This is being shared too! I’m watching this presentation and listening to the podcast at the same time! Check it out! There’s some very informative stuff Chris Craft is sharing, not only about Slideshare but about presentations in general.
I needed this before learningatschool07 Chris!

What would we do in this fast-paced, fast changing Web2.0 wonderland if it wasn’t for people sharing? If you’ve been bitten by the wikibug or you’ve been hearing about wikis lately and thought you might want to “dip your toe” into the Web2.0 pool ocean – then this video below is an absolute must for you to see. Yes, it’s 28 minutes long – but believe me – it will be the most informative and motivating 28 minutes that you will have invested today!

I can’t wait to skype with CoolCatTeacher, Vicki Davis – because I want to thank her. Thank her in “skype-person”. I’ve written thank you. (Many times). Now I want to say it to her because skype makes it possible! (The telephone makes it possible too, but that’s not half as much fun!) Even though my students and I have started our wikispace already, We are still picking up tips and tricks and pointers from this teacher. (And it’s incredibly hard to imagine that this video was her second only attempt at making one!) Sharing at it’s finest! I really want to share this video with my colleagues!
Keeping with the sharing theme – (I have to confess I HAVE been a bit slow to catch on here!) Wikispaces are giving away 100,000 spaces to educators – you know that already – but what didn’t register with me, even though I’d looked at the help pages hundreds of times, Wikispaces are giving away free plus spaces for K-12 educators globally – that’s right – anywhere in the world where a teacher is going to use a wikispaces for primary / secondary schools – NO ADS – NO COST! I’ve just asked if our wikispaces can be changed over to the free plus spaces. I can’t believe I missed mis-read that! You can signup here!

Still going with the sharing theme ……. My good friend Simon & I did some sharing. Some sharing of knowledge, encouragement and laughter as we skyped last night whilst editing our skypetalkandwrite wiki. Now that was fun. Simon even had a go at recording it as a podcast.

Still going some more with the sharing ……. I’ve just got off skype-chat after finally connecting with my new online collaborative project partner Ms Cofino. It was so cool to chat and share with another like-minded teacher. I can’t wait to tell me class that we’ve made contact and that during our chat I found out that our whole country has the same amount of people as Ms Corfino’s city! That’s going to blow them away!

I’m sitting in the Rotorua Convention Centre, in David Warlick’s session, The Magic of RSS, blogging in real time thanks to the technology of wireless connection!

As usual I’m up the front learning about RSS, what it is, how it works and how to use it, aggregators, and mashups. On David’s flickr example there was my photo I’d taken on Wednesday of Millenium Hotel where we’d presented and I’d tagged it learningatschool. An example of how powerful tagging and RSS feeds are.

“We are seeing a major shift in how we find information. We’re starting to train the information to find us!”

What did I learn? Tagging is very extremely important. RSS is information power. I could listen to David Warlick all day. It’s about conversations.

It was impressive to see just how easy it to train the information that you might be requiring for the classroom to come to you. Edge of seat stuff! You can RSS anything – from photos, to newspaper articles, blog posts – anything and everything that has an RSS feed. It’s all about being part of the conversation. You can pay particular attention to whatever is important. This is so much better than searching through 633,567,987 hits on Google!

Social bookmarking is something that I’ve started using – I’m now convinced that I should be using it all the time and no longer adding these to my favourites on my laptop. In fact, a lady in the audience at David’s sessions jumped up and yahooed when she realized that you could tap into other people’s bookmarks! Well, he did promise that that would happen.

“The shape of information has changed. This we need to understand. This is literacy. Information that will help you do your job. In most cases Students are not ready for this.”

We need to take advantage of time where we can jump a little ahead of our students and get our heads around how RSS feeds work and making the information come to us. And this is what make me excited. Making that information come to us and showing students how to make information come to them!

Through an aggregator you can connect to people who will help you to do your job. Teachers should be lifelong learners. This is an intensely valuable tool. This is a Personal Learning Network. George Siemens calls this “Connectivism”. Connect to people who can help you do your job. Help you do your job!

Podcasts? Grab the link and drag it into itunes. Works exactly the same way as an aggregator.
Some aggregators David suggested:
The most popular for educators for a long time was – bloglines Not dissimilar from Newsfire (newsfire is a download – not web-based) or Google Reader. That’s what I use.
A lot of people like netvibes (does load a little slowly) What’s nice though is that it allows you shape your aggregator into your own personal digital newspaper.
Web-based aggregators have a definite advantage in that they are available to you no matter which computer you are on.

The conference is almost over. I’m sad but glad to be going home to see my children. I’ve been empowered, motivated, inspired and affirmed. It’s all good!

Today was just awesome, awesome, awesome!  The keynote speaker needed no introduction really.  David Warlick.  This man will always be important to me.  He was the first person ever to comment on my blog!  For that, I will always be extremely grateful because he wrote ….

“Congratulations and welcome to the conversation”.

It was a delight to hear a man with such passion, such energy and a wonderful sense of humour.  I didn’t take notes.  All his notes are online.  That’s cool.   He asked “What do our children need to be learning today?”  and suggested that “we need to teach them how to teach themselves.”  What did I take away from this keynote address?  Tell a new story.  This is kind of what my aim is when writing this blog.  This is my new story.  My journey through Web2.0.  Am I doing the following in my class?

“It is often said that “the future is not what it use to be.” In this information-driven, technology-rich world, where jobs are created and become obsolete in less than ten years, preparing our children for a future that we can not imagine has become one of our society’s greatest challenges. ..and it is a challenge that we are not meeting.”

 Sort of? Maybe? Yes! Actually I am.  I am because I’m trying to.  I’m committed to being a life-long learner.  It’s what drives me.  It’s where my passion and enthusiasm comes from.  And just like enthusiasm, it’s contagious. It has to be! 

 Later I got the best opportunity I’ve had in my career.  I sat up the front (like an excited school girl on the edge of her seat) at a workshop on the Art and Techniques of Wikis.  Again, I didn’t take notes.  They’re online.  That’s cool.  It was so empowering and encouraging to know that I’m on the right track with wikis.  I learnt a little more html code and also learnt how to create new pages for my students really quickly.  I also learnt about wikiengines and how to include RSS feeds in a wiki page.  Now that was really cool!  But the really cool part came after the workshop.  I was brave enough to go up and met this man.  I shook his hand.  (and was cheeky enough to ask for a photo and if I could video his workshop tomorrow for my good friend Simon, who unfortunately had to go home today at lunchtime).  What would have topped this session off to the max would have been if Vicki Davis – CoolCatTeacher had of been online when David opened skype.  That would have just sent me through the roof! 

If I didn’t already think the world was a small place, I do now.  I’m standing at the Sitech stand, and this name badge catches my eye.  TeAwamutu Intermediate.  One of my online collaboration project partners is at TeAwamutu Intermediate.  Look closer.  Lynne C  it reads.  Oh my goodness!  That’s my partner!  That was really exciting.  1100 delegates and we just happen to bump into each other, not knowing what either looks like, just knowing names.  Cool!

At Day 2’s end I’m not as tired as yesterday.  My eyeballs are no longer displaying the roadmaps of NZ.  Some very positive comments from people who attended either Simon’s or my workshops have me feeling very good.  Very good indeed.  Meeting a Guru has me feeling good.  (Might slip that picture into projectfeelgood!) Going online to write this post and finding another generous, encouraging and motivational person online, Mr Chris Craft, and having a chat before he goes to work and I go to sleep just made the day perfect!  

Day 2 over and out. 

It was a rather restless night. Awake every hour on the hour. I needn’t have worried. Our Skype Talk and Write session very ably led by my good friend and colleague Simon, went amazingly well. All seats taken, some people standing. There were no technical hitches and the audience seemed interested and exciting about the potential of using Talk and Write with Skype. Backgrounds were varied – some having skyped personally already, some not. Not many had used Skype in the classroom and no one had used Talk and Write. Simon did an excellent job of explaining the ins and outs of SkypeTalk and Write and some people were even brave enough to add themselves to the contact list on the skype Talk and Write wiki. We hope to see the contact list grow and people begin to skype (or skype Talk and Write) around NZ schools and internationally as well. Go check out the wikispace and add to it if you’re interested!

Breakout 2 session for me was a Elizabeth Robb’s hands-on workshop of TKI the website (a portal-plus site for NZ teachers with a wealth of educational resources) but the particular focus was Gifted and Talented Students and what resources were available on TKI for educators. Liz is the Gifted and Talented Community Facilitator for TKI. A most enjoyable and very valuable session! Lunch was a 12minute walk back to the Energy Events Centre. Unfortunately the power went out about 5 minutes before lunch and then the building had to be evacuated! I understand that one lot of presentations had to be cancelled which was a real shame.

Breakout 3 session was another hands-on session, this time with Jennifer Corriero and Michael Furdyk. What an amazing pair these two are. Step by step both of them took us through setting ourselves up on TIGed. My school and class now have (thanks to the generousity of these two lovely people) a free 3month trial period in TakingITGlobal. This sits so nicely inside a focus this term for our team about Relating to Others. The potential of this site and the tools that have been made available to teachers and educators is just mind blowing. Although it is a bit easy to get lost when first taking a look around TIGed, it doesn’t take long to get the hang of it. The student blog area is of particular interest to me as is the chat room with capability to have 4 video conferences going. The site has levels of security (a bit like a walled and unwalled garden). I can already hear my brain clunking away at the possibilites of where my class and I can go in this environment. You can try a demo if you like.

After a mad dash to another venue, Breakout 4 was our Digital Weather Station presentation. Although there were many spare seats and despite the overwelming heat of lots of digital equipment in such a small space, participants seemed very interested in what the Digital Weather Station had to offer. Some were interested in the cross-curricula ideas, many were thinking about purchasing a Digital Weather Station, someone had their own private weather station and one person had missed out on Simon’s presentation in the morning so came to this one instead. Some great ideas were shared, all of which are on the wikispace for the Digital Weather Station. If you’re interested – go take a look – any ideas, comments, suggestions etc you could add would be most appreciated. We’d love to see this collaborative area grow!

A huge thank you to Gary, Jenny, Jonathan & Simon of Sitech. Thanks for the faith! If you’re really serious about getting top quality digital technology with amazing support and training – these are the people to give a call! And so ends Day 1. Done and Dusted. So looking forward to hearing David Warlick’s keynote tomorrow.

First attempt at a video upload to YouTube for our collaborative project.  It’s all the things that make me feel good!  And yes, that is the Snapper I caught in the Gurnard competition!

The time has finally arrived.  Conference week.  It started with a very inspiring first keynote speaker – Jennifer Corriero – co-founder (with Michael Furdyk) of TakingITGlobal.  This is one must-check-out site! For youth by youth.  Bringing the world to your students …. prepare your students for the world.  TIGed is the teacher side of TakingITGlobal.  It sounds like a great place to start if you’re interested in bringing global perspectives to the classroom.   I had the privilage of hearing Michael speak a couple of years ago in Auckland at a ULearn conference.  It was awesome to hear Jennifer speak this time.   I’m also very lucky to be doing a workshop with both of them entitled – Engagement in the 21st Century. 

PS.  Both Simon and I got our presentations sorted – no problems – ready to rock – yeah baby!

Two sleeps to go before we present! Simon’s workshop is full and mine is growing steadily. It’s been nose to the grindstone, hard out working on, what I’m hoping, will be two most enjoyable and worth while workshops that we have been preparing for the conference in Rotorua. We both received this very encouraging email today …..

Gidday, Simon and Chrissy.

I just wanted to offer my very best wishes for your presentations at L@S.

I know that you will be a bit tense: it’s an awesome thing that you are
doing to share your learning with others, but of course there is personal
risk in it and you show great courage in stepping up. From what I have seen
of both of you though, the things that will carry you through are your
professionalism, your zest for teaching, the excitement you have for
delivering fresh opportunities to kids, and a pair of bloody good, inclusive
smiles. Have fun, stay humble, let the audience speak – and the day will be
yours!

May it go well, guys.

God bless,

Russell

Wow. That’s awesome! Friday night we had a “dry run” on our presentations – I’m in “overload of information” mode because there’s so many awesome ideas to share about the Digital Weather Station that I don’t know where to start! Simon saves the day and refocuses me! Thanks Simon! We run through the Skype Talk & Write and apart from the wireless internet connection refusing to play ball, things look extremely good there! But check out his blog tonight – it doesn’t end there!

Spent all weekend diligently working on the Weather Station presentation – (only a couple of hours break to go fishing – grins!) Open it up tonight to put the finishing touches on it and get the message every facilitator hates one night before they leave for a conference: CORRUPT file – cannot open! Oh *&%^! Began from scratch. It’s now 1.35am in the morning and I’m finally finished. This time it’s written to a flash drive – just in case! I wonder if this kind of thing ever happens to David Warlick? I’ve booked in to hear two of his addresses in Rotorua + the keynote (I hope he doesn’t think I’m stalking him!!) Can’t wait!! May nothing else go wrong. Please. Fingers and toes crossed!

Things to be precise.  I can not believe how “fast” this web2.0 journey is going!  It’s amazing, it’s exciting, it’s motivating, it’s ….. it’s …….. it’s mind boggling!  Today we had our first ever inaugral international skype! Up until today we’d only ever skyped with Simon’s class down the road.   Today we skyped with Columbia, South Carolina!  How cool is that?  My students met Mr Craft (who was enjoying a nice Sunday afternoon whilst we were working hard out at school on Monday morning!) the teacher who’s been working hard over the weekend on a wikispace that will help his students and my students and students from other countries compare their worlds.  It looks fantastic (but I won’t link it until it’s ready to go).  I don’t think it sunk in for some of them that it was still yesterday and this was someone who was actually half way round the world, not down the road.

We’ve started working on our class wiki, beginning with a wiki warm up task.  I’ve had to add another task already! “This is way cool” (a comment I overheard today).  We’re also looking into the way round blocked YouTube that CoolCatTeacher blogged about a couple of days ago (just scroll down a bit).  I think we just might be able to do it that way too.  Otherwise there’s this suggestion to try from Chris Lehmann over at Practical Theory  I’ll keep you posted.  Next will be trying to unblock the edtechtalk chatroom so I can participate in the WOW2.0 chats.  I’ll be missing this week’s one too though – First Aid Course to attend.  Hopefully that will give me some time to try getting into the chat from school otherwise I’ll just have to wait until the holidays!

Our online collaborative project (thanks OP4T & Jen Wagner) with another Intermediate in Te Awamutu, New Zealand and Kuala Lumpar, Malaysia is just about ready to begin.  Watch this space.

I’ve watched my fellow colleague Simon step right out of the shadows lately to post more and reply to other’s posts.  He got a mention by the reflective teacher too after posting on Your Days in Sentences!  And he’s been getting some pretty amazing emails lately.

When I stop and reflect for just a moment, it just blows me away at how far things have progressed since our wonderful trainer Jenny at Sitech mentioned that word web2.0 to us.  It was only in October 2006. Unreal!

I’ve been listening to the Tech Chicks podcasts.  (I’m a lurker podcast subscriber).  These ladies are just awesome to listen to.  Fantastic simple, easy to follow, and downright useful tips and tricks!  A must subscription over at itunes podcasts. You’ll definitely need your google notebook open to take notes – or if you’re listening to it on your ipod like me – best you settle down with a big piece of paper and a pen with lots of ink in it!  It’s not a good idea to be driving while listening to these two! 

Today was a cool day!  Today I met in “skype-person” Chris Craftand his lovely family and they got to meet mine.  My kids thought that it was so cool speaking to someone who was still in yesterday!   If ever I had a reason to improve my Spanish beyond Level 1 Basics …… I have an authentic one now!   We talked about the logistics of our classes meeting skype-face to face, time differences and some technical problems we may have with the audio.  If you have any ideas about the audio difficulties of skyping with 30 odd students so that they can all hear what’s being said then can you please go over to Chris’ blog – he explains the difficulties a little bit better than I do!

I worked on my Cross-Curricula Ideas with a Digital Weather Station wikispace today.  I didn’t think I’d achieved much because I know I kind of procrastinated and stalled starting work on it BUT by the time I’d had enough of sitting at my laptop I was pretty pleased with what had been accomplished.  The Powerpoint / Interwrite presentation is coming along nicely and I’m no longer panicking that there won’t be enough in the presentation for 1 ½ hours.  I hope and pray that people won’t be bored, or disappointed.  There are some amazing people presenting this year at the Conference and I can’t wait to hear David Warlick’s keynote speech.  Poor man has been living out of his suitcase for a while now judging by all his conference postings – I sure hope he gets to rest at home for a few days at least before he flies out to New Zealand!

Simon has been busy working on the presentation wiki – Skype Talk and Write.  (It was actually what he’d accomplished that made me “rattle me dags“  (some what famous New Zealand colloqu  saying).

So yes.  It was a good day.  I can’t wait to share the skype news with my class.

I also watched this.       www.teachermovie.com
You need to watch it too if you haven’t already.  And you’ll need a tissue!