Have A Great Conference

I am having a great conference. Please tell me about your conference experiences.

SOITA Hands On Workshop

Tomorrow I head to Dayton, Ohio to attend the SOITA conference and to present a hands on workshop on Blogs and Wikis.
If you attend please see the SOITA Blog page.

I'm Going to Jail

Well, for MDA.
Please consider making a donation. Visit my MDA page for more information.

Summer Academy Finishes

We made it. Alyssa and I had the chance to meet some hard working, capable, inventive, motivated and creative teachers through the last three weeks of Summer Academy. Each week we learned about all the latest Web 2.0 tools, mindsets, and ways to incorporate them into the curriculum. Each teacher made a blog, wiki, or both as a final project and we saw lots of fabulous uses. One of my favorite parts of this job is meeting the extraordinary teachers working in today's schools. I also like the aspect of helping teachers find the light when working with technology in the classroom while helping others with less self confidence in technology make it through a class to feel empowered.
To see some of the public final projects please go to the Summer Academy blog.
Great job teachers! It was a pleasure to meet all of you and hear about the greatness in your classrooms.

North and South Along 23

On Friday I traveled South to New Boston for a Digital Camcorders and Film Projects class. The five participants were great and made films of everything from shoes, to prom prep to basketball. They were nice enough to take me with them to Arby's for lunch. The drive proved fairly eventful as the Malt Shoppe in Waverly chose that exact morning to catch fire and Route 23 was shut down. I was diverted around the burning building and had to be careful not to hit any of the curious pedestrians milling about and watching the building burn. New Boston is very far south so I had my first view of the Ohio river since last spring when I went to Arkansas.
Today I travel the other direction on Route 23 to Marion where I will meet with a group of pre-service teachers to explain the ins and outs of webquests. I look forward to sharing the fun with them and asking about ways they think we can incorporate Web 2.0 tools for the next generation of webquests.
Happy Earth Day to everyone.
Try these webquests for an Earth Day activity http://www.education-world.com/a_lesson/lesson/lesson307.shtml
or
http://www.geocities.com/gradeone_ca/Lessons/earthday.html
and remember every day is Earth Day.

UPDATE: Governor Strickland Rescheduled for May 7, 2008

As many of you are already aware the Interactive Video Conference with Ohio Governor Ted Strickland has been rescheduled for May 7th. We are looking forward to the fabulous interactions that will take place on that day. Look for further blogs on the topic.

At Your Service: How Government Works Series with Attorney General Mark Dann and Speaker of the House Jon Husted

The Interactive Video Distance Learning series At Your Service: How Government Works with special guests Attorney General Mark Dann and Speaker of the House Jon Husted continued last Tuesday at the WOSU@COSI studios. Ohio Attorney General Mark Dann interacted live with Bishop Hartley, Kenston Local, Warren Local, Beachwood Local, and Lake Academy schools with countless others watching the session. Later that day, students from Bishop Hartley, Eastern Local, Norwalk, Sheffield-Sheffield Lake, and Put-In-Bay were able to pose some great questions to Speaker Jon Husted as numerous other sites watched the action from that session unfold. Questions to both gentleman included questions about the economy and building new oil refineries, the constitutionality of school funding in Ohio, and environmental issues.
Both politicians spoke about the importance of students getting involved in their local communities. They encouraged volunteering in an area students feel passionate about. An archive of these sessions can be viewed at http://sg60.oar.net/OSC/index.php by clicking on the "Archived Sessions" link.
Please feel free to comment about the sessions.
Ohio Governor Ted Strickland is the next featured guest.

Survey Monkey and Diigo 3.0

Much of this week I spent playing around with Survey Monkey (www.surveymonkey.com). What a fun application. I created two very functional surveys and was able to do just about everything I wanted to do without too much trouble. The choices for construction, collection, and analyzing are bountiful. It all comes out looking very professional. There is a cost but for anyone who does a lot of survey work or enjoys design and data it is well worth it.
Hooray, also, for Diigo 3.0. I absolutely love the sidebar and the new toolbar layout. I still have lots to play around with on that but I can already tell it might make very happy.

At Your Service: Ohio Government Interactive Video Conference

Justice Robert R. Cupp
Lots of hard work from WOSU, ITSCO and Robert Cupp's office paid off as the first session in a four session series entitled At Your Service:How Government Works conducted via Interactive Videoconferencing went off beautifully. If you are not familiar with how IVC works think of a Jetson's videophone. People in different geographical locations can see and hear people in other geographical locations in real time. This made for an exciting opportunity to have Justice Cupp in the WOSU@COSI studios and the students from Oak Hill Union, West Carrollton, and Bloom Vernon Local ask questions from the comfort of their own classrooms. Questions asked ranged from tattoos and piercings in schools to the current presidential election and the state of Ohio. Students were interested to hear about a day in the life of a Justice of the Ohio Supreme court directly from the Justice.
The conversation can continue here in the blog. Please feel free to comment.
Three additional sessions with Ohio Attorney General Mark Dann, Speaker of the Ohio House of Representatives Jon Husted and Ohio Governor Ted Strickland are coming up in April.