News Update!

The Ides of February

Tomorrow is February 15th, which is the deadline for presentation proposals for the Association of Educational Communication and Technology's conference in Anaheim this October. I've presented at this conference for years, and am looking forward to it. Have turned in two proposals. One is on "Learning through Podcasting: Student-Created Podcasts." The other, with my colleague Mark Millard, is "Web 2.0 for Educators: We (and Our Students) are the Web." Hopefully, both will be accepted! Hopefully, you can attend AECT (right next door to Disneyland--Bring the Fam!) and hear what we have to say.

February 15th is also the opening day for presentations to the International Student Media Festival, also in Anaheim in October. As I've mentioned previously, I will be helping out again with the festival. I will be teaching a new class for the ISMF, about podcasting. We will also have a new category, for student-created podcasts. So if your students have or will be creating their own podcasts (or other media type), consider submitting it!

The next episode of "Teach with Tech" is in the planning stages, and I'm eagerly looking forward to the recording session. It will be about technology and special education, something that I haven't dealt with yet in the series. I look forward to finding out more about the state of the art in the area.

Chris

Welcome, Indiana Computer Educators!

This past Friday, I attended the Indiana Computer Educators' conference in downtown Indy. It was my first time at the conference and I was impressed. Things seemed very well organized. I hadn't been to the Convention Center since the Star Wars Celebrations II and III, and so it was strange walking down the halls and not seeing Jedi Knights and StormTroopers anywhere. I still kept expecting to turn a corner and bump into Darth Vader, but it never happened.

There was a nice, large exhibitor's area, with representatives from many companies and lots of goodies to pick up. I won't need a new pen for the rest of the year, for sure. My presentation on podcasting was during the first session of the day, and in one of the Wabash Rooms, which is the biggest, I believe. Had a good turnout, maybe 80% of the seats were full. A lively, interested audience of K-12 teachers. Most had listened to podcasts, maybe a third had created them, but only a couple had used them in their teaching. I provided guidance in all three of these areas. It was a shame we only had 45 minutes, because I would have been happy to keep going on and giving more examples of cool uses of podcasting in the K-12 arena.

As promised, the Powerpoint from the session will be posted here on the blog. But not tonight! I'm still in Indy and using a friend's computer now. But on Monday, when I get back to the office, I'll post it.

If you're in Indiana, and you think your school might want a similar presentation, let me know and maybe we can work something out.

During the presentation, I mentioned the International Student Media Festival. I encourage you to have your students submit work! This year will be the first for the new podcasting category. Check it out at http://www.ismf.net. There isn't any podcast-specific info there yet, though. Doesn't mean you can't start a project though.

Using the Internet in the K-12 Classroom

Happy New Year, "Teach with Tech" listeners!

Soon the new semester will be upon us, here at Indiana University. As I have since 1998, I'll be teaching my online course, Education W505: Using the Internet in the K-12 Classroom. I'm looking forward to the new semester, and meeting the new students. Of course, the class has changed over the years I've taught it, just as the Internet has grown and developed. The basic idea of the course is that I lead students through the basic tools of the Internet (email, the Web, chat/instant messaging, learning management systems, etc.) and we discuss how they can be integrated into the student's current or future teaching. Recently, I've added podcasts, blogs and wikis into the class. The activities and projects all revolve around creating things that can actually be used by the students in their teaching. I've been really pleased and impressed with the work that my students have done in this course, creating webpages, webquests, etc. The capstone activity involves creating an instructional unit that integrates the Internet. One of my favorite aspects of teaching this course is that the students are so diverse--while I welcome students from Indiana, it is always nice to have students from out of state or out of the country. This past semester I had a student in Taiwan, and I've had them from Dubai, Japan, England, Pakistan, etc. over the years. I'm still looking for a few more students for this semester (which starts January 9th). Interested? Check it out at: http://www.indiana.edu/~w505a/

Only a week or so before I leave for the MacWorldExpo convention! Can't wait! I'm sure I'll have lots to share in the podcast when I get back.

The International Student Media Festival will start accepting K-12 media project entries on February 1st! Time to start thinking about your class's entry, if you haven't already.

Cheers,
Chris

More Episode 14 Info

Some additional information about Episode 14 (ISMF):

You can check out the project created by the Cannelton, IN Elementary School Media Club, a website titled "The Moon and Beyond," which is one of the projects profiled in the podcast, at:

http://www.siec.k12.in.us/cannelton/beyondmoon/

I don't have a URL for the other project, but it was created by kids at Heard Elementary Academy in Savannah, GA (there were quite a few projects from GA at the ISMF), specifically from the Gifted Education Program, which is led by Allison Roberts, Kim Mercer and Sally Watson. Kudos to both groups!

The enthusiasm of both the adults and the kids that I interviewed was inspiring, and I can tell that these media projects have made a big impact on the students.

Cheers,
Chris

Episode 14 (International Student Media Festival) is Available!

Episode 14 is now available! Some of you may be listening to it right now. This episode features a few short, entertaining and informative interviews with teacher, parent and student participants of the International Student Media Festival (http://www.ismf.net), recently held in Dallas, Texas. This festival highlights the creative work of K-12 students in a number of formats, such as still photgraphy, web design, and digital video. The episode is the shortest "Teach with Tech" so far, at under fifteen minutes, so it's a quick, fun listen. Hopefully, it will inspire some of you K-12 teachers to start projects with your students for next year's ISMF.

The blog has undergone a slight facelift, with the new Blogger dashboard. Hopefully, it is more readable now. I'm thinking a specific "Teach with Tech" logo would be nice to have sometime...

I've got a couple of interviews coming up, as well as some more material that might make it into a podcast, so stay tuned....

Chris

Back from AECT! & Podcasting Screencast

Had a great time at the Association for Educational Communication conference in Dallas, Texas. Met a lot of charming, inteliigent people and saw some old friends. As I suspected, I barely got out of the conference hotel, so I don't have a great sense of what Dallas has to offer, though I did enjoy the Mexican food at RJs on the West End.

At AECT, I presented on the topic of "Podcasting: A New Medium for Distance Learning." It was a packed room and numerous people asked me for a copy of my slides. Better than that, I've created an enhanced podcast or screencast for you, for free download. Just click on the title above. You will probably find that it opens in iTunes, but Quicktime Player should work fine, too. (Actually, I just tried this out, on Windows---for some reason, the slides are almost unreadable in Quicktime, so you will want to use iTunes after all.) I may make this a part of a "Teach with Tech" (Enhanced Podcast) series, along with my HTML tutorial, and make it subscribable. But I don't want to confuse things and upload it along with the regular "Teach with Tech." By the way, I used Profcast to make the screencast and it couldn't have been easier.

Also, while at AECT, I participated in a Skypecast, which is a live broadcast over Skype, in a show called "EdTechTalk Brainstorm." It was a lot of fun, partly because of my co-guest (is that a word?) Jennifer Maddrell, who is an IU grad student in Instructional Systems Technology. We will both be appearing on EdTech Weekly this coming Sunday at 7pm Bloomington time. They should also have an mp3 archive of this past Sunday's session up soon, so check it out. Not that my contributions were all that meaningful, but....

Do you know about the International Student Media Festival? Sponsored by AECT, it is a wonderful opportunity for K-12 students to show off their work, in areas such as still photography, stills with audio, websites, and digital video productions. I assisted as one of the judges this year, and also attended some of the events, such as Marco Torres' inspiring keynote, and the viewing of K-6 projects. I also interviewed some parents and kids, who were very excited about the ISMF. More about this in a future podcast.

More to come....

Chris