Hintonblogger

"This above all: to thine own self be true". - (Hamlet Act I, Scene III)

I attended a session that I was really disappointed in yesterday and I think there is an important lesson to learn here from the experience. Sometimes sessions don't connect with us, that's a reality and okay. The problem I ran into yesterday was I attended a session that said it was going to cover a particular topic and covered something completely different.

Yesterday went pretty well, but I'm thinking today will be even better. Here's what I'm planning for today:

• 7:00 - 8:00am Learning.com Breakfast with Robert Zucker (Marriott Rivercenter Salon A/B)
• 8:30 - 9:45am Tuesday Keynote (HGCC Ballroom C)
• 10:00 - 11:00am ISTE Observation Tool (Grand Hyatt Bowie B)
• 11:00 - 12:00am Seven Habits of Effective Tech Directors (Grand Hyatt Crockett C/D)
• 12:30 - 1:30pm Understanding Digital Learners (Grand Hyatt Texas Ballroom D)
• 2:00 - 3:00pm Learning.com Presentation (Marriott Rivercenter Conference Rm 15)
• 3:30 - 4:30pm Math A-Z (HGCC 102 A)
• 5:00 - 7:00pm AzTEA Affiliate Reception (Rio-Rio Cantina)

Another full day, lots of good stuff. I'm especially excited to see Ian Juke's Understanding Digital Learners session, as well as the Seven Habits of Effective Tech Directors. I've got some notes and thoughts about a couple of sessions from yesterday that I'll be posting shortly.

So it is crazy early here in San Antonio and I should be in bed by now. Of course, instead I'm tweaking my schedule and wondering how to fit in all the neat sessions and events. It is looking to be a terrific conference and it is an annual event I look forward to for months.

As I reflected on Jen Wagner's post "Take the Conference Challenge", I've decided that for NECC this year I've officially declared myself FREE.

Free to not be to everything or everywhere. Free to miss a session I really want to attend for another that is equally as good and to not feel guilty about it. Free to enjoy sitting down with some friends and reconnecting with them and to understand what they are finding of value here. And finally, FREE to have fun and realize that NECC is only the beginning, and thanks to NECC's Ning network and to Classroom 2.0 I can always catch up later. Thanks Network!

I'm not free apparently to get to sleep early though - always room for improvement I suppose. Here's tomorrow's schedule - always subject to change, but looking pretty good thus far :)

• 7am - Get Registered
• 7:30 - 8:30am SETDA Breakfast at Marriott Rivercenter
• 8:30 - 10:30am CoSN Council Leadership Forum (emphasis - Digital Content)
• 10:30 - 11:30am Federal Program Meeting (EETT - SETDA)
• 11 - 12pm Virtual Classroom: Hybrid Learning in Action (HGCC 214 C/D)
• 12:30 - 1:30pm Literacy Isn't Enough: Digital Fluency in the Age of InfoWhelm (Grand Hyatt Texas Ballroom D)
• 2 -3pm Moving the Texas Vision 2020 to Reality Takes Planning! (HGCC 001 B)
• 3:30 - 4:30pm Scholastic Administrator's Hottest Trends in Edtech (Grand Hyatt Lone Star Ballroom E)
• 4:45 - 5:45pm A Meeting of Moodlers (Grand Hyatt Lone Star Ballroom B)
• 7:00pm - 9:00pm SEDTA-iTunesU K12 initiative kickoff event (Grand Hyatt San Antonio, Texas Ballroom E/F)

When I'm not in a session I'm aiming to hit the Blogger's Cafe and see some of NECC Unplugged (impromptu presentations by NECC attendees - see the schedule for more details - you may have to scroll the page a bit to get to the actual schedule), as well as the poster sessions. Hope to see people around!

My first lesson from NECC is an old one, have patience. I went into my first set of sessions and hopped from one to the other and then again. Now I wish I hadn't. I'm realizing that the conversations/presentations that occur here in person at NECC work a little differently than the ones that happen virtually (I know, duh!).

I have grown far to accustomed to skipping and skimming information as I try to keep up with the virtual discussion over the past year. I think I went into my first session that same way. What I found (and will have to keep reminding myself) is that I have to give the conversation time to develop. It's like I have to slow down my "twitch" reaction to conversations in order to get value out of them.

Well I'm back at NECC and looking forward to another great learning and networking experience. I think what the addition of the Hot Topic Lounges this year (including the blogger's cafe that I'm writing this from) were great ideas. I'm looking forward to heading over to the Second Life area later this morning to see if I can learn how to "fly" better, edit my avatar, and, in general, become better acquainted with moving around and interacting there.

I'm presenting in the Open-Source Lab on Drupal, as well as presenting a session in there about Moodle, both of which are on Wednesday. I was up late last night trying to finalize my schedule and am excited about today's sessions I'll be attending.

The New Story presentation that David Warlick is sharing is compelling, but it seems there must be some intermediary steps in order to get there.

One of the best examples is that the road to the New Story about education has to accommodate some of the institutionalized aspects of Industrialized education, at least initially. So the question is how we can begin the new story in education, defined by flexibility, communication and collaboration, and authentic learning while the social limits brought by our industrial society.

Here are some examples of what I mean.

School Day
The rigidity of the school day has long been based on the bell structure originated in industrial factories. How can we accommodate the fact that schools must take care of children during the work day, while breaking from the rigid structure that seems inconsistent with the flexibility required by the information society we are transforming into.

Nicholas Negroponte gave the principal keynote at NECC 2006 and spoke about the $100 laptop. He started off by talking about the types of education throughout the world and some of the challenges they face.

*No power
*No Teachers
*No roads sometimes

He gave some economic details about how the laptop was going to be made. He also commented briefly on the criticism he had received from Microsoft and Intel about the laptop. The crowd generally gave him an ovation whenever he mentioned that criticism. Which leads me to ask why people insist on berating Microsoft in particular, especially in the education environment? Most of the people in the room were doing to Microsoft what many in the press have done to Mr. Negroponte, they were berating an idea without understanding the details behind it. The people in that room were booing Microsoft without a clue as to why, because Mr. Negroponte offered no details of their criticism. Could it possibly be that the Microsoft and Intel simply have a different idea of what will work and are different ideas so wrong? Consider what Mr. Negroponte is saying or proposing with his idea? It really is transformational and a potential game-changer. Why should we expect (or disapprove) of companies that see someone threatening their "turf" and react to it, don't we do the same thing in our own lives?

Back to Blogging with Gusto! I'm back at NECC and loving my first day of sessions and activities. I was fortunate enough this year to be able to present at NECC on Strategies for using Moodle effectively in the classroom and it was an awesome experience. I'll blog a little more about that later. Now about my first day at NECC:

I was nervous about presenting, but decided I needed to take advantage of being here and planned a full schedule for today. The first session I attended was about Virtual Schools and really looked at the concept of online learning and virtual schools from an institutional perspective. It was presented by people from the Southern Regional Education Board. For me the biggest impact was the reminder that online courses, learning, and teaching is expanding and not going away, in fact, as the presenters shared, it is a viable learning option for students. I started feeling a little panicked (and not because I was presenting next). The reason is that I want to be a part of this great new learning opportunity and I feel like I'm somewhat unprepared and I don't want to be left behind.

I have been in my current position (Instructional Technologist) for a year now, and am very grateful to my school district (Gilbert Public Schools in Arizona) for the opportunity to attend NECC. The whole conference opened my eyes to a different paradigm of learning and to consider that the student perspective, with the advent of technology, might really have shifted effective educational techniques more than I had been willing to admit. The sessions I attended not only helped expose my to that paradigm, but also provided some potential short-term actions I could do to help begin meeting the challenge of educating today's students, who are truly digital natives.

No, I didn't run out of blogging steam from NECC or my brief sightseeing trip to Washington D.C. I am simply swamped trying to catch up with Master's course work that took a back burner while I was at NECC (and really since I left for vacation on June 11th - it's kind of hard to keep up with an online catch when your Internet access options are changing day to day - and most regularly are dial-up dependent). I also spent one day trying to see everything there was to see on the Mall in Washington D.C. For those of you who have been there, you know that such a task is an impossibility, there is much too much to see. If could've spent a week going through the different buildings and tours that were available. However, since I had exactly 24 hours, of which 6 hours travel time coming from and returning to Philadelphia, as well as 6-7 hours of sleeping time, had to be subtracted, I was pressed for time to say the least.