If you haven't seen it already, you've got to check out this video. An inspiring and challenging call to educators (and parents) about the need to reach out to children through technology.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
FOWA Miami
So I'm going to start back-asswards as my uncle likes to say.
FOWA Miami was pretty cool. Some of the presentations were awesome (Gary Vaynerchuck's was a complete surprise!) and others were a little over my head (as soon as they started throwing out terms like queries and stacks my eyes would glaze over).
So here's a quick recap of what I enjoyed in no particular order
Aza Raskin demoing (eventually!) the Ubiquity plug in from Mozilla - it's in Alpha but I urge all firefox fans out there to download and try this one. It's hard to explain in words but if I had to I'd say it was a really cool way to interact with all of your applications by simply using prompts (I know this sounds like we're going backwards but you have to see the demo to believe me when I say my jaw dropped ever so slightly when I saw this)
The 280North guy demoing Atlas - an amazing way to program rich user interfaces with drag and drop functionality. Again, you have to watch the demo to believe this but I think EVERYONE (even those jaded- too- cool- to- smile- developers) dropped their jaws. Spontaneous clapping erupted and they deserved it. Did we just witness a milestone making moment in history? I guess time will tell.
Kristin Halvorson from BrainTraffic ending her talk 15 mins early so she could ask "Why am I the only woman on the program?" The few of us in the audience (maybe 15% but I could be wrong) clapped. It was a difficult conversation and I could feel the bristling of some in the room but Ryan Carson and Chris Messina handled it rather well and asked the audience to help by proposing possible women speakers via twitter (#FOWASPEAK). I just sent a tweet with the URL to the article by Fast Company this past month on the most influential women in technology.
OK, it's past midnight and I think I'm running out of steam and even though I'd love to cover how all of this relates to education and kids I think I'm going to have to call it a night. I'll save some juice so I can write more quotable quotes from Jason Fried of 37signals and Gary Vaynerchuk in my next post.
FOWA Miami was pretty cool. Some of the presentations were awesome (Gary Vaynerchuck's was a complete surprise!) and others were a little over my head (as soon as they started throwing out terms like queries and stacks my eyes would glaze over).
So here's a quick recap of what I enjoyed in no particular order
Aza Raskin demoing (eventually!) the Ubiquity plug in from Mozilla - it's in Alpha but I urge all firefox fans out there to download and try this one. It's hard to explain in words but if I had to I'd say it was a really cool way to interact with all of your applications by simply using prompts (I know this sounds like we're going backwards but you have to see the demo to believe me when I say my jaw dropped ever so slightly when I saw this)
The 280North guy demoing Atlas - an amazing way to program rich user interfaces with drag and drop functionality. Again, you have to watch the demo to believe this but I think EVERYONE (even those jaded- too- cool- to- smile- developers) dropped their jaws. Spontaneous clapping erupted and they deserved it. Did we just witness a milestone making moment in history? I guess time will tell.
Kristin Halvorson from BrainTraffic ending her talk 15 mins early so she could ask "Why am I the only woman on the program?" The few of us in the audience (maybe 15% but I could be wrong) clapped. It was a difficult conversation and I could feel the bristling of some in the room but Ryan Carson and Chris Messina handled it rather well and asked the audience to help by proposing possible women speakers via twitter (#FOWASPEAK). I just sent a tweet with the URL to the article by Fast Company this past month on the most influential women in technology.
OK, it's past midnight and I think I'm running out of steam and even though I'd love to cover how all of this relates to education and kids I think I'm going to have to call it a night. I'll save some juice so I can write more quotable quotes from Jason Fried of 37signals and Gary Vaynerchuk in my next post.
Conferenced Out
In the past seven days I've been to three conferences and it shows. My boss asked me to stop with the ideas yesterday, so it must be pretty bad! :)
I meant to blog about all of them live but while I'm an excellent multi-tasker visually, I have a hard time doing multi-sensory multi-tasking (like listening and blogging at the same time). Besides, I like to be able to consolidate my notes (yes, I still use a notebook and pen).
The three conferences that I went to
I'm going to try to write up what wowed me most from each of them and what impact (if any) it may have on education, for the two and half people that actually read my blog. That would include you, Ma.
I meant to blog about all of them live but while I'm an excellent multi-tasker visually, I have a hard time doing multi-sensory multi-tasking (like listening and blogging at the same time). Besides, I like to be able to consolidate my notes (yes, I still use a notebook and pen).
The three conferences that I went to
- Mobile Learning 2009 - Washington, DC (my first mobile learning conference)
- Barcamp / WordCamp Miami - Coconut Grove, Fl (my first unconference)
- Future of Web Apps (FOWA) - Miami, Fl
I'm going to try to write up what wowed me most from each of them and what impact (if any) it may have on education, for the two and half people that actually read my blog. That would include you, Ma.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Mobile Learning Conference 2009
I'm looking forward to attending the Mobile Learning Conference in DC next week. They've got some interesting speakers lined up including:
Marc Prensky
Founder and CEO, Games2Train
If you haven't read his book, "Don't bother me mom, I'm learning" you should! Quite a thought provoking and entertaining read.
Dr. Elliot Soloway
Professor, University of Michigan (I've used his name several times in the papers I wrote in graduate school so I think it'll be cool to finally meet him - yes, I'm a geek!)
Alec Ross
Former member of the Obama Technology, Innovation and Government Reform Team (he'll be giving the lunch key note speech)
I'll be twittering from there and I'll do my best to update my blog with some good tidbits of information.
I'm particularly interested in seeing if there are any solutions involving Flash based content on hand held devices as well as what mobile learning can mean for developing countries like Sri Lanka. This is a completely new field for me so I'm sure I'll learn a lot and meet some cool people.
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