DV for Teachers

This feels difficult. I went to two different conferences in the last three weeks, and came away with more specific information for following up than ever. I heard about wonderful ideas, teaching practices, classroom strategies, new uses of technologies… new to me, anyway, but that’s why we go to these conferences.

So what’s difficult? Part of the difficulty is knowing I’ve been at this job for 10 years now, as of the 7th of July. It’s been a great ten years – I really like what we’ve created here in the ITC. I’ve seen what could be, though – some wonderful innovations that we could emulate at Emory’s Cox Hall, the FCIT at University of South Florida, and the University of Texas at Austin. Now I’m ready to try some of these new things, to plan and share these ideas and this energy, but the students and faculty are either involved in the end of summer semester or on vacation, and as I said, I’ve got other commitments to keep.

So, back to the work I left behind to go to the conferences… valuable work I mostly enjoy for people I like and respect for a purpose I support, but it’s not the exciting stuff I saw at these conferences! While I’m tempted by the new new things, I’ll dig in, and work to keep the energy from these fresh ideas while I do the not so new things. As Dave Winer always says, still diggin’.

I’m in a session called Information Fluency Meets Web 2.0, and it’s one of those “wow my brain is expanding” sessions. Joyce Valenza is a high school librarian who works closely with teachers on teaching strategies, finding and developing online resources, and more. The session will have a podcast up shortly after the conference ends. She’s got a blog about Web 2.0 too. She’s presenting with a teacher from her school who’s worked with her on many of these projects.

Here’s one great idea I wish I’d thought of, combining book trailers and the (often annoying) required reading list: have the students reading the book make a trailer about it. Then, the best of them goes up on the web site for all to see, and at the end of the year, they’re all shown to the students who’ll read the books that summer or the following year. It’s such an obvious idea!

This is the kind of session that NECC is be about at its best: fresh uses of existing tools that produce results, shown with enthusiasm that’s contagious. I just told them that they’ve nuked my brain, and it’s glowing!