Monday, July 31, 2006

Online Video Sites

Okay, it's summer vacation and I decided to take time to check out some of the interesting videos that have been "talked" about on the blogs and are available on the online video site of Google Video.

Sure there are many, many videos on those sites that I don't want to watch. However, some of these videos are just amazing things to show students who are interested in making videos that include many different video-taking and video-making techniques.

(For Google Video, you have to download the player to your computer (either platform) from this page to watch the videos in a normal-size window with good resolution, rather than the fuzzy resolution of the site. http://video.google.com/playerdownload/)

Some interesting ones:

Amazing Stop Motion Video

Invisible Board

Amazing Rollerblade Rail Grind

Hall Pass (my favorite student-produced video of all time!)

And even all types of technology tutorials for teachers and students found in this search of Google Video!

Kathy Schrock

Technorati tags: /

Sunday, July 23, 2006

Building Learning Communities

Last week was Alan November's "Building Learning Communities" Conference held in the Boston area. This is my sixth year attending and presenting at this conference, and it truly is all about the conversations and the community-building! The audience is diverse in their nationalities, their roles in education, and their ideas, which just ratchets the conversation up even that much more! Congrats to Alan on putting together another great group of educators!

To see (and contribute to) the postings and pictures created by the attendees, simply click on the Technorati tag (blc06) below!

Technorati tags: /

Sunday, July 09, 2006

Kathy Schrock's NECC 2006 Support Pages

Here are the links to the support pages for my two presentations at NECC.

A Three-Hour Tour:
Navigating Primary Source Materials on the Internet


http://kathyschrock.net/navigating/
Here you will find links to the items talked about during the presentation, and the slide show itself in PDF, Picassa Album, and RSS feed formats.

We Interrupt this Broadcast: Using PSAs in the Classroom

http://kathyschrock.net/psa/
Here you will find links the videos and lesson plans covered in the presentation.


Technorati tags: / /

Saturday, July 08, 2006

Flickr pics from NECC 06

Here are a couple of pictures people have sent me which prove I was really was at NECC!

In the SIGTC Breakfast Panel audience, looking very pensive.




Fourth of July at the conference!




I met up with Marsha Goren, one of the GlobalSchoolNet Award winners!


Ready for my "navigating" presentation!



Meeting up for a chat with Joyce Valenza!



A cell phone picture of the big screen at the closing keynote.




Cell phone "salute" at the closing keynote.







Technorati tags: /

Friday, July 07, 2006

NECC Days 2 and 3

Well, the rest of NECC was just as good as the first day. Day 2 had Negroponte as the keynote (I love the $100 laptop), I attended some fantastic sessions, and had all my best buddies attend my Primary Resources presentation as well as a group of superintendents (who I applaud for signing up for the Superintendent's Summit!). The Making it Happen Reception honored some technology pioneers, movers, and shakers, ant the Bloggers MashUp (okay, that's what I called it) at the Rock Bottom was a success!

Day three was a bit nerve-wracking for me, as the closing keynote. I kept muttering my script everywhere I went, and I noticed strangers moving farther away from me as I was muttering! Everyone was extremely supportive, and I felt it went pretty well!

I am sitting here in the airport reading the "reviews" from the bloggers in attendance (I feel like it is opening night for a stage event!) and it seems as if it was well-received. I mean, how could it not be, with the wonderful selection of student PSA's I had to chose from to demonstrate this useful and educational form of video production?

Okay, time to get on the red-eye and catch some shut-eye! Thanks to all who stopped me to say hi and, please, don't hesitate to write!

Kathy Schrock

Technorati tags: /

Thursday, July 06, 2006

NECC06 Report Day 1

My first day of the official NECC Conference in San Diego started out with a SIGTC breakfast with a panel of experts in Web 2.0 (including wikis, blogs, and online apps) talking about the future of these tools to support teaching and learning. David Warlick, Tony Vincent, and Will Richardson were three of the panelists and the conversation was rich and raised some interesting questions.

The opening keynote, DeWitt Jones, was inspiring with his wonderful photographs and lofty messages.

I got to practice my closing keynote presentation in the huge ballroom with only the tech support crew for an audience. Daunting, to say the least! Today I give my Spotlight Session presentation which now seems so easy!

The exhibit hall is huge, open, and full of great vendors, the educators attending are very gracious when I meet them and talk, and there are friends all around! Last evening, I attended the MassCUE/NHSTE/CECA joint reception, the MICCA Reception, gabbed with the friendly group from Alabama, and attended a very nicely presented Apple Reception. They had a vendor software showcase as well as good food, and it was nice to be invited to attend.

I am trying an experiment below. Blogger does not allow a user to "tag" their posts with keywords. These tags are searchable by the blog search engines to allow users to see related posts from many users all in one place. For this conference, the tag we are all using is necc06. Hopefully, this post will be added to the list, and you should be able to click on the tag below and read everyone else's NECC06 experiences!

For those of you who are Blogger users, I used this page (Technorati Tag Generator) to create the code that I simply pasted into the HTML view of this post in Blogger.

--Kathy Schrock

Technorati tags: /