I posted most of my notes about Saturday’s EduBloggerCon at NECC at my wikispaces wiki, and I’ll be coming back here to reflect and think through some of it. I’ve started a Ning network, too, and added lots of folks on Twitter.

Speaking of reflection, I was a little reluctant to come this year… I’ve felt a bit static in my work, that blogging more than an irregular pointer to a good multimedia link was too much effort, much less producing podcasts, reflecting here, finding opportunities for doing more teaching and presenting. I have let looking at my usual technology (and other) sites be much too much of my online life. There are many many other professionals like me out there, and now I see how social/educational networked sites can work; there’s more to it then “friending” someone.

I’ve met some good folks, folks I’ll connect with more, I’m sure. You can read about them at my Ning site.

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!

So, good, right?

Ask Doc Searls about it, though. He is an advocate for Linux, the open source operating system, and always looks for tools that are not proprietary or closed, or as he calls them, “silos.” He links to the Gizmo Project, which looks like an alternative to Skype and other closed systems.

Keep these things in mind, folks: open standards are best, most flexible, and most likely to be future-proof. More details on potential negatives regarding Skype, why Gizmo looks to be a valid alternative, and the ideas that drive its development here.

[Update: Browsing to Slate only moments after posting this, I came across their studiously non-rigorous comparison of several current VOIP systems. Gizmo was not among them, but Skype was. So, read. Know also I should have made clear that my only experience with any of these was helping Anne test her initial Skype installation before I left for the conference. Almost all I know of this is what I’ve read; my inclination is to hope for decent performance and cross-platform interop. YMMV, etc.]——-

As a negative example of the value of blogging as a timely and relevant posting of information, here’s the link to the list of folks blogging NECC… on the last day of the conference. Never too late, I suppose….——-

They haven’t yet used it with students, but they’re considering ways to utilize it. Their current license is limited to 50 concurrent log-ons, and that’s one of the current limitations. One of their next steps is to upgrade their QuickTime Streaming Server to allow multiple up to four video participants with iChat AV.——-

So, good, right?

I got to Paul’s poster session a little early, actually, while he was setting up: sticking up a banner for the backdrop, piling stacks of the DVDs (which kept falling over), hooking up one laptop to a monitor to show the website and web store with another showing an example video full-screen. And then, he pulls out a Sony PlayStation Portable, with one of the NETS videos playing on it. PSPs can connect wirelessly (to each other, not to access the web [yet, says me]), take up to 1GB Memory Sticks, will play (Sony’s proprietary, non-user burnable [unfortunately, also says me]) UMD disks, and have USB connectivity. Thinking about this, I got, well, excited.

For the price of a decent Palm – about $250 – a presenter, trainer, or teacher has a video player that connects to a projector or TV with up to 4 hours of video or other instructional multimedia on it, Paul says. He showed me the tool he uses to compress the video for the PSP. I’m still thinking about what that could mean.

This is a very, very interesting idea.——-

I also haven’t eaten a cheese steak yet on this trip….——-

The first was with Matt Miller, who sat next to me (and helped a lot) during the PHP workshop. After comparing Philadelphia’s current swelter with the similar (and to me, familiar) humidity of Atlanta and the dry warmth of his native eastern Washington state, we got to talking about what we do. Matt works for Mead School District outside Spokane, and does almost everything, from what he says. What’s remarkable is the degree of cooperation they share and the commitment to the faculty and students. He and his one-member staff support county, school, and individual teacher websites, laptops, media and more. They regularly meet with other staff – network support people, others – to do all they can to make it work for those teachers. They’ve spent the last few years showcasing (and learning) new technologies: blogs, RSS, digital video, and more, and they’ve been so successful at showing what these tools can do that now the teachers are asking to learn it and implement it themselves. So, being successful, Matt and his team have an enormous amount of work to do to get all the tools and programs they’ve been asked for ready in time for fall. It sounds to me that Matt and the people running his district have what it takes: a commitment to learning, a commitment to shared goals, and a willingness to listen to the people they work for: the teachers and their students.

Too often technology is for its own sake – and it is “cool” – but when it gets out of the way, when it becomes transparent, people can see their work and their goals more clearly. When you’re trying to learn to drive, there’s an overwhelming amount of information to pay attention to. When you’re used to it, the car kind of disappears and you can concentrate on where you’re trying to go. All technology, and training for technology, needs to have that transparency in mind for the people who will use it. Get the tool – a car, a computer – out of the way so you can work consciously toward your goal.

Matt and his colleagues seem to have the sweet spot right now: a cooperative group who meet regularly to assess and work to meet the needs of the people who depend on them. No battles over turf, or permissions; effort to make things better. Must be nice.

It’s always more than the technology, as Matt knows. That leads me to the second conversation, from a chance meeting in the convention center with David Weksler.

David is from Tenafly New Jersey, and remembered me from somewhere – another NECC maybe; neither of us could remember where. He told me a series stories of educators that made a difference: the late Clark Kerr of California, who eased university admssion for a tearful despairing young woman he met on an airplane, and whose parents visited his office 25 years later, out of the blue, to give him their daughter’s newly published book and thank him for changing her life; Andy Carvin of the Digital Divide Network, whom I know from his regular posts at EdTech, has turned a love of helping people and a gift for teaching into a position to travel the world and live the difference, not just talk about it. There were others he mentioned, but my mind just ran over.

I love this conference. I love the chance to run into people I don’t know and find out I do know them. I know their desire to use these fantastic tools to smooth the way, to help that light go off over the heads of others: “A-HAH! Now I see!” Oh man, that’s why I teach. It’s so great to meet with so many other teachers.

I won’t soon be creating a postcard sender. I may try to use it for workshop registration at the ITC, and I’ll definitely work on testing WordPress blogs.

[Update: David just showed how all this works with MySQL databases, and now he’s running through a demo to access a database of blogs and podcasts that he hosts to automatically update an RSS feed of educational podcasts. Intricate, but exciting. Set up properly, a teacher could use this to track all kinds of submissions by their students: hip stuff like podcasts, sure, but there’s homework of course, and questions, discussion among students, and so on.]——-