WEMTA Conference Take-Aways

This week I attended and presented at the Wisconsin Educational Media & Technology Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Below are some of my take-aways from the Conference.

Educators Range of Use
I had a great conversation with Chris Longe after the banquet about professional development. She gave me permission to quote her, "Some teachers are really pushing the envelope on a lot of the Web 2.0 technologies being presented here, while others are still trying to find the mailbox". This really fit well with the Coaching Educators’ Use of Information & Technology session I presented on an EETT grant I'm evaluating. I think administrators are key in helping educators move ahead with technology. I think that administrators need a couple of tools in their toolbox to help teachers move forward with technology. (1) They need to have buy-in and a belief that technology is important for their students (2) they need to be able to recognize what effective teaching practices with the use of technology are and (3) they need a variety of coaching strategies to deal with the large continuum of teacher comfort levels with technology.

Web 2.0 Conference Strategy
This year's WEMTA conference was filled with Web 2.0 tools and the word "collaboration" was everywhere. Diane Dorsh, in charge of technology for the Neenah Joint School District, shared with me a strategy that she uses with her colleagues when going to a conference. They start a wiki and everyone who goes to the conference contributes to it. That way it can be shared with everyone in their district. What a great use of a Web 2.0 tool!

Adventures on Second Life
Another presentation I did was on Second Life. A lot of educators ask me how Second Life can be used in education. I chose to share a couple of videos to help the audience better understand the potential that virtual worlds provides.

The first video I shared was a video that gives a nice overview of the power of using Second Life as a simulated environment.



I also shared two videos of the Pacific Rim/ Project. One of the things that I challenged the audience to think about while watching these videos was what ISTE NETS Standards, AASL Standards, 21st Century Skills, and Content Skills this project would cover. When you think about this project from this perspective it is truly amazing how deep this project is!

Part 1:


Part 2:



After showing the videos one person made the comment that she was glad that I showed this because she always had sort of creepy idea of what Second Life was and this really helped to see how it could be used in education.

Next, we met Michelle Kowalsky virtually in Second Life. Michelle is Michelle is a professor at William Paterson University in New Jersey and teaches school library media specialists. She recently finished her dissertation in which she studied communication patterns among librarians in Second Life.

The audience found it humorous because I couldn't always keep up with Michelle and my avatar was a little slower and more clumsy than her. Some people came up to me after the presentation and said that it was nice to see me struggle and that they were having trouble or feeling frustrated learning how to move and interact in Second Life. I think part of that is because we as adults don't like to be unsuccessful at something, but failing is a part of learning and important part of learning and we've forgot what it feels like to learn something unfamiliar and new.

We suggested that you go to ISTE's second life island if you are a newbe educator in Second Life. Another person asked where you can find other schools on second life- http://www.simteach.com/wiki/index.php?title=Institutions_and_Organizations_in_SL