Random

NECC New Orleans...

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I'll be attending NECC (National Education Computing Conference) in New Orleans later this month. I'll be doing a workshop and also contributing to a group weblog: necc.edweblogs.org. Am looking forward to seeing some of the folks I met last year in Seattle...

Beacon School...

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Technology Integration and the Beacon School Portal Another key part of our theory is that this system has grown organically, not as part of a pre-packaged software package, but created, whenever possible, using free software tools and written by myself and the students of Beacon. In fact, a student and I used a Linux-based programming language and database tool to write all portions of the "portal" software. Again, the philosophy behind the portal software must be in line with the pedagogy of our school. We don't want to merely use technology; we want our students to be creators of technological innovation, just as we don't want our students to just memorize facts but want them to have the skills to apply knowledge. The portal was created as a community effort, with that very pedagogy in mind.

This article from Technology and Learning by Chris Lehman highlights web use at The Beacon School in New York. I like the philosophy behind this... free and/or inexpensive tools that are selected for an education purpose. Not a solution that is imposed on a program, but solutions that come from the users as the need arises.

Anne Davis on Blogs and NECC...

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I'm putting the final touches on my NECC concurrent session, Weblogs in Education: The Possibilities Are Limitless! I'll be presenting with Sandy Peters.

I work all next week. Then I'm taking off a week early for a "much-looked forward to" vacation prior to the conference. The conference is going to be fun. I hope lots of you are going. I plan to use some student video clips. I thought you might enjoy the blogging rap my Wrinkles' students created. I'll also be participating in a NECC 2004:Blogs@School workshop with Tim Lauer, Will Richardson, Steve Burt and Tom Hoffman. They'll be a whole of blogging going on! Yep, weblogs are off the chart![EduBlog Insights]

Anne Davis points to her concurrent session at NECC and also to the 3 hour workshop that she will be taking part in along with Steve Burt, Tom Hoffman, Will Richardson and myself. If you go to the NECC program site and search under the term weblogs, you'll find 6 sessions listed.

Tom Hoffman Proposes a Conference For The Rest of Us...

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I think this article should earn Matt an imaginary invitation to present his work at a fake educational technology conference I'm pretending to begin planning. The working title is "Why doesn't all this "stuff" work? 2004." The imaginary theme is "Cheap, robust technologies to make the computers actually work in your school." Or something like that. Topics would hypothetically include Rendezvous, K12LTSP, LDAP, RSS, weblogs and wikis, wifi, when to use PHP, where you can use Python, how to buy gear on EBay, how to figure our what's wrong with and return that new computer that crashes intermittently but persistently but passes all the manufacturer's diagnostics, etc. I'll round up some imaginary sponsors at NECC.

Tom starts off by pointing to a review of USB pen drives and then proposes a conference for the ed-tech community geared toward making all this wonderful technology work. I'm hoping to help him round up sponsors at NECC in New Orleans later this month... Maybe some of the ISTE 40 or so...

Providence Portland Center For Medically Fragile Children

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PortlandTribune.com | Some enchanted evening

There are 18 residents at the prom this evening, out of a total of 58 who live full time at the Center for Medically Fragile Children. Part of the Providence Portland Child Center, it’s the only facility of its kind in the Pacific Northwest, having started several decades ago as an orphanage operated by the Sisters of Providence. The orphanage closed in the 1960s but the center still serves children from birth to age 21, some coming from as far away as Idaho and Montana.

The Portland Tribune has a very nice article about young people who live at the Providence Portland’s Center for Medically Fragile Children. These students are medically fragile with complex medical needs. Most are unable to communicate verbally, and all are physically disabled to a profound degree. Lewis Elementary has a classroom that serves several of the 58 students who live at the Providence Center. The teacher, nurse, and paraprofessionals who work in this classroom are exceptional people doing exceptional work.

New Media Consortium Summer Conferrence

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UBCWiki: SmallPiecesLooselyJoined/AboutSmallPieces

Colloboration via the net does not necessarilty require monolithic, expensive tool suites that aim to do everything under one umbrella. We will share and demonstrate the use of readily available, mostly free, discrete sets of "small" and "loosely joined" technologies - weblogs, wikis, instant messaging, audio/video chat. The loose joining means that how they are connected are not necessarily in the programming of the software, but the ways people can use them in a social context that is an environment of dynamic, changing relationships and connections, rather than the rigid, limited ones defined by computer code...

Alan Levine, Brian Lamb and D'Arcy Norman will be presenting a very interesting session at the NMC 2004 - New Media Consortium 2004 Summer Conference. They are looking for participation by others who will not be at the session. I will be taking part in a video chat session during the session.

I like the idea of encouraging and experimenting with the use of free/low cost and readily available technologies such as weblogs, wiki's, and chat. I also like the philosophy behind this experimentation... Maybe they can add a tool such as Flickr to the mix. More later...

VoIP for Mobile Users...

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TheFeature :: VoIP goes Mobile Here's how the MG-3 works: first, you have to sign up for VoIP service with a company that resells i2 Telecom's hardware and network access. You'll get the MG-3, a little plastic box stuffed with microchips, which you plug into your broadband connection and existing phone line. Then, when you want to make a long distance call with your mobile, you just call your home number. The MG-3 will recognize the mobile's number using Caller ID, and connect you to i2 Telecom's VoIP network. You get a second dial tone, and you can make your overseas call. Want to talk to somebody in China? You'll get charged 5 cents a minute. Cingular has been having a great time charging you $3.49 a minute for making the same call. (Wanna bet they're screaming at their lawyers right now to cook up a way to kill this in court?) [by way of: Dan Gillmor's eJournal]

The Feature has an interesting article about a company that has developed a system for the use of VoIP by your mobile phone. Am thinking if something like this could be used in schools. In Portland, very few classrooms have telephone access. I know that our IT folks are looking at VoIP as one method of providing this to our teachers. Adding mobile phones to mix is interesting.