Tuesday, October 16, 2007

K12 Online

It started with David Warlick’s keynote, his video started at the airport and then took us along the paths David treads upon. I liked his ‘not afraid’ example.I also watched Clarence Fisch’s video, also taking us to places he likes, and a wonderful presentation about cellphones and how these can be used in class by Liz Kolb. She presented numerous useful applications and examples how to use them - I only use my cell phone for phoning. I liked the Bubbleshare option to post photos directly by sending them via phone to address they give you - different people can thus post photos to the same account via their phones, which is neat.I also watched an inspiring travel to China - a story of physical travelling and cyber connecting. And a great presentation by Alan Levine - I knew most of the applications he talked about, liked a lot how he connected everything together by pointing out the very important features which make them so usable - interconnectedness of e.g. Flickr, Blogger, etc. , social perspective (tagging for personal organization and to learn more about the field we are interested in), the embed option letting us make mashups of different resources. I loved his commenting on the learning objects movement from awhile ago - I think I attended a seminar last year on that, where we participants were encouraged to start working on creating such contents, which could then be shared and used like lego bricks - I liked the idea, but the way to carry it out seemed very complicated … I somehow could not force myself to start working seriously on that. These embeddable options are much more user friendly, anyone can use them. I also liked Alan’s comment that we should get used to living in the construction zone - things change so quickly we cannot count on perfection, but have to get used to constant improvement instead. So true.
Tuesday was the writingmatrix day.

I was very excited about it. Wesley Fryer posted a very appreciative feedback about our presentation
Now I’m looking forward to today’s fireside chat with all week 1 presenters. Our team isn’t likely to be complete, unfortunately, with Vance and Rita in the air and on the road, and Doris behind a mercyless University firewall, but Nelba and I should make it.