Blogging the Technology, Colleges & Community Worldwide Online Conference

I’ve spent the last 8 hours or so logged in, engaging in the TCC Online Conference being held over the next few days.

As its based out of Hawaii, the timezone thing kinda sucks for us in Aus, but the sleep-less night has been worth it.

I’m bleary-eyed at the moment, but inspired!

Highlights of the conference so far include:

A Virtual Class Project: A Face-to-Face Class, a Distant Client, and PLAY! A Video Game Music Symphony by Ellen Cohn, University of Pittsburgh and Jason Michael Paul, Jason Michael Paul Productions. This presentation was really exciting, and provided a case study of the Play! Virtual Class project. This session was really interesting to me, as it appealed to my inner geek (‘puter games music is so cool!) as well as the Stage Manager in me. (I studied Theatre Technology @ Uni).

The project allowed students from the Uni of Pittsburgh to work with Jason Michael Paul on the promotion of the Play! Symphony events. Sounds like action learning at its best. Jason also talked about how the web and emergent tools like MySpace are being used to create communities and promote events and services. Check out the Play! website – it is seriously cool.

Tim Lauer on Elementary School Mash-ups. Tim is one of my favourite bloggers, so it was a bit of a thrill to attend his session. He talked about his use of online tools with Elementary School students @ Meriwether Lewis Elementary School in Portland, Oregon. Using tools like flickr and del.icio.us, Tim showed how very young students can engage in the social web in real, safe and meaningful ways. Check out Eden’s project on the Lewis Elementary School Flickr stream.

I was particularly dazzled my some of the stuff Tim is doing with Google Map Mash-ups, allowing students to geographically track the information they’re discovering as part of classroom and research projects. Check out Map Builder.

He also made some good points about managing child protection when using these tools with young students and the need to have an ongoing conversation with teachers, students and parents about those issues.

Kids Today – Teaching Our Students in a Connected World by Will Richardson

Another of my favourite edublogger’s Will Richardson’s presentation was wonderful. He talked about the read/write web, and students can engage online as readers, editors and publishers. His perspectives on how Web 2.0 technologies are transforming personal learning, are inspiring.

A few interesting facts from Will’s Presentation:

• 1.2 million new blog posts each day
• 35.7 million sites and 2.3 billion links currently tracked on Technorati
• 7 million new web pages produced each day
• 3600% increas in user-generated video in one year.

WOAH! BABY! 😉 No wonder we’re all struggling to keep up with all the amazing stuff out there.

Anyway, you can view all the links and resources from Will’s presentation on his wiki.

And finally….

I’ve tried to record the links and resources mentioned in the presentations I attended via del.icio.us. Check it out!

I’m off for a nap now…. need to get the energy together for tonight’s sessions! 😉