The Savvy Technologist » Conferences

TIES 2007: Policies 2.0, Rules for the Social Web

Tim Wilson — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 20:29:33 +0000

The Blue Skunk himself put in an appearance at this year’s TIES conference. Doug is presenting about the social web and some issues that schools encounter trying to understand it. Doug’s handouts are posted on his blog. In particular, a large list of links are on this PDF version of his session handout.

Key points from Doug’s talk:

Checking out blogsafety.com for a bit of a reality check regarding online predators and cyberbullies. (Note: it looks like they’ve changed their site and have moved to ConnectSafely.)
Some of our concerns in the Web 1.0 world about protecting students from content that they might find has been replaced by Web 2.0 concerns about what kind of content students might publish.
How do you decide what to publish on your blog: praise locally; complain globally. Complain all you want about educational issues, but do it in a global sense. Don’t complain about your boss or school on your blog. Your employer can discipline you for it in some cases. Keep you comments about what’s going on in your school positive and highlight the good stuff.
If you must block access to resources, do it on the basis of content and not format. You don’t block all magazines from your school because Penthouse is published in magazine form.

How can we teach kids to use this technology appropriately?

Articulate and demonstrate values
Reinforce positive behaviors
Discuss issues
Emphasize principles rather than rules
Assessment
Create low temptation environments that promote effective supervision
Chance to practice in low-risk settings

Doug suggests forming a advisory committee for district technology. I’ve got a group of teachers and parents, but they focus on tech integration issues exclusively. I could really use a group that would help me deal with policy issues. I’ll have to talk him some more about it.

TIES 2007: Implementing IT Best Practices

Tim Wilson — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 06:48:22 +0000

We’ve been preparing to implement the ITIL standards in my district for about a year now. Now that five of us have achieved the foundation certification, I think we’re poised to make some significant headway this year. This presentation from the TIES Conference is a description of some of the ITIL fundamental concepts and a summary of my thinking about how we’ll tackle them in Buffalo. This is most definitely a work in progress.

I’ll post my slides here after my talk, but for now you can follow this links to learn more about ITIL:

ITIL homepage
Wikipedia article on ITIL
ITIL Community Forum
I did my ITIL certification at the U. of MN, but I think the ITIL program at New Horizons of Minnesota is better.

Update: Here’s a link to my slides from this talk. I think most of them will make sense on their own, but anyone who looks at them will obviously miss some key things that were discussed in my talk at the conference.

TIES 2007: Kurt Steinhaus, opening keynote

Tim Wilson — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 15:20:23 +0000

Kurt Steinhaus is Deputy Cabinet Secretary of Education in New Mexico. (He’s also a marathoner who ran 4:38 at the 2007 Duke City Marathon.) The title of his talk is “Enjoying T-Time by the Sip or by the Gulp?”. His slides will be available on the conference wiki.

Kurt wants us to take action in three areas:

21st Century Skills
Robust support systems that function “just in time.”
Innovative teaching and learning to keep pace in an increasingly digital world.

Kurt visited Minnesota a couple weeks before his keynote (something I’ve never seen before) and stopped to visit some schools.

He saw the 1-to-1 program at Oak-Land Junior High School in Stillwater.
Andy Weaver at using technology to study falcons.
American Indian Magnet School and World Cultures Magnet School in St. Paul.
New Country School
Scot Hovan, Kate Noreen, and Patrick Crothers at Mahtomedi High School
Dave Casey at Buffalo Community Middle School who is doing amazing things with his social studies students
Edina Public Schools
Northrop Urban Environmental Learning Center in Minneapolis

What trends did he see?

Relentless, intense passion
Support system (technical and teching and learning)
More school-wide integration

Kurt observed some transitions underway in Minnesota and elsewhere:

From purchased licenses to Web 2.0 and open source
Application-based to Web-based and mobile learning
Isolated and offline to collaborative and online
Copyrighted content to shared content
Submitting reports to blogs and web publishing

What is the future of technology in education? It’s already here, it’s just not in every school yet.

How can we move forward?

Step 1: Where are we?
Step 2: Reach a broad consensus on a clear message (vision or goal).
Step 3: Meet them where they are and use your “bag of tricks” to move resources toward achieving the vision.

Kurt talked about how to advocate for your vision. Prepare a “One-pager” that you can give to key decision makers. Include the following things and customize your one-pager for each audience.

Name
Compelling vision
Brief overview of history
Rationale (why is this essential)
Funding request (include recurring and non-recurring costs)
Research base

Also, develop an “elevator pitch” that you can deliver to a decision maker in 30 seconds in any setting. One of Kurt’s recommendations: “Make your friends before you need them.”

TIES 2007: Introducing Virtualization Technology

Tim Wilson — Mon, 10 Dec 2007 06:56:52 +0000

Here are some notes from my presentation about virtualization technology. I’ll update this post after my session to cover some of the topics that come up in the discussion.

Learn more about virtualization

An Introduction to Virtualization by Amit Singh
The Pros and Cons of Virtualization
Server virtualization at InfoWorld
Intro to Virtualizaton and Virtualization Part 2 from Security Now! with Steve Gibson and Leo Laporte

Upcoming TIES presentations

Tim Wilson — Sat, 08 Dec 2007 20:28:00 +0000

I’ll be at this year’s TIES Conference next Monday and Tuesday doing a couple presentations, connecting with old friends and colleagues, and scoping out the vendors. If you’re in the neighborhood, here’s the info on my presentations. I decided to go a little more geeky for a change this year. Now I just have to do the last bit of cramming to get ready.

Introducing Virtualization Technology: Options, Implementation and ROI

Monday, Dec 10, 11:20 a.m.–12:10 p.m.
Virtualization technology in the data center is revolutionizing the way servers are deployed and managed. Participants in this session will review current virtualization technologies, see a demonstration of VMware and hear how Buffalo schools achieved a one-year return on investment of over 100 percent by virtualizing most of its servers.

Implementing IT Best Practices: A District Case Study

Tuesday, Dec 11, 10:00 a.m.–10:50 a.m.
The Buffalo-Hanover-Montrose School District is in its first year of implementing the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) best practice standards for IT service management. Participants in this session will learn about ITIL and gain insights into one district’s successes and challenges reengineering key aspects of its IT support system.

See you there!

MEMO 2007: Podcasting Nuts and Bolts

Tim Wilson — Sun, 07 Oct 2007 00:13:04 +0000

I did a 45-minute podcasting presentation at MEMO yesterday which focused on some of the practical aspects of podcasting. One of the things we talked a bit about was equipment for video podcasting. (I really don’t like the “vodcasting” or “vlogging” name.) I’m thinking about starting a video podcast, so I picked up the following gear to enable me to use my high-quality microphones with a low-end camera.

Canon ZR800 ($200) is low-cost camcorder that records onto DV tape. Canon has always provided a low-end camera with an audio input primarily intended for the education market. The audio input is key. Without it, you’re stuck using the relatively sucky built-in mic.
Studio 1 Productions XLR-BP Pro ($180) XLR microphone adaptor. The Canon ZR800 audio input is a 3.5-mm miniplug which means that it will be almost impossible to find a decent microphone to plug in directly. This adaptor makes it possible to use standard XLR microphones with the ZR800′s audio input. It has two XLR inputs plus a miniplug and a ¼" plug. You can mix and match any two of these input simultaneously. It’s got a clip on the back that makes it easy to hang it from your belt or attach it to a tripod.
ARTcessories Phantom II ($60) phantom power supply will deliver the phantom power you need to use condenser mics. I got this model because it’s battery powered and thus more friendly to mobile applications. If you’re using dynamic mics then you wouldn’t need this box. Most good lavalier microphones (aka lapel mics) are condenser mics that need the 48V phantom power.

We talked about microphones, and I recommended USB headset microphones like this Logitech model for student use. The beauty of a headset microphone is that once the proper levels are set, the student can move around and not change the distance to the mic. You’ll get much more even sound levels than with a microphone on a stand.

Big list of podcasting resources

Tim Wilson — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 16:46:02 +0000

The crew at Mashable put together a really useful post entitled Podcasting Toolbox: 70+ Podcasting Tools and Resources last July. I get a lot of questions about the production and publication side of podcasting, and I’ve started sending people to that list because it’s really a comprehensive collection of all the web-based tools and services out there.

I’ll be at the MEMO conference tomorrow participating as a panelist talking about literacy (moderated by the Blue Skunk himself) and later doing an advanced podcasting session where I’ll probably do a lot of Q&A. I’ll do my best to post some summaries here.

NECC podcasting workshop

Tim Wilson — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 16:01:31 +0000

Joe Morelock and I are presenting a podcasting workshop at this year’s NECC. Here are some links to various things we mentioned:

Podcast examples

Equipment

Copyright

I’ll update some more after this afternoon’s session.

Spread the word on Conference Connections

Tim Wilson — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 01:34:00 +0000

If you want to catch a lot of great content from this year’s NECC, make sure you subscribe to Conference Connections. This is the podcast channel that has taken all my attention away from my own podcasting for the past 6–9 months or so. I’m really stoked that we’re the official podcast channel for ISTE. We’ll be recording at least 25 sessions (including the keynotes) plus as much other content as we can assemble.

If you can’t make it to NECC, or even if you want to expand your NECC experience, you can subscribe to Conference Connections in iTunes by clicking here.

Spread the word. Tell your friends. Heck, you can even tell people you don’t like all that much.

NECC here I come

Tim Wilson — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 01:23:15 +0000

7:16 a.m. Ugh. That’s a bit earlier than I like for air travel departures. But at least I have several days of interesting conversations and endless audio editing to look forward to.

NECC is back and in Atlanta this year. I’ll be doing two identical half-day workshops (Podcasting—The New Voice for Learners) with a fellow ADE and all-around cool guy Joe Morelock from Oregon. In addition, I’m leading a team of Apple Distinguished Educators who will be producing the official NECC podcast channel on behalf of ISTE.

I’m really looking forward to NECC this year. Every year there are more friends to meet and greet. I’m very impressed with how ISTE continues to embrace blogging, podcasting, and other forms of web publishing. ISTE is really way out in front on this stuff compared to any other conference I’ve attended in the last couple years. They’re even getting on board with a systematic approach to Technorati tagging courtesy of Steve Hargadon.

See you there.