Alice Mercer's PD Blog http://mercertraining.edublogs.org “It is not the beginning of the end, but it is the end of the beginning.” Winston Churchill Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:03:57 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.8.2 en hourly 1 Reflections on NECC 2009 Day One http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/07/06/reflections-on-necc-2009-day-one/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/07/06/reflections-on-necc-2009-day-one/#comments Tue, 07 Jul 2009 04:03:57 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=81 Have gone up at: http://inpractice.edublogs.org. Enjoy! Also a post on the “social” scene and how to make the most of it is at: http://www.isteconnects.org/2009/07/06/expanding-your-network/

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/07/06/reflections-on-necc-2009-day-one/feed/ 0 The conference formerly known as “NECC” http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/07/05/the-conference-formerly-known-as-necc/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/07/05/the-conference-formerly-known-as-necc/#comments Mon, 06 Jul 2009 03:26:53 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=80

Larry Ferlazzo pointed out that many readers may have NO idea what a NECC is, and why it’s such a big deal, so I thought I would do a short posts on NECC background. I’ll explain the title of this post at the end.

First, NECC (the National Educational Computing Conference) is an annual conference for the members of ISTE (the International Society for Technology in Education). This is a conference focused on education technology and draws folks from around the world, although most are from the U.S.

It is a big conference. How big? This year had it’s largest turnout, with ~18,000 in attendance (about 4,000 were exhibitor/vendors). The exhibition floor for this year was the size of 5 football fields. Below is a crude triptych panorama of the exhibition floor:

They usually have top name speakers for the keynotes (although not all the attendees will think they are so great). This year we had Malcolm Gladwell, and last year we had James Surowiecki.

Since we were in D.C. and a block from NPR, we had Robert Siegel, moderate a debate on brick and mortar Schools, NPR Technology commentator,  Mario Armstrong, did a post speech Q & A with Gladwell. There was even mention of the conference on APM’s Marketplace for June 29, 2009.

The conference and ISTE are doing a rebrand, and will drop NECC, in favor of ISTE for next year’s conference in Denver, hence the cheeky title of this post. So you will not hear about NECC next year, but will hear it called ISTE instead. Sorry for the confusion, it wasn’t my idea. They wanted it to be more “international”. We’ll see if that extends to having the conference outside the U.S. in the future.

To see what others think and what happened, here are some resources. I will be doing blog posts for the next week or so about my adventures there.

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/07/05/the-conference-formerly-known-as-necc/feed/ 2 Reflections on EdubloggerCon09 http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/07/04/reflections-on-edubloggercon09/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/07/04/reflections-on-edubloggercon09/#comments Sat, 04 Jul 2009 23:28:49 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=79

My reflection post on EdubloggerCon09 can be found at:

EdubloggerCon 2009 Reflections

Links:

My Liveblogging at EdbubloggerCon at NECC

The schedule: http://www.edubloggercon.com/DC+2009+Agenda.

Photos on Flickr tagged ebc09

Photos in the EdubloggerCon Pool

Blog Posts (Google)

Blog Posts (Technorati)

Twitter feed for ebc09 or edubloggercon09

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/07/04/reflections-on-edubloggercon09/feed/ 0 NECC Day Three Live Blog http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/07/01/necc-day-three-live-blog/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/07/01/necc-day-three-live-blog/#comments Wed, 01 Jul 2009 12:30:55 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=77

NECC Schedule

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/07/01/necc-day-three-live-blog/feed/ 0 NECC Day Two Microblogging http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/30/necc-day-two-microblogging/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/30/necc-day-two-microblogging/#comments Tue, 30 Jun 2009 12:30:55 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=78 This day will largely be spent at Capitol Hill lobbying, so I will be “mobile”. Here is my feed:

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/30/necc-day-two-microblogging/feed/ 0 NECC Day One Live Blog http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/29/necc-day-one-live-blog/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/29/necc-day-one-live-blog/#comments Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:29:46 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=75

My NECC Schedule

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/29/necc-day-one-live-blog/feed/ 2 EdbubloggerCon at NECC http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/27/edbubloggercon-at-necc/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/27/edbubloggercon-at-necc/#comments Sat, 27 Jun 2009 12:30:39 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=76

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/27/edbubloggercon-at-necc/feed/ 0 My NECC Schedule http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/22/my-necc-schedule/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/22/my-necc-schedule/#comments Mon, 22 Jun 2009 19:32:34 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/22/my-necc-schedule/ Below is my calendar for NECC 2009 | National Educational Computing Conference put on by ISTE which will be starting next week. I will begin my travels to Washington, D.C. on Thursday afternoon with a train ride down to the San Francisco Bay area to spend the night there  before leaving by plane for the Capitol.

I will be live blogging many of the events I attend. The blog will appear at http://inpractice.edublogs.org, but I will likely mirror it at http://mizmercer.edublogs.org and http://mercertraining.edublogs.org.

I will be spending most of Tuesday on Capitol Hill as part of a lobbying effort by ISTE. I will be communicating solely by cell phone that day, so you can follow me at http://twitter.com/alicemercer or http://www.plurk.com/mizmercer.

Other places to find me and my media:

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/22/my-necc-schedule/feed/ 0 Test of Cover It Live http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/22/test-of-cover-it-live/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/22/test-of-cover-it-live/#comments Mon, 22 Jun 2009 17:01:38 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=73

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/22/test-of-cover-it-live/feed/ 0 Preview of Fear Not the Code http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/22/preview-of-fear-not-the-code/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/22/preview-of-fear-not-the-code/#comments Mon, 22 Jun 2009 14:23:51 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=70 Welcome! We’re going to use this post to “work on” during the session which is schedule at 9:00 a.m. PDT.

Embedding images is easy with a visual editor, but don’t let that code freak you out!

Photo credit: 177 of 365 – blind justice on Flickr

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/22/preview-of-fear-not-the-code/feed/ 0 Follow-up to VoiceThread: A 21st Century K-W-L Chart on Edublogs Live! http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/21/follow-up-to-voicethread-a-21st-century-k-w-l-chart-on-edublogs-live/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/21/follow-up-to-voicethread-a-21st-century-k-w-l-chart-on-edublogs-live/#comments Sun, 21 Jun 2009 22:50:33 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=69 It was a fun session, and a great turnout (about 20) on Friday night (for me at least, lots of Aussies there for their Saturday a.m.). You can listen to the session at:

My links for the session are at:

And in response to the question about rubrics for VoiceThread:

And here is info about pricing for educators. I may have misspoke because it looks like the Pro-educator account will put you in ed.voicethread.com which is not as “open” an environment as some educators would like:

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/21/follow-up-to-voicethread-a-21st-century-k-w-l-chart-on-edublogs-live/feed/ 1 VoiceThread – A 21st Century K-W-L Preview http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/18/voicethread-a-21st-century-k-w-l/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/18/voicethread-a-21st-century-k-w-l/#comments Fri, 19 Jun 2009 04:26:01 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/18/voicethread-a-21st-century-k-w-l/ The following is a list of bookmarks to go along with my presentation on Edublogs Live! about VoiceThread. You can access this session on Elluminate at 7 p.m. PDT on Friday June 19. Hope I’ll see you there!

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/18/voicethread-a-21st-century-k-w-l/feed/ 0 Schedule Change http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/17/schedule-change/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/17/schedule-change/#comments Wed, 17 Jun 2009 19:17:21 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=67 The Edublogs Live! session I am doing on VoiceThread: A 21st Century K-W-L has been changed from Thursday 6/18 to Friday 6/19 at 7 p.m. PDT. Hope to see you then!

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/17/schedule-change/feed/ 0 Upcoming Events for June 2009 http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/02/upcoming-events-for-june-2009/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/02/upcoming-events-for-june-2009/#comments Wed, 03 Jun 2009 02:06:40 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=66 As part of my promise to do a better job of sharing upcoming events more than 24 hours before they occur, here is my list of online “events” that I’ll be doing this month.

Monday June 8th at 6 p.m. PDT: It’s Elementary:Reflecting on the School Year Ending

It’s Elementary
Link to show

Wednesday June 17th at 9 a.m. PDT: Follow up to Classroom 2.0 Meetup

This is an in-person event. Details can be found here.

Thursday 6/18 Friday 6/19 at 7 p.m. PDT: Edublogs Live! VoiceThread: A 21st Century KWL

Monday 6/22 at 9 a.m. PDT: Fear Not the Code which is about using embed code and not freaking out…

A Special Message to SCUSD Teachers

I will be conducting trainings on the new district student information system, Zangle in the Oak Ridge Lab this summer. Check her for more information as I get dates (likely starting in July).

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/06/02/upcoming-events-for-june-2009/feed/ 0 Authenticity vs. editing student work: a peaceful middle ground for your class blog http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/05/27/authenticity-vs-editing-student-work-a-peaceful-middle-ground-for-your-class-blog/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/05/27/authenticity-vs-editing-student-work-a-peaceful-middle-ground-for-your-class-blog/#comments Thu, 28 May 2009 02:05:59 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=65 This was an online event with Edublogs Live, that I forgot to preview here. I promise I will list future shows before they happen!

You’ve started your blog(s) with students, and they are writing, when is their work “ready” to publish and share with the world? If you haven’t thought about it yet, you should. Watch as we discuss how to figure out your philosophy about publishing student work, and how to make sure that you are having students show their best work, while still supporting learning.

Points covered included:

  • Considerations, including potential “critics” who may read the blog;
  • Building comfort and fluency in students;
  • Avoiding embarrassing students;
  • Revising and editing comments after they are published;
  • Identify draft vs. final versions of work.

Sue Wyatt (taz teacher) and Jan Smith shared their experiences with student blogs which were very illuminating!

You can see the archive of the Elluminate session here

Links

Other

A note about the writing on this blog…

This blog includes writing from elementary students, and shows work at all stages from first to final drafts
Work with this logo:

has been edited once.

Work with this logo:

is in a final form.

We do this to show the whole writing process, and hope you enjoy seeing how we learn.

the image link is here:
Edited: http://oakridgefourthgrade.edublogs.org/files/2009/05/cooltext421028791.png
Final: http://oakridgefourthgrade.edublogs.org/files/2009/05/cooltext421029122.png

I did both on cooltext: http://cooltext.com/Buttons

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/05/27/authenticity-vs-editing-student-work-a-peaceful-middle-ground-for-your-class-blog/feed/ 0 Links for What’s New! http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/04/22/links-for-whats-new/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/04/22/links-for-whats-new/#comments Thu, 23 Apr 2009 04:11:11 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=64 Podcasting Lectures

Interactive White Boards

Flip Video Cameras

Videos for Math Instruction

Twitter in Education

Cell Phones in Learning

You Tube for Education

Maybe useful to you…

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/04/22/links-for-whats-new/feed/ 4 Preview of What’s New! http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/04/18/62/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/04/18/62/#comments Sun, 19 Apr 2009 04:15:49 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=62 This Thursday, April 23, 2009 at 4 p.m. I will be doing a training at the Oak Ridge Elementary computer lab called, “What’s New” which is about recent trends in educational technology. Here is the slide show for the training:

Whats New

View more presentations from Alice Mercer.
]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/04/18/62/feed/ 0 Upcoming Event in Sacramento! http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/04/14/upcoming-event-in-sacramento/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/04/14/upcoming-event-in-sacramento/#comments Wed, 15 Apr 2009 04:17:26 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=61 For those of you in Sacramento who subscribe to this blog, I will be at a Classroom 2.0 Live Workshop on Friday and Saturday April 24-25th. It will be held at Sacramento City College. You can find more information here: http://www.classroom20.com/events/cr-20-live-workshop

The event is for educators at all levels of technology proficiency, so I hope you will join me there!

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/04/14/upcoming-event-in-sacramento/feed/ 0 Student Blogging: avoiding the potholes on the way http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/04/07/student-blogging-avoiding-the-potholes-on-the-way/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/04/07/student-blogging-avoiding-the-potholes-on-the-way/#comments Wed, 08 Apr 2009 03:41:09 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=60 I will be conducting a session Student Blogging: avoiding potholes on the way in the Edublogs Elluminate room in a little under 24 hours. Since the day and time depend on your time zone, here are a few:

UTC: Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 01:00
US EDT: Wednesday April 8, 2009 at 21:00 or 9:00 p.m.
US PDT: Wednesday April 8, 2009 at 18:00 or 6:00 p.m.
Perth, Australia – Western Australia Thursday, April 9, 2009 at 9:00 AM

or click here to calculate your own.

This session is for folks new to blogging with students and talks about how to structure and plan for this big step. It’s more a how and why than a how-to. Please join us!
Photo: Day 223 – Learning to use computers on flickr

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/04/07/student-blogging-avoiding-the-potholes-on-the-way/feed/ 0 Recap of Beyond PowerPoint Training http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/03/26/recap-of-beyond-powerpoint-training/ http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/03/26/recap-of-beyond-powerpoint-training/#comments Fri, 27 Mar 2009 03:42:33 +0000 alicemercer http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/?p=59
Photo Credit Tiny Flowers by Emily D Elliott on flickr photosharing

I’m sorry!

Howdy! Thanks for coming to my training, and thank you for your patience with a truly trying technical situation. I will be discussing the difficulties we had with ISET (the “tech” folks), so if you were planning on attending my session on April 23rd (”What’s New”) things should be better. Please fill out the online evaluation form here, or by clicking the Evaluation tab above. If you would like to hear more about trainings in the future, please put your email address at the widget in the top left column. I’m thinking in the future, that I’m only going to cover PowerPoint by itself, and I’ll do a training on online alternatives as a standalone training.

Here are the links for the training:

The presentation:

Background on PowerPoint design (the links in italics are “backups” and should be available at SCUSD even though these sites are blocked):

Resources to get pictures

Resources to make slideshows online as an alternative to PowerPoint, or if want to place a PowerPoint on a Web page

]]> http://mercertraining.edublogs.org/2009/03/26/recap-of-beyond-powerpoint-training/feed/ 0