both hands

Preparing students for their future no longer means giving them a base of human knowledge, my job now is to teach them how to access information quickly, how to create solutions for problems (and by problems I mean sources of perplexity, not thorns in your side) that don’t exist yet, and how to teach themselves new skills on the go (think of Trinity from The Matrix, dodging bullets while learning to fly a helicopter seconds before she pilots one).
Even writing this, and having attending the conference, I can hear a voice in my head asking if all this can really happen in only 10 years. But then I think about the fact that most computers in the average workplace had monochromatic screens and floppy drives only 13 years ago (doesn’t it seem like that was ages ago?).
I now see that the public education system has been dragging its’ butt when it comes to incorporating technology into the classroom. I commonly hear my fellow educators complaining about having to check our email on a daily basis, even though interview candidates were being turned away from prospective jobs in 1995 if they didn’t have the skills to receive all office communication by email.
And you know what? Those who are hyper-connected already consider email a cumbersome and archaic form of communication. Twitter much?
I am no tech expert, but I consider myself to be one of the first “digital natives” (by which I mean I was the first in my childhood classroom to have a home computer giving me an ease and comfort with computers that my mother still doesn’t have after 20+ years with one), and I went through culture shock at the conference. I saw tech savvy educators participating in sessions in a radical way. Simply sitting, watching, and listening to a presenter is passé; everyone in the room was simultaneously streaming their reactions to the presenters’ ideas on Twitter, while watching or filming the session on U-Stream, chatting on the workshop’s Wiki, surfing the web for websites as they were being referenced, and taking notes on their word processor.
So. Where am I taking it from here? What will my classroom look like this year?
I’m taking it one step at a time, but with each step, I have a mantra to repeat: How can I use - insert technological innovation of the moment here - to teach my students?

Leaving the conference, I kept wishing our whole district could have attended. Fortunately, you can attend the same workshops I can, in your own home, whenever you want. Just search the web for BLC08. All conference participants and presenters used this as a tag for blog entries, Flickr photos, U-stream videos, podcasts, and more. Or, you can search specifically for some of the presenters and tools that I took note of and plan to explore further:

Software and Freeware:
- Wordles
- Comic Life
- Mist
- Chatzy
- ChaCha
- Twitter
- Wiki
- LearningScore
- Audacity
- Scratch
- Screencasting: Camtasia, Jin, Tux Paint, Voicethread, Screencast-o-Matic

Websites:
- kewlbox.com
- TED.com
- BBC
- peggysheehy.edublogs.org
- ewan.mcintosh account on del.icio.us
- NetNewsWire
- classtools.net
- newtools.org
- cbc podcasts
- ideasandthoughts.org
- gcast.com
- tabuladigita.com
- hagames.com
- http://fas.org/immuneattack/
- english-online.org.uk/games/grofdoom/advisory.htm
- food-force.com
- peacemakergame.com
- disney.go.com/hotshot/index.com
- http://adifference.blogspot.com
- http://remoteaccess.typepad.com
- www.computerclubhouse.org
- web.uncg.edu/dcl/econ201/trailer.hml
- www.marcprensky.com
- www.game2train.com
- www.bobsprankle.com
- http://edtechteacher.org

Presenters that I thought were amazing:
- Darren Kuropatwa
- Clarence Fisher
- Marc Prensky
- Bob Sprankle
- Ewan McIntosh
- Alan November
- Dr. Pedro Noguera
- Tom Daccord
- John Davitt
- Eric J. Marcos

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