eTech Ohio Conference: Wednesday

This conference had an unusual morning format, there were open sessions at 8:00 am and keynote speakers took the stage immediately following at 9:30 am. Had I not been presenting during the first block of sessions, I may have been tempted to catch a bit of sleep and start the day later. That would have been my mistake as the morning sessions were as vital and well attended as any other session throughout the conference. Plus, by 8:00 am most of us would be at work anyway!

Keynote Session: David Weinberger
Knowledge in the Age of Abundance

"Many of the properties we've ascribed to knowledge actually come from the limitations of how we've communicated and preserved knowledge: by writing things down on paper. As we increasingly write things down on the Web, some of the basics of knowledge are changing. Knowledge increasingly now includes differences and disagreements. This is unsettling…because knowledge itself is becoming unsettled."

I looked through the conference site hoping this session was online, I even logged in with my hall pass hoping it was maybe only available for conference attendees. Alas, there is no PowerPoint, slide share, or video available. I did find a session he did at another conference last year on YouTube.

Power & Peril of Social Web: Helping Teachers
& Students Create a Digital Footprint
Kathy Lawrence, Cleveland Heights High School

"Participants will be introduced to popular tools of the social web (eg: Ning,Twitter, GoogleDocs, Diigo) and explore how these tools can be leveraged to build your own personal learning network. We will also examine our role in helping our students create and maintain a positive digital footprint with their use of these networks and resources."

This session included interesting links to the social web and resources for assessing your personal digital footprint. I admit to "Googling" myself and at times being surprised at the memory of the Internet (I found a list serv post from grad school). I'd never used Pipl and was more than a little surprised at the results. Other interesting resources were the blog Technology in the Middle, Danah Boyd's blog Apophenia, and the YouTube video Read/Write Web with Will Richardson.

Technology Implementation in Academic Classrooms
David Harms, Penta County

"Participants will learn different strategies and techniques to use existing technology to increase student success in academic content areas. Topics covered will include podcasts, wikis, moviemaking, skype, and creation of an online textbook by a practicing social studies instructor at a career center with a high level of special needs students and traditional non academic students."

I was very interested in the wiki used by Harms, in particular the Mayan Project page. Students took ownership of their projects and created vital information pages that were, in turn, evaluated by experts in Mayan history.