wearejustlearning.ca|blog

At last I have a chance to catch my breath here at the GaETC conference in Atlanta. After a relaxing weekend at a ski lodge up at Mt. Tremblant north of Montréal, I flew to Georgia on Monday for a week of intense tech teacher geekiness. Ah…. To be with my people!

Jen Wagner (technospud) and I have been hanging out since Monday. Yesterday, we were joined by Vicki Davis. Jen and Vicki were both workshop presenters at the conference while I was a blissful participant.

I attended two workshops yesterday and learned a good deal about the art of presentation from both. The training for using the eportfolio module for moodle was well done and I learned a few tricks with moodle that I had not known before. While I think that moodle would make an excellent repository for eportfolios, it occurs to me again that a one-enterprise solution for all online environments would be so nice. With so many online environments currently available, their uses and purposes seem to be overlapping.

The other workshop I attended was Vicki Davis’ workshop on wikis and I really appreciated the way she divided the participants into teams and put us to work on collaborative wiki-building to get our feet wet. Wikis are just so great for organizing content and displaying information without having to know a thing about html coding. Such a relief!

Last night, the women of web 2.0 had our second skypecast with EdTechTalk. The topic was why we blog and what it brings to our teaching. It will be available online soon. The turnout was surprisingly good and I have become so impressed with Cheryl’s audiocasting skills.

I also had the great pleasure of going to Patrick Crispen’s session on what’s new and what’s next – sort of Patrick Crispen 2.0. He was using PPT 2007 to make his presentation. After Feb. 19 2009, we will no longer have broadcast television. He highlights IPTV – on-demand television which is a combo of youtube, ipod video, and tivo over the telephone lines. This is important for schools so that schools can have closed circuit television with streaming data between classrooms.

He also discusses the differences between standard definition and high definition television. One should be looking for 1080p if one is buying new equipment in order to prepare for the progressive scan that will be broadcast soon. When buying cables to prepare for the new technology (which is digital), buy very good cables that can convert from analog to digital. High definition multimedia interface (one simple cable) will convert the signals. Eventually we will moving to just one cable. It is okay to buy the cheapest for HDMI. He warns to know about High Definition Content Protection which might prevent these devices from working altogether. One should look for 1080p with multiple HDMI 1.3/HDCP connections.

The notes to his presentation can be found here.
technorati tags:

GaETC Conference, women of web 2.0, Technospud,
Vicki Davis, Patrick Crispen