Category: Ed Tech

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Where there's a Will…

Will RichardsonIf you read blogs about education with any sort of regularity you will no doubt recognise the name Will Richardson.  Will’s blog, Weblogg-ed, has become somewhat of a keystone in the edublogosphere, not just for the things he writes about and the thinking he does about education in the 21st century, but also because he is just so darn prolific!

Thanks to the jungle drums of Twitter, I was really excited to hear that Will is coming to Australia to deliver a talk entitled The Why 2 of Web 2.0.  I don’t know Will personally at all, but we have bumped into each other a few times in various chat rooms and UStream sessions.  He was one of the founding ideas-people behind the global K-12 Online Conference (although his commitments at the time required him hand it over to others to run).  His has been a seminal voice of the blogosphere for a long time, having written several books on blogging and the use of Web 2.0 in the classroom, spoken at conferences all around the world.  Will is pretty well respected in the edublogging world.

Given all that, I’d certainly like to meet him and hear what he has to say.

If you are interested in education and the way it applies to 21st Century learning, then try to get along to either Brisbane (May 7) or Sydney (May 9).  I’ve already booked my ticket!

No doubt some of us Sydney bloggers will get together and try to get together with Will while he’s here.  How about you?   Join us?

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See you in Texas?

There are two ICT trade show events that I’d love to attend – NECC in the US and BETT in the UK. I’ve probably left it a bit late to attend BETT (it starts in a week or so), but I’m seriously considering attending the 2008 National Educational Computing Conference in San Antonio Texas. After hearing all about it for the last few years I’ve been curious and interested to attend a NECC event, and the 2008 event just happens to fall conveniently in the midyear Australian school holidays (where I potentially have a full three weeks off!)

One of the motivators for attending this year is thanks to the amazing connections I’ve made with so many educators throughout the US and Canada via tools like Twitter and Skype. I feel like 2007 has been the year of expanding my own personal learning network and I’m keen to get to an event like NECC to meet up with people in real life that I feel I’ve come to know through these virtual spaces. Besides, last years Bloggers Café sounded like a really fun thing to be part of and I like being part of fun things!

I noticed that there is a study tour being organised here in Australia that takes a detour via New Zealand and Silicon Valley to get to San Antonio and it’s looking like it might be a good use of some pre-tax dollars. I need to have a chat with my new school to see how this might fit in with their professional development plans, but regardless I think I’d like to head over to Texas and be part of it anyway.

The study tour details can be found at http://www.ictev.vic.edu.au/event/2008_ACCE_NECC2008_Study_Tour.htm, and here is a part of the blurb…

Spend time with colleagues in New Zealand, visit Apple in San Fanscisco, Dell in San Antonio, have small group time with key international educators, enjoy the celebration of ICT with 15,000 like-minded educators, receiving briefings from ISTEs key people, COSNs leaders, ISTEs international representative, meet and work with other international IT educators and enjoy two weeks immersed in technology in education.

So, fellow Aussies, whaddya reckon? Who else is thinking about going? And what about my American friends… twist our arms a little! It wouldn’t take much!

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Spot the PC

Mac users

I love this photo…

Unless you’ve been walking around with your fingers in your ears and loudly singing “lalalala!” it’s been hard to avoid noticing Apple’s amazing renaissance. Not so many years ago it was hard to imagine that Apple had any real long term future at all, but things have certainly turned around since Steve came back. Apple’s growth is quite phenomenal at the moment. It’s hard to know exactly why this is happening, but it undeniably is.

Whether you attribute it to the iPod’s viral “halo effect“, the effective and very funny “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” advertisements, the sheer style and beauty of the new Macs, the frenzy that was whipped up by the release of the iPhone, the drawcard success of Leopard, or just the exodus away from Windows following the disaster of Vista, there is no denying that the Mac platform is enjoying enormous growth at the moment. Recent statistics claim that Mac sales are growing at four times the computer industry average. (Dell is the market leader, but currently has a negative growth rate…)

And the place where Apple seems be gaining the most traction is in education. With such a strong focus of the use of digital media like video, audio, graphics and podcasting, many schools are seeing that the Mac makes a lot of sense. Add the fact that viruses, malware and other nasties are virtually non-existent for Mac users, it’s built on an industrial strength operating system is stable, fast and easy to use and intuitive, and there are some pretty compelling arguments to switch over from the dark side of Windows.