were showing technology, we mainly talked about how to change teaching and learning practices in the upcoming year.

Meet with our 9th and 10th grade History teachers, who are looking to reshuffle the history curriculum in 2009-2010. We have been able to talk from the beginning about how the new tools can help students learn and I have been able to shift them in their examination and development of new essential questions by using the principles of Understanding by Design. It is been great to watch their shift in thinking.

There have been countless other smaller conversations which I have currently had, with new teachers, administrators, and current teachers. I am also scheduled to meet with other groups as the summer progresses and other teachers visit campus. There are new units on the election, using uStream and screencasts in the classroom, and ideas to implement tablet pcs that are still be had. And I look forward to each and every one.

First, thank you for putting on a great conference. This gathering of educators who are looking to embed technology into their classrooms is one of the highlights of my year. I gather many new ideas and make many great friends from the conversations that you enable me to have by assembling this massive group of people.

Secondly, thank you for providing the space for the second EduBloggerCon this year. I had gone to many NECCs in the past, but this single event provided for me more contact with people who inspire me, challenge my thinking, and have helped mentor me to become a better educator.

Thirdly, thank you for providing a large number of audio and video podcasts of sessions that I can access later. With a conference this large, it is always difficult to make choices between equally interesting sessions. Also, it gives me the benefit of sharing the ideas and thoughts with colleagues of mine who are not able to go, either because of conflicts in time or budget constraints.

Lastly, thank you for amending your policy on “amateur” recording for non-commercial use. Your swift action shows me that you are trying to be in touch with your constituent group and that you are open to change. As someone who has had to attend a few conferences throught one of the variety of new communication means, both synchronous and asynchronous methods, it does not replace the excitement of being at the conference live. What it does do is:

• Create a desire to attend the conference live
• Provide access to the information if personal conditions arise, if the distance to the conference, or if school and/or personal budgetary shortfalls prohibit an individuals ability to attend the conference.

I look forward to your attempts on how to make all of the sessions available to the largest number of teachers. Knowing that they can be inspired, mentored, learn, and grow in a way the meets their needs is great modeling of the techniques and the tools that you are supporting.

Sincerely,

Vinnie Vrotny

I hope that the success, the hype, the anticipation, and the growth surrounding both of these events and venues from Atlanta will not exceed the reality and create a let down.

For me, however, just being able to sit around so many great people and thinkers, engaging inconversations, sharing, and planning will satisfy my thirst for learning and personal growth. I am a sponge awaiting to absorb as much as I can.

See many of you soon

During this academic year, I have had many personal obstacles which I have had deal with. The most significant were the health issues that my eldest daughter dealt with from August 2007 through December 2007. She was diagnosed with Crohn’s Disease and I am please to share how proud I am of her that she has “survived” her sophomore year. It was a struggle for her to make up the work caused by her six week absence from school, but she finished her finals yesterday and seems to have achieved a reasonable level of academic success, hopefully maintaining a B average, while also participating in JV soccer in the spring. She downplays her achievement, but she is doing a phenomenal job of managing her illness.

The Crohn’s and Colitis Foundation (CCFA) has a fundraising walk, Taking Steps, in various cities around the country. Our high school’s community service club and I are collaborating and have set up a fundraising team, Team North Shore, for this years edition of the walk. We are participating in the walk in downtown Chicago on Saturday, June 7th on the Great Lawn just east of Soldier Field. Registration for the walk is free and be done either online or in person from 5:30 p.m. - 7:00 p.m. The 3 mile walk kicks off at 7:00 p.m. and will feature entertainment and hopefully, a wonderful evening along the Chicago Lakefront.

This is the major fundraising event for the CCFA. CCFA provides a wonderful network of resources for all of the affected by the diseases. They provide forums for those who have been diagnosed with the disease and their families so that they can become educated and share resources on new treatments and news. They provide free teleconferences for the members of their network which are informative and helpful. I have been received the same benefits from my participation in the CCFA networks for the past six months as I have from the variety of education learning networks, blogs, nings, and twitter, I have immersed myself in over the past 20 months. Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) are important elements of our lives which helps us interact with others that we may not have had access to before.

I welcome anyone who will be in the Chicago to register for this free event and join us in the walk and show your support. For those of you who aren’t able to attend, I would hope that you would consider giving a donation to CCFA in the name of our team to help them maintain their resources and educational opportunities.

Thank you for letting me indulge in something personal.

So I turned to my del.icio.us network. Using the search terms “wmv” and “flv”, I found Media Convert, (word of caution - Media Convert is an ad supported network and several of the ads were of a questionable nature to view in a K-12 environment. For adult use only) a free online converter. Converting the projects from a .wmv to a .wmv format, I was then able to upload them into VoiceThread.

Embedded, you will see the current progress of the group, with about half of the projects turned in, converted, and uploaded. They are looking very good, for one week’s worth of work, especially when they have also been discussing the book that they have been reading, On Paradise Drive.

13 Days that Have Changed America

I know that I want to show some highlights of the 13 Days that Changed America project, because I feel that the process that we are all going through on this project, Kevin, the student, and I, is an excellent model of what we should be aiming for. This is a collaborative project, with individual elements, that allow the students to first begin to answer an excellent question, research the event, analyze the significance of the event, and presenting their findings to a global audience, so that they can get feedback from others. There are creative uses of new technologies (wikis, VoiceThread, and Digital Story Telling software) for them to craft their message. This is truly a collaboration, with teachers serving as guides and mentors to the students on this project, as equals, not as dispensers of knowledge.

Kevin suggested that in the faculty meeting, that a podcast consisting of the reflections of the students to this project would be a valuable and be a more authentic voice to share with the faculty. Agreeing with Kevin, I began to think about how we would go about and complete this. While thinking, I had an “aha” moment, why not use the tools and technology to enable this.

Enter Gabcast, a service that allows for someone to call into a phone (land line or cell phone) into a toll-free number, and with a channel number and PIN, record their message. I first found out about this service while “attending” a session at the K12 Online Conference last October and I have been seeking the right project to incorporate this. I shared this option with Kevin, who was very excited about allowing students to use their phones and cell phones as an experiment to record their reflections.

In five minutes, we came up with the following questions we are asking the students to share their thoughts about this project. They are:

• Did the elements of the project(research, analysis, collaborative learning) reflect the nature of the course?
• How is the creation of a digital movie an effective way to present an argument as opposed to writing a paper?
• What is the benefit of working collaboratively as opposed to working independently on a project such as this?
• Was this an effective wrap up project for this AP US History course?
• What are the benefit of using new technologies (PhotoStory, VoiceThread, Gabcast) on a project such as this?
• How you change the project?

I am anxious to hear their thoughts and will mash up them up in a podcast that I will share via this space. Now, I have to finish up my segment, which I will try to share my reflections on the process over the weekend.