Lightning in a Bottle

NCCE is next week!  It looks like we’re going to have a really well-attended conference with lots of great workshops and presentations.  Among many things, I’m looking forward to seeing Wesley Fryer speak in person, having read his blog for quite awhile. (Well, as much as I can keep up with - I’m not sure the man ever sleeps.)  There are the usual load of exhibitors, and there’s just frankly too much to see and do.  I’ll spend a lot of time in the exhibit area, I know, and I’ll spend a lot of time in those wonderfully spontaneous conversations that only seem to happen in conferences.  If you haven’t registered, it’s not too late - I hope we see you there!

We finished reading Qwest grants today. Qwest is funding a total of nine $10,000 innovative technology grants throughout the state, and we screen our region’s applications to send on three finalists to the state. At the state level they will pick one from our three, so there will be one grant funded at each of the nine Educational Service Districts.

What makes it a frustrating exercise is that there are so many good proposals from so many dedicated teachers. Projects covered almost every content area and grade, and focused on involving students in a variety of creative and exciting projects. I would fund many of them without batting an eye, but only the one will be accepted from our region.

All of these people clearly put a lot of thought and effort into the projects they envisioned, and it really bothers me not to be able to reward them for their dedication, passion, and skill. I’m hoping that we will have access to greater levels of money in the future to avoid this problem!

There was an article in The Guardian yesterday about how many schools are purchasing the British equivalent of the Asus EeePC.  (In England it’s marketed as the RM Minibook, but it is the same device.)   When they looked at the cost, I thought it was interesting that one of the measures was the cost per week – 1.6 pounds, or $3.13 over a three-year period.  They are projecting sales of over 30,000 to schools by the end of the year, which is even more impressive when you consider that ASUS has not marketed to education.

 Now that I’ve had a chance to use my EeePC for a couple of weeks, I like it even more.  I’ve figured out how to set the wireless connection so it automatically connects to my home and work networks, and I’ve found that the battery life is much better now that I’ve fully charged it overnight, running for three hours at least.  I was able to update Skype so it uses the web cam, so I can videoconference with it.  I’ll keep reporting as I explore it more.

Professor Michael Wesch from from Kansas State University has a great blog post that went up today.  It contains a link that shows a synchronized video/PowerPoint presentation he did at Educause on the “The Crisis of Significance.”  It incorporates some of the material from his videos, but puts it into a context that brings a clarity to those presentations.  It’s about an hour long, and incorporates 379 slides (!), but it effectively underscores a lot of what I’ve been thinking about lately.  We don’t have simply a technology gap with students coming into schools now, we have a cultural gap.  While the “generation gap” has been around for a long time, the impact of technology seems to be creating greater and faster levels of separation in ways that directly impact what and how we teach.

Note - I did have to install a plugin to make the video presentation work, and there are several comments to the effect that others were having difficulty viewing the presentation.  I used Firefox for Windows, and after installing the required plugin it played just fine.