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ISTE Leadership Symposium

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Yesterday I had the chance to attend the ISTE Leadership Symposium. Lots of mucky mucks from DOE, RTechs, Higher Ed, Corporate types, school administrators, and even a few teachers.

...the symposium will encourage participants to establish a shared vision and overcome the barriers to ensure success in achieving global educational goals.

Helped them put some of the work product from the day up on a blog. http://necc.edweblogs.org/leadership.

Now I'm off to the convention center. Wireless all around , so should be able to post some sessions here and also on the weblog we have developed for the conference. Will Richardson will be posting to that site also. Should see him later today and of course at the Edublogger meeting.

Jon Udell Explains the RSS world...

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Jon Udell: My conversation with Mr. Safe

Like I said, this is simple stuff, and now there are lots of tools. One guy, to make a point about simplicity, wrote a blogging tool in 30 lines of Perl. So it's not about the format, and it's not about the tools. It's about a new way of communicating, one that's defined by personal publishing and subscribing, and that empowers writers and readers as never before.

Jon Udell explains RSS and some of the political debates about the format. I think the quote above is what resonates with me. Has since I first started publishing on the web from Buckman 9 years ago. It is the power to share the work of myself, and my students, with others. To make connections with people. It's about telling our story... The web and more specifically, weblogging tools, make this process open to just about anyone. As Jon states in his piece, that is what excites people about weblogs…

Georgia State University Preservice Teachers Using Weblogs

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Anne Davis points to a great quote by one of her students about the possibilites she sees for the use of weblogs in the classroom.
I particualarry like her comment about PowerPoint...! :-)

I am so excited about learning about blogs and how to use them in my classroom, particularly as I was not very familiar with them before now. Everything we discussed in class today seems universally applicable to most classroom situations. This is very refreshing because most people just say to use PowerPoint to meet county mandates about incorporating technology into the curriculum. As we have already established, I hate PowerPoint. I can't wait to apply ideas such as publishing students' work, communicating with parents, and communicating with other classes by using blogs into my own classroom. This is all very intriguing and I want to learn more.