Live at Apple Camp

I am at the movie making Apple Camp with my son, Zane. I have found out a couple of things. 1) My son is much more shy around strangers than I realized. 2) He gets really quiet when he gets shy. I don't know if he is bored or just looking bored.
The Apple Store staff is doing a great job of working with the kids. The group my son is in is having a hard time coming up with ideas. But the camp counselor is working through it with them. It will be fun to see what they come up with.
I think this concept is a great idea from Apple and I hope they continue it in the future.
Zane and I are going to record a podcast later about the experience from his point of view.

TEM Podcast 32 -NECC2006 Special #2

A great day at NECC.
One Laptop Per Child - Nicholas Negroponte Blog Entry
Your school media channel-Chris Walsh Blog Entry
Award Winning Digital Photography - Arnie Abrams
The Mega VCR -Hall Davidson
A Web of Connections - Will Richardson (I lost my blog entry, but here and here are a couple of good summations of the session).
The Savvy Technologist Edublogger Meetup
Roger Wagner
theeducationalmac necc2006 necc

Digital Photography-The Good, the Bad, The Ugly - Leslie Fisher

Leslie knows digital photography. I have seen her present before. Top problems with Digital Photography
Not Close Enough
Not in Focus-Press the shutter button halfway down to set the focus.
Camera Shake - What causes it? Lack of lighting. What can you do about it? Tripod or table, set a time, change the settings, use a flash.
Boring Composition-Use Law of thirds. Look for lines, Sapce makes you think, Shoot High/Shoot Low, If I see another...
Ignoring the background
Missing the Moment - Why does it happen? Camera trying to expose for everything. Use Sports mode. Warning, the faster the shot, the less light brought into the camera. Watch for underexposed shots.
Too Much Flash
Too little Flash
Why not Vertical? Digital Zoom - Crap
Wrong Settings - Pixels, Pixel = Pixel Info. The dots that make up the overall picture, Megapixel = 1 million pixels, 1280 x 1024,is 1.3 Megapixels, The more megapixels in your camera, the bigger the picture! The better the print, Pixel dimensions will vary by brand. Take Pictures as largest quality possible.
Camera Settings
Resolution
Camera Raw - Camera does not touch the image whatsoever.
Shutter priority
Aperture Priority
Exposure Compensation
White Balance Adjustment
Lighting - Friend and Foe, look for natural light sources, Hand Test Leslie is not allowed to reproduce the handout for this session due to a contract with a business, but check her site for her other handouts which are just terrific. necc2006 theeducationalmac necc

The MegaVCR: Media and More in Your Pocket - Hall Davidson

For me Hall Davidson is another can't miss. I have attended conferences where Hall has presented for about 10 years now. He has such a great presentation personna and knows his stuff. The things he has done with the California Multimedia Festival was the inspiration for what we have done with our district elementary film festival.
This session is about the video iPod. United Streaming license's now allow for download ing of their content. Showed a mix he did using Premiere Elements of US content with him overlayed. It is pretty amazing. Hall makes a pretty good case for teachers having video iPods. Showing other content from US on the iPod. Showed a few other videos. Now he is actually going to show the process of getting the video from download to iPod.
The thing about Hall is that no matter what he is presenting, he is entertaining and hilarious. It's too bad they didn't advertise the session better, the crowd was smaller but it was still fun and very informative. necc2006 theeducationalmac necc

Award Winning Digital Photography Projects - Arnie Abrams

He is referring to the DeWitt Jones Keynote yesterday and mentions the creativity aspect. He will focus more on bringing this to the classroom. Handout available at Arnie's website.
Why bother
Visual Literacy
Visual Learners
Visual subjects
NETS Standards
Better, cheaper, easier cameras
New, fun, motivating
Instant results
Have your own darkroom
E-publishing
Cross-curricular projects
The Week That Was
Safety Do's and Dont's Poster
Research Project rather than paper
Getting Started with Digital Photography
Start with a specific assignment in mind
Portrait, motion, documentation
Going on assignment
Which is the Fake?
Make a commercial

Language Arts
Photo sequences or Every Picture Tells a Story . Story starters
Book Reports that come to life
Phoetry
Bilingual Photo Dictionary
Human Letters
Photo Flash Cards
Mystery Objects
Parts of Speech
Science

Special effects Photography - Time-lapse, Stop Motion, Panorama, Spin Object
Extreme Close Ups
Adopt a Tree

Social Studies
Virtual Postcards
Politics and Pictures
Two Sides to a Story
History Figure Cube
Our Town-Past, Present & Future

Math Projects
Pictures of Math
Counting Items
Patterns
Human Bar Chart
Fraction Photos

Social Skills
Illustrating Emotions

Teacher Tools
Visual Seating Chart
Student ID Cards
Enhance Field Trips

Camera Management Tips
Inexpensive cameras for student use
Standardize equipment
No "hand-offs"
Keep a camera handy
Keep spare batteries charged
Lots of memory cards

Digital Workflow
1. Capture - Shoot the picture, or scan, or have film transferred to digital, get a picture from the internet.
2. Transfer - Upload the pictures to a computer via the camera or a card reader
3. Edit - crop, correct or enhance.
4. Share - Print or share the photos electronically, back up to a CD or DVD

Useful web links at www.arnieabrams.net/dp_day.htm

Project Management Tips
Training Session
Student Licenses
Copy the Manual
Organize images into folders
Store file on external drives or CD/DVD
De-emphasize printing
Share photos on the web-Web photo albums
This session was as full at the DP session I attended yesterday. But I think this crowd got more out of it. The presentation was better and filled out the session time much better. Both presenters obviously enjoy digital photography, but Arnie showed more of a passion for it.
theeducationalmac necc2006 necc

Building Your Own Media Empire - Chris Walsh

Subtitle: Podcasting to Improve Communication & Training in Education Communities (handouts at www.epochlearning.com) Looking at community driven content.
Agenda
1 - Understand Podcasting
2 - See/hear in action
3 - Create a simple podcast
RSS makes it all possible.
Your digital news wire.
It's democratic distribution of content
"The Long Tail" - Something for everyone
Blogs - Text entries, published periodically
Podcasts - audio/video episodes, published periodically (interesting comment on the content being personal)
Why Now? - ease of distribution, more bandwidth, better mobile devices
Time Shifting - listen or watch anytime
Place Shifting - listen or watch "anywhere"
Enables learning everywhere & all of the time
Instruction
Student Voices
Professional Development
Community Outreach
Home Communication
Plays examples of podcasts - they are listed on the handout. Doing an example podcast using the Odeo Studio
This was a very well planned out and executed session.
theeducationalmac
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One Laptop Per Child-Nicholas Negroponte

The big keynote for the conference this year is Nicholas Negroponte and the "$100" laptop. He begins by talking about the project as a journey. Mentions Seymour Papert and his view on students programming and the benefits thereof. Negroponte spends much of his time in underdeveloped countries. Technology isn't about teaching, it's about learning. Introduces the concept of the $100 laptop.
Three basic principles - 1-Use technology to learn learning, not to learn something.
2-Teaching is one but not the only way to achieve learning.
3-Leverage children themselves.
History of his involvement in bringing technology to underdeveloped nations. Started with a few computers in a few locations, then moved to telecommunication(wifi, wimax, etc.) Communication is not a problem today. Project in Cambodia. At the same time Papert worked with the state of Maine on their laptop project. In Maine, they have discovered that teaching and learning is different. What is One Laptop Per Child? 1 - A non-profit entity of $30M funding for non-recurring engineering costs.
2 - About Scale, Scale, scale being global is curcial. Launch 5-10 million in 2007, 50-150 million 2008 > 5 large diverse countries.
3 - To provide to children: to own, to take home, to use seamlessly.
Partners Google, eBay, AMD, News Corp, Brightstar, Marvell, Nortel, Red Hat, 3M, Chi Mei, Quanta, Satellite - TBA, UN, IADB
A lot of laptops. How to get to $100.
•No sales, marketing distribution
•First Purchase Order 5-10M units
•Linux
•Reduce display cost leveraging backlight innovation
500 Mhz AMD x86 processor
128M dRAM
512M Flash
>2 W nominal, can be human powered
3 USB ports
Stereo sound, with 2 audio out
WIFI mesh network
Rugged
Dual mode Display - Spatial Color, Backlit, Transmissive, OLPC LCD Display, Sunlight Readable, Reflective
Camera under consideration
Working model should be on floor shortly Open Source
Skinny Linux
Instant on
Will be faster than your laptop
Parallel Commercial Channels
Whitebox and brands
Private labels
Maintenance by the kids
Design - not cheap, not toy
Color coding of machine for revision purposes. A pivot screen. Crank moved to power supply to reduce wear on the laptop. Part of the Package
$1000 server with 300GB
Inter-school wireless connections Satellite back haul, where needed Mesh
About Launch, global, simultaneous, in quantities of one million each.
Launch countries - Brazil, Nigeria, Thailand, Argentina Central American plan with IADB, In discussion with : China, India, Egypt, Mexico, Bangladesh, Arab League
Why not in the USA?
Buy the $400 Intel Laptop
We do not treat malaria here
Too many school districts
Reverse chain: OLPC's problems are different
Time Line
Nov. 17 Announced WSIS
Dec. 12 Quanta agreed to build
May '06 final country commitments
Q4 '06 developer rollout
Laptop price commitment $100 target price end of 2008, price will float based on : currency, memory, nickel, cobalt. $138 anticipated in 2007 constantly lowering, $50 target price in 2010. Gray market issues - Economics
Initial and launch: Central government funded.
Single order
Susequent
Philanthropic Organizations
Child-to-child funding
Commercial subsidy
One country paying for another
Etc.
Side Effects
Linux on the desktop
No caps lock key
Power conciousness, more human power
No bloated software
stop featuritis
Viral telecommunications
Peer to peer everything
Learning by doing
Contribute ideas to wiki.laptop.org If personally intertested or want a developer board, send e-mails to: iste@laptop.org theeducationalmac necc necc2006

Telling the New Story

If I had to choose only one session to attend here at NECC, this is the one that I would choose. David Warlick presents the case for Telling the New Story so well that I don't tire of hearing it. Part of the fun of David's sessions is listening to the music he has created, or music that his son plays. The only way education will change is if we can Tell a New Story about education. We have been in the industrial age education system for so long David is not optimistic that it can change. However he has seen pockets. Examples of what can happen when teachers and student are given technology that they can use to bridge gaps. The handouts for the session can be found at David's Site. David's civics teacher predicted in 1967 that everyone would have a computer by the year 2000. Leadership - 3 types - There is the leader that is the master. There is the leader that is the creator, inventor. The leader that can tell a compelling new story. The current education system was designed to prepare people to work in straight rows, working on repetitive tasks, for their entire career. Uses The World is Flat to talk about what we need to prepare our students for today. Also talks about Richard Florida's work. Picture of David's son in "cockpit." We see technology, he experiences information. The kids today are super human. They have invisible tentacles that reach through walls and around the world. They take them to where they need to go. Then they come into the classroom and we cut off the tentacles, and they don't like it. A story from a Techie Children believe that "...everything is clickable, even their parents." -Vinod Khosla "There is no longer a need to teach kids the facts..." In the classroom today we need to create learners who are specialized and/or adaptable.
The Long Tail effect.
When we have new questions, where do the new answers come from? One of the answers will be something that somebody said yesterday on a blog or wiki.
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The Educational Mac Podcast #31-NECC 2006 Special Edition 1

Sessions attended today-BTW, I have to hand it to ISTE and the NECC crew this year. The wireless access throughout the conference center is terrific. There were a few slowdowns, but the access seemed very robust. Once again, I applaud conference organizers. They really stepped up after the lack of access last year.
San Diego is a great place for conferences. I have attended many here and just love it. I think if I could afford to live anyplace I wanted, San Diego would be in the top 3 of my choices. Speaking of affordability. I can't believe there are still hotels that charge you so much for a night's stay and still won't provide free internet access. When Best is Free: An Educator's Guide to Open Source
Blog Entry
Podcasting and Podcatching for the Absolute Beginner
Blog Entry
Telling the New Story: Promoting Visions for 21st Century Classrooms
Blog Entry
Say Cheese! Using Digital Cameras in the Classroom
Blog Entry
Apple introduces a lower cost iMac for education.
See You in a Few! (hours that is)
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Podcasting and Podcatching for the Absolute Beginner

Dr. Larry Anderson has organized the session and has gathered several great podcasters. Ted Lai - co-authored iLife in the Classroom '06 with Jim Heid, David Warlick, Lucy Gray, Tim Wilson. There is a wiki set up at David's site that will contain notes taken by participants in the session. Ted and Tim are introducing the basics, talking about RSS. Defining Podcasts and Podcasting. The big thing about podcasting is the timeshifting aspect. Facts Doesn't require an iPod, Timeshifting, Not platform specific, Democratization.
Timeline - Podcasting officially began in Summer of 2004, Curry and Winer, Term coined in Sept. 2004, Thousands of podcasters online now. Fastest growing technology use in history.
Vocabulary - RSS, XML, enclosure, aggregator, blog, syndication.
David describes the relationship between blogging and podcasting, unfortunately the bandwidth suck is going big time and he can't get anywhere fast online.
Lucy is now going over podcatching in iTunes and my battery is about dead, so I am going to shorten this one and hope I can find an open outlet somewhere. theeducationalmac necc2006 necc

David Thornberg on Open Source-When the Best is Free

In the Sails Pavillion. I kind of like this setting for a session, it is very open and there will be a lot of noise, but it is sunny and airy, not at all like the usual stuffy conference room. Dr. Thornburg begins by talking about the platform agnostic nature of open source. Has written a book called When the Best is Free. A benefit of open source is that it tends to get updated a lot. The cost benefit can be impressive. Edubuntu is the only operating system that was designed for schools. Now playing a game. Contestant picks a card, the card reads Audacity. Talks about what Audacity can replace (Sound Forge). BTW-The session is packed with people standing around the edges. I have a feeling open source is going to be a huge topic at the conference.
Now the program he is demonstrating is Inkscape. Line art drawing tool comparable to Illustrator.
(I just realized I left my extra battery at the hotel, doh!)
Next up is NVU, it is a wysiwyg web editor. Now in the game is NetLogo. It is a free Logo software, but not open source yet. The next software is Blender. It is a 3-D modeling tool that can also do 3-D animation. He will not demonstrate Blender but is showing a film that was created using Blender. Blender has been used in feature films, notably Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.
Dia is a diagramming software comparable to Visio. The SRO crowd has stayed pretty much intact. I am a little surprised as the session has moved a little slowly, at least for my taste.
Final software is Tuxpaint. It is a paint program for kids, comparable to KidPix. This has been an informative session, but again could have moved a little faster. necc necc2006 theeducationalmac

NECC 2006 Schedule

I have to admit that I have had a hard time getting very excited about NECC for a variety of reasons. However as the time is close at hand, I can feel the anticipation building as I look forward to seeing distant friends and meeting new ones. Here is my tentative schedule for NECC. I will update as I settle on a few more sessions. Remember, Be the first to introduce yourself to me each day (5,6, & 7) and I will have a shiny iTunes gift card for you.
Kelly Dumont NECC 2006 Tentative Schedule ---------------------------------------------------------------- Wednesday, July 5
10:00-11:00am Podcasting and Podcatching for the Absolute Beginner
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11:45am-1:00pm Extraordinary Visions
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2:00-3:00pm Telling the New Story: Promoting Visions for 21st Century Classrooms NOTES: Time Conflict
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2:00-3:00pm Introducing the Read/Write Web: Challenges, Opportunities, and Implications NOTES: Time Conflict
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3:30-4:30pm Say Cheese! Using Digital Cameras in the Classroom
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Thursday, July 6
7:15-8:15am Tom Snyder Breakfast
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8:30-9:45am One Laptop Per Child
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11:00am-12:00pm A One Hour Tour: Navigating Primary Sources on the Internet
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12:00-1:00pm Sandisk Lunch NOTES: Time Conflict
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12:30-1:30pm Award-Winning Digital Photography Projects for the Classroom NOTES: Time Conflict
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2:00-3:00pm The MegaVCR: Media and More in Your Pocket NOTES: Time Conflict
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2:00-3:00pm Using Technology to Support 21st-Century Literacy Skills NOTES: Time Conflict
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3:30-4:30pm A Web of Connections: Why the Read/Write Web Changes Everything
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5:00-6:00pm Savvy Technologist Podcast
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
8:00-10:00pm EduBlogger Meetup
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Friday, July 7
8:30-9:30am The Good, Bad, and Ugly: Taking Digital Pictures Effectively
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11:30am-12:30pm iLearn, Therefore iPod
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2:30-3:30pm Open Technologies: What They Mean for You and Your Students
See You in a Few! (For some, quite literally)
necc necc2006 theeducationalmac