Illinois Computing Educator's Conference 2010- Here we go!

After battling a scary snow storm last night we are here in St. Charles, Illinois at the 2010 Illinois Computing Educator's Conference! A sugary donut and a cup of tea later, I'm sitting here in the keynote presentation listening to Mario Armstrong (Armstrong Media), a media personality and inspiration to educational technology. Here are my notes from his presentation "Classrooms of the Future":

@marioarmstrong
www.marioarmstrong.com

• Seoul, Korea has the fasted internet speed?
• Urban Video Game Acaedmy- he started this, students build video games through the knowledge of science and technology- cool!
• Tech, Tech, Boom! techtechboom.com
• problem solving should be the emphasis of education
• we need to have digitally literate students
• Check out http://scratch.mit.edu
• "We need a national broadband policy." ~Absolutely!
  
• Suggestions for using Skype in the classroom:

  ·         2^nd grade interviewd bat expert

  ·         Develop a well defined objective

  ·         http://skypeintheclassroom.wordpress.com

• Many of his examples for educational tech are with elementary students, we need to stop thinking that little tykes can't handle it!
• mobile is cheap and accessible, why aren't we using it more?!
• we need to work in baby steps; this is hard to do when we we are so excited but feel thwarted when we are told we can't.
• check out Zero G flights Northrop Grumman Foundation- I remember hearing about this, space and Kelly don't mix!
• keep blogs updated :) (I need to do better on that!)
• "The difference between having an audience and having a community is which way you face the chairs" ~@cbragron
• This presentation is being streamed with Ustream- I need to check this out.
• Skype is such an easy way to add tech to the one computer classroom- I'm wondering if our school has web cameras in the tech center we can check out.
• "Be on demand.", students should be "drinking out of the firehouse....make sure your water is in the hose....." nice analogy.
• check out livescribe- pen that's a computer.
• unbelievable classroom: Chesapeake High School in Baltimore- augmented reality and virtual learning environments.
• accelaglove, translating sign language to actual speech- whoa!
• http://one-economy.com
• http://thebeehive.org
• tutor.com
• his final thought- how can school's implement a similar idea like Google's 20% rule? Amazing things have come out of that rule- so how can we have our own google time? good question......
  

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