|  | | | | By Maas Dan on 7/29/2008Simply outstanding thanks to the great CASE staff and spectacular speakers... including our own Karl Fisch and Anne Smith...Read More » | By Maas Dan on 7/22/2008This evening, the CASE Coordinating Council welcomed a guest from China... who was still in China.Read More » | By Michael Porter on 7/10/2008 11:00 AMFinal reflection, for now, on NECC 2008. In many ways, NECC is the perfect complement to the TIE conference. NECC brings in speakers and practitioners from all over the country, and even the world. It’s intriguing, and in many ways validating, to see and hear what’s going on in other places. I’m happy to report that as I sat listening to many speakers, I could honestly say, “Oh, we do that.” I don’t pretend to think that we do it all, or that we do it all perfectly, but I would put our teachers and their practices on par with their counterparts from across the globe. In fact, I believe that we have teachers who should be presenters at NECC; they’re simply that good.
Likewise, the TIE conference is an opportunity to witness effective strategies by educators in using technology in the classroom. Two things are distinctly different about TIE—there are more classroom teachers presenting, and there are computers at all the sessions, which encourages active learning. As we have in the past, Littleton... Read More » | By Michael Porter on 7/2/2008 8:12 AMSo a quick day two update. As I mentioned last post, I was excited to attend a session by Ian Jukes. Ian is always on the bleeding edge of the educational technology world. As a former professional football player, Ian attacks every speech as if he is playing in the Super Bowl. His mantra: Kids today are digital, and unless we’re fluent in digital mediums, our kids will simply unplug us. To be clear though, Ian doesn’t want to throw traditional literacies out the window. He correctly notes that schools are important social agencies for the transmission of culture. What’s different today though, is that students aren’t simply receiving culture—they’re producing it.
After that, I stuck around for a session by Will Richardson of the role of social networking in teacher learning communities. As Chris Marchetti quickly picked up, Web 2.0 tools could have a tremendously powerful affect on the PLC work in LPS and other places. The key though, according to Will, is that purpose precedes protocol. In other words, until teachers understand why they are participating in an online community (to refine practice to aid their students) they will not buy into the concept of connecting asynchronously.
... Read More » | By Michael Porter on 7/1/2008 11:16 AMOops. Started the morning off by going to the wrong session, but sometimes detours lead to interesting destinations. I had hoped to go to a Web 2.0 and Marzano’s instructional strategies class, but it was booked up 25 minutes before the session even began. I was interested in the Marzano class, as that is the premise that Brent Wilson and I are using for our IT 6515 class at the University of Colorado, Denver. Feel free to see our class work (and think about making a contribution via the discussion tab if you feel so inclined) at http://it6515sharedresources.wikispaces.com/ .
So instead, I wound up at a digital editing for elementary students session. It’s a bit heavy on the tool process, and perhaps glosses over the curriculum connections, but reminds me of something I heard at the TIE conference. There, the keynote speaker, Dr. Jason Ohler, defined literacy in a profound manner: Literacy is the ability to “write” in the medium in which one “reads.” In other words, we know how much video students take in—can they produce and publish in that medium?
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