Educational Origami » NECC 2008

NECC Vol 6 – Using emerging tools for collaborative Learning environment

andrewch — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 16:34:29 +0000

This session was a little on the edge. The three presenters (two real and one virtual via skype) were pushing the boundaries of their presentations – they had a wiki they shared, google documents and forms, presenting ucing google presenter and skyping into the presentation to video conference. The bandwidth and wireless was flaky so the audio was rough in places. But it was very interesting. The find was the integration between google forms and google spreadsheet. Then linking the output and data – this could be images like a graph to web pages. Quite neat and definitely worth following up. The other great thing with google forms and spreadsheets is not limited to 100 respondents like the free version of surveymonkey. Really cool. Here is the mind map of the session:

Here is the mind map:

NECC Vol 5 – Ian Jukes

andrewch — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 02:54:33 +0000

Ian Jukes is a researcher and presenter I have wantde to meet. His paper on Digitial Children is one I have read and enjoyed. It even warrants a page on my wiki. So I must admit I was looking forwarded to Ian session today….

….and I was not disappointed.

At about a million miles per hour, Ian presented a brilliant and witty session on Understanding Digital learners – learning in a digital Landscape.

The session was based around 7 key changes that are required to move into the 21st Century and to teach the digital natives.

Teachers need time to catch up – Essentially taechers need to be given time to play and learn
Moving beyond 20th C Literacies to 21st C Fluencies
Changing our instructional approach
Allowing the students to collaborate
Allow students to access information natively – using their tools of choice and recreation.
Let students create real time, real problem digital products/solutions – real rich problems
reassess evaluation and assessment

ian didn’t say throw out all of our old practice rather keep those aspects that are good, but remove the rest.

Here is the mind map:

More to follow..

NECC Vol 4 – the story so far..

andrewch — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:03:21 +0000

Well day one went well. The open source lab was interesting – I attended a session using Blender a 3D image and animation tool. A good session, a little to big for really good learning but it was a good taster and one I will follow up on.

I continue to be impressed with the diversity of open source products available. Wandering around the trade show, I wonder how many of the companies pedaling their wares are being seriously effected by the open source revolution. For most of the products on sale there is an alternative open source, community developed and often supported product. What is the major difference between open source and proprietory software, often I feel it is only the level of structured support available to the user.

The other session was David Warlick. David is an enjoyable and insightful speaker. I try to go to his sessions as they are fun and interesting.

The remainder of the time was spent on the trade show. This was as useful as the other sessions. Once you get past the sales pitch and start asking the interesting questions its amazing what you hear and see. These contacts are as useful as the sessions.

A Good day, roll on day 2.

NECC Vol 3 – Tabula Digita

andrewch — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 14:27:55 +0000

This is an interesting product – a 3D immersive mathematics game. Kids play in 1st person either individual or in teams. They have instructional modules followed by the games themselves.

Can be competitive between schools and districts. Neat

C-Map Notes

URL: http://www.tabuladigita.com/

Neat game interface, a fun approach to maths and adjustable into other subjects. Would be bandwdith intensive. Cost on application