AECT 2007 in Reverse Order

Read from here down and you will get a pretty good look at one person's experience of AECT 2007 blogstyle, that is, chronologically backwards. The last few posts, which is to say the first few below this one, were all posted at the same time as I was away from my Internet connections and typed them all up while making my way back home. The Tuesday and Wednesday workshop items, which are found now in the archive, were posted on the fly during the workshops and really are my live notes. AECT 2007 was great. Thanks to everyone who made it such a wonderful experience for me.

ESL in SL

Checked out of my room. An hour and a half to kill before the ride to the airport. Is there anything else to see here. Oh, look. Another Second Life presentation. Despite my best intentions, I have missed quite a few of these. Here is a chance to catch Sabine Reljic's. OK, I didn't really learn much that I did not already know, as Sabine spent most of the time introducing SL to the uninitiated, but it did take my mind off the trip.

Beyond PowerPoint

Al Mizell and Marsha Burmeister gave a presentation, mostly in PowerPoint, about going beyond PowerPoint. The handouts consisted of a single web address, just like I did it for MEA/MFT, but in this case, on a label that could be stuck onto the conference program. The programs discussed looked interesting, and the presenters were cheerful enough to take my mind off the fact that today is a travel day. Did I mention that I am a nervous traveler?

Instructional Games

Three part session: Mansureh Kebritchi and Atsusi Hirumi presented on how game designers are, or are not, identifying the learning theories they apply in their game design. Conclusion: things are getting more professional, but there is plenty of room for improvement. Debbie Denise Reese presented on game design (the game here being Selene) with the goal of bringing students to the state Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls "flow", that balance of skill and challenge that keeps you happily going until you realize to your surprise that many productive hours have passed unnoticed. Mary Jo Dondlinger and Les Lunce presented on wayfinding affordances (cues to keep the learner from getting lost) in virtual reality, a subject we will get to practically apply in Second Life.

University Reception

Snacks of a high quality (the oysters were not properly appreciated, so I gave them my attention) give aways (I just took a couple of pens) and lots of conversation with lots of interesting folks. As mentioned earlier, a conference like this always involves missing something to attend something else. A presentation called "Dear Professor, I Demand a Response..." was on my list until I saw that it conflicted with the intellectual property session which I really had to attend. But, at the reception, I was introduced to Barbara Rosenfeld and Lisa Novemsky, the "Dear Professor..." presenters. We had a lovely chat which ran for hours, wandered beyond the reception itself, included interludes with Nai-fen Yu, Christine Sorensen, and a bowl of real spumoni ice cream the likes of which you just can't get in Montana. All in all, a most satisfying evening, followed by a rather short round of sleep.

Membership

Don't ask me why I would attend the membership meeting, since I have long been one of AECT's least active members, but I have actually been tracking AECT from a distance all these years (I last attended in 1993) including the organization's downward plunge and subsequent recovery. As was pointed out at the meeting, even in its most troubled moments, AECT was alive and kicking. But there is no question that the outfit is staging something of a comeback, and it was good to see that things really are going well at the moment. Much of this comeback should be reflected in the new aectnow.org website.

Also, like all instructional media outfits, AECT is very much focused on the future. As an old history major, and the brother of a historic preservation officer, I was glad to see that AECT is making an effort to collect its own memories, including doing with its senior members what many of us are doing with our elderly kin, interviewing them on video while they are still here to be interviewed.

Collapse

OK. I was planning to attend a little more Friday afternoon, but instead I went back to my room and collapsed. Mostly, I think, cognitive overload on my part.

Intellectual Sharing and Stealing

Rosemary Talab moderated a discussion by Preston Parker, Leonard DuBoff, esq. and Mary Ann, and our very own Janis Bruwelheide on the topic of intellectual property (that is, not stealing stuff like music and movies and books and such.) Janis keeps us pretty well filled in on her data, but her handouts included some very useful links. Preston spoke on Creative Commons and GLU Licensing, two different ways to make your stuff free to use. He pointed out problems with the "non-commercial" designation (If I am being paid to teach, and I use this, is that a commercial use?) and the fact that there are two systems (If I blend both kinds in one new work, how do I "share-alike" it?) Leonard, being a lawyer, spoke about the law itself, and how it will or won't work (If you created something and it is stolen in China, can you afford to pursue remedies in Chinese court?) All of AECT's accumulated copyright wisdom can be found at www.aect.org/copyright.

Cognitive Trouble in River City

Benjamin Erlandson and Brian Nelson presented on a study they are doing on cognitive overload and how to avoid it in a multi-user virtual environment, specifically working with River City. Information which will be of use to designers of learning games of all kinds.

AECT in Second Life - The Demo

Hooray! After a couple of technical difficulties were worked out, the demo did indeed take place. A few of us got together at AECT headquarters in Second Life while Professor Tomsen (Tom Atkinson) interacted with interested visitors at AECT in Real Life. Second Life is a topic which has come up a lot at AECT this year. What education is being / can be / will be done in virtual environments? My primary response is jump in and find out. If you think what is being done here is not yet what it should be, join us and show us how to do it right. We will be happy to work with you. As for Second Life, AECT is now officially in.

AECT in Second Life

Getting ready for tomorrow. Plan is to do some in-world demoing following Mary, Lisa and Ross's presentation on AECT Activities and Opportunities in Second Life. If called upon, I am ready to serve.

Oh, and when I popped in to take this picture, I was invited to the ISTE Halloween party. While I was there, I learned that Scottmerrick Oh and I had tied for first place in the portion of the ISTEGOSH where we took pictures of ourselves. Can I help it if I love pictures of me, in both real and virtual worlds?

Chinese Characters and Artificial Intelligence

I wrapped up my Thursday attending a presentation on a method being developed to teach Chinese characters through beautiful animations, and another being developed to guide HTML based portfolio production through Artificial Intelligence Markup Language. Both Nai-fen Yu and Kenneth Luterbach have set themselves difficult tasks. Both had interesting things to report. I have seen AIML used in pandorabots in Second Life, and so enjoyed learning about AIML. But I really wish I could show you the Chinese character animations. They are instruction delivered in a way that lifts the spirit with their beauty.

Can We Respond?

Presentation by Mary Herring (another person from breakfast) Sharon Smaldino, Kay Persichitte, Christine Sorensen and Clif Mims on how we are all going to respond to all this legal and technical stuff. The general conclusion is that we educational technology folks are going to have to lead the rest of our field into the future. Do the folks at English lit conferences see it this way?

I kept thinking about the day our college had their big brainstorming session to plan for the future. Everybody knew that technology was one of the things we had to do. When all the votes were counted, it was not even in our top ten goals. But, you know, we still had to do it. And, I must say, many of my colleagues have made a lot of progress in this area, even if it was not a priority for them.

Videogame Literacy

Christian Loh ripped into his topic with such vigor that Luca Botturi (a fine fellow from the University of Lugano who I met at the Second Life breakfast) was left with exactly zero minutes and zero seconds to do his half of the presentation. The message was, you had better know something about video games, because your kids are going to be playing some real brain and spirit damaging nightmares, and they will need your guidance before [name of horrible violence glorifying video game deleted to avoid giving them more publicity than they need] ruins them completely.

E-Connections During Field Experiences

Guy Westhoff presented on the system he has set up at Washington State University to allow students doing their equivalent of paras and student teaching to communicate with each other and with faculty via various electronic means. They are using Marratech due to its superior ability to handle multi-party video conferencing. Sounds like the whole thing was a challenge to set up, both technically and legally, but now that they have it, the can do much student teaching evaluation via distance, and their student teachers are relieved of much of the isolation that I certainly recall from my own student teaching experience

Dispositions

David Carbonara presented on work he is doing to create instruments to assess the dispositions of teacher candidates toward technology. We really don't do that in our lab, and he has a long way to go before he does in a way that he will find satisfying. But he is making much progress. This goes on my list of things to do just as soon as he figures out exactly how to do it.

Sound!!!

I just had to go to MJ Bishop's presentation Necessary Bells and Whistles, Designing With Sound to Enhance Learning, even if it did mean missing Marc Prensky's follow-up chat. I am a big fan of well used audio, and a big enemy of badly used audio, in instructional technology. MJ was a bit flustered, having thought that today was tomorrow, but that happens at conferences like this. Days whip past with a soft whooshing sound. Once she arrived and got rolling, her presentation was most enjoyable, and useful. Ideas I must bring back home, as soon as I get a copy of her handouts.

Interactive Flash Video

I attended Taeyeol Park's presentation on Adding Interactivity to Video with Cue Point and ActionScript in Flash. We are not doing Flash videos, but if we ever start, I now know something about how to make them interactive.

Keynote - Marc Prensky

Marc Prensky is a good guy for an eight a.m. keynote, as he gets you going. His topic was the rate of change in education and what we have to do about it. We see this as a thing which has happened, but our students see it as how it has always been. They are used to new technologies every day, and rather bored by our attempts to teach them without keeping up. Rather than being the place where ignorant students are led out of the dark, today schools take the students raised in the light of networked learning, and plunge them into darkness while we try to teach them in old ways. Marc correctly notes that we can't add all the new things without deleting some of the old, if only because of time constraints. Marc quoted Charles Handy, "Most of us prefer to walk backward into the future, a posture which may be uncomfortable but which at least allows us to keep on looking at familiar things as long as we can." Marc says the most important learning is taking place after school, and programming is the new literacy. Feels right to me.

Second Life Breakfast

Had breakfast this morning with seven other folks on the AECT in Second Life task force. Mary Herring gave us the news that the AECT board has given us the go ahead to establish an AECT presence in Second Life beyond the building Ross Perkins has already put up on Eduisland. This, coupled with the breakfast at Coco's that Lisa Dawley picked up the tab on, made for a great start to a very busy day.

The Roundup

AECT's Welcome Reception used to be called the Roundup. Now, it is called the AECT Welcome Reception. Less confusion, less charm. At any rate, I spent most of the evening chatting with the presenters of the Tuesday morning workshop and another of the folks who attended that one. Delightful people. One of them turns out to be involved in Second Life, so I will have to make contact with her there, as well.

Keynote - Stephen Downes

Stephen Downes, an educational technology philosopher who spoke like a philosopher, often stopping in mid-sentence to change his mind. He set up a screen with a web address where you could go to enter commentary on his speech during his speech which was displayed on the screen. Thus, we got to chat about his presentation together. At least, everyone who brought a computer did. Sadly, my machine was not with me for the first time in two days. Stephen runs OLDaily, a website which reports every day on on-line learning. His presentation made much of the fact that learning is not the acquisition of known things, but really the growth of a network in the brain, which is literally true. He compares current learning to a utility, like water or power. There is a constant supply put in, and users take out what they need when they need it. He sees this leading not to a hive-mind like uniformity, but to knowledge which is a joint product of what we all know and share. Group vs network, in which the group is the sum of its parts, but he network is something more.

Stephen mentioned Second Life, saying that it does not support diversity, since sometimes you feel directed in some direction, and does not support autonomy, since he could not pick the last name he wanted. Specifically, Downes. So we can say that he has visited SL, but not really come to know the place. Sounds like he may not have gotten much past Orientation Island.

Practical Promotion Idea

One of the projects Shuyan's students do is a brochure advertising one of the department's courses for next semester. Hey, Jim, maybe we should have students in your class create a poster advertising my class.

Electronic Portfolios

One of AECT's affiliate organizations is The Society of International Chinese in Educational Technology. I spent Wednesday afternoon at SICET roundtables, specifically the ones dealing with electronic portfolios.

The first, focusing on student involvement, was led by Dr. Shuyan Wang of the University of Southern Mississippi. My notes:
Four types of e-portfolios: summative, formative, job application and teaching. My thought, our portfolios at MSU are a little of each.

Her Ed Tech masters students create their portfolios in a Word document which she has preformatted. They are built on jump drives, backed up on a file server, and eventually end up on CDs, like ours. Portfolios are submitted, receive comment, are resubmitted, receive comment again, are submitted a third time. The final version includes all three stages of the student projects.

For faculty to actually make use of e-portfolios, they must be a course objective included in the syllabus, not just an add on. A participant said his school is looking at having faculty submit their own performance review materials in e-portfolio format, in part to make evaluation easier, but in part to force faculty to become familiar with e-portfolios so that they will be better able to work with students on them.

The second session, focusing on assessment, was led by Rui Hu of the University of Georgia. My notes:
The reflective component of their e-portfolios counts as 30% of their projects. Reflection addresses four questions: how I did this, what I learned, what problems I encountered, how I can use this in the future. E-portfolios are peer reviewed. Set of questions helps students keep on track with step by step reflection. Peer review helps keep students aware of rubric. Students are given guidance on constructive criticism, to avoid getting just "this is very nice" reviews.

Rui's students are creating e-portfolios in Google pages (thus fulfilling a dream which formed in my head yesterday). She does a session with them in which they create a set of links, then build the eight pages those links go to, and put the links on all pages. There was some later discussion of uploading to Google pages. This is something we must look into. Could make our own e-portfolio process simpler, and solve the "where to house them" problem at the same time.

K-12 e-portfolios were mentioned. Helen Barrett was cited as a good source on this.

Running Around Like Headless Chicken

For those of you who have never attended a conference like this, deciding where to go each hour or two is a big part of it. You have to pass up nine interesting programs to go to one. A session runs late, a session changes time, somehow, despite your best planning, you end up in a corridor frantically reading presentation descriptions trying to decide where you will go one minute from now.

Wait for it...

Very busy. Many notes. Little Internet access. Plan to be on later today or much of tomorrow, however, and will update then. Half the fires are out, but this place is still smokin'.

Audio Observation

Nobody thought to put a speaker on the computers today. People in the front row could just barely hear the sound. Those little Anchor AN-100 speakers we have are such a good idea. I wish I had one with me today.

Webinar

Still Karen Kaminski, Colorado State.
livemeeting, infiniteconferencing, globallinkcommunications, instantaccessplus, etc.
Google "webinar hosting services" and you will find.
Campus can set up webinar hosting, but it is expensive to set up and maintain.

Streaming

Karen Kaminski is presenting.
Recommendations:
Logitech webcam V-US20. Good, quiet, non-echoing room. Headset w/mic. Plantronics DSP-500.

We are having tech problems connecting to a live Webinar. Ah, it wouldn't be tech without problems.

Streaming servers allow less copyright concern, since the file is not actually copied to the listener's computer. Still, copyright laws still apply.

Real, Microsoft and Apple all have software to produce. For bandwidth, stick with audio unless the video really contributes to the content.

Helix Server is free. Recommendation, if the University Tech folks won't set up a server, set up your own. When the tech folks see lots of incompatible servers going, they will probably step in to clean up the mess. Hmmmm........

Streamed content should be brief, since it does not allow pausing. If you want pauses for reflection, let the student download the content and play it locally. On streamed files, post a listening time, so students know when they will have the 14minutes 32 seconds to sit and listen to the streamed file.

Podcasting

Eugene G. Kowch, U of Calgary, our presenter, has begun by pointing out the waving palms right outside the window. Eugene is Canadian and is enjoying the palms as much as I am. He promises to e-mail us his presentation, of course. He will be using only free software. My kind of guy.

Podcasting is, unlike everything else we have seen here, one way. Making content into a Podcast does not make it magic. Poorly designed instruction on an iPod is poorly designed instruction that you can take with you to the beach.

Eugene is bioperating-systemal but prefers Windows. However, he says, "we can do it on PCs, but on a Mac it is 100 times easier." We knew that. In fact, Eugene has done his presentation on Windows, and is having a multitude of problems because of that. He has just hit the "video only plays on the primary display" Windows curse.

Eugene, despite being a Windows guy, says for Podcasting, go Mac, go iPod. Asked directly, iPod vs iZune says iPod. The iPod Touch is demoed. Ooooooo.

How to do it on a PC: Audacity is recommended as audio editor. OurMedia is recommended as server. iTunes as Podcast locator. On PCs you also need Spinexpress2 and LAME for various file conversions. Many steps are displayed. "On a Mac, you just press one button."

Go to iTunes and subscribe to the feed on OurMedia. That tells iTunes where the feed is. iTunes --> Advanced --> Subscribe to Podcast. Paste in OurMedia URL. Click OK. Oh, Man! I have got to do this! For audio, mp3, for video mp4. Otherwise, same system.

Warning, OurMedia.org is full of "adult" content. NOT for grade schoolers.

University sites serving podcasts. Yale, Penn State, etc. Student click one button. Every time the student connects an iPod to their computer, they automatically get the latest lecture downloaded. Apple runs it through uTunes.

http://www.ucalgary.ca/~ekowch/AECT Podcasting101.html

Blogging

Blogger (aka Blogspot), Edublogs and WordPress are recommended as places to put blogs. WordPress has the advantage that you can install it and run it on your own server if you want to. Our first presenter has run out of time, but will be e-mailing us her entire presentation. Oh, this modern age.

RSS Feeds and Readers

We begin with, RSS feeds and readers. The Google reader is the first suggested. Also Bloglines. I have never done RSS, but next week, I will. RSS is shown to us first, because it is a good way to read blogs. You can have a class blogging, and with your RSS reader, you get each student's most recent post on your reader.

Our presenter is giving us handouts via del.icio.us, the same thing I did with MEA last week. Man, we are so cutting edge!

Blogging, Podcasting, Webcasting and Streaming

Good morning, folks. I am sitting in Salon II, and the presentation with the same title as this post is getting started. Heather Tillberg-Webb is presenting on blogging right now. There are only two people here who have already used blogging with a class. Hey, EDCI 320 students and Thai educators, we are on the cutting edge!

This Town is on Fire

Did I mention that this town is on fire. No, really. Fire. You know how you see pictures of a forest fire in Montana. Well, this is like that, only the fires are surrounded by a thick carpet of city. Flying in was fantastic. Looked like the city you would expect to find on the lowest level of hell. Today, every time I walked out the door of the hotel, I looked for the flames. You can't actually see them from here, but the hot Santa Ana wind, carrying all that smoke, felt like there should be a fire right by the door.

Google Workshop - Hour Seven - Collaborative Presentation

We used Google docs to create a presentation collaboratively. Here it is.

I Love Christmas Eve Even More Than Christmas

My family has a big party on Christmas Eve. As a child, I loved the Christmas Eve party just about as much as opening presents on Christmas Day. As an adult, it is really the Christmas Eve event that I love. All our decorations are put up with the Christmas Eve guests in mind. My mother leaves the cooking now to the next generation, but she still spends a happy couple of days sending me up, down, in and out to put all the traditional things in all the traditional places. These images were gathered from Freefotos, Pics4Learning, and Flickr.

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Murder at the AECT Conference Jennifer Banas, Bill Freese, Sung Hee Park

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With travelers from all over the state, country, and world, there is a great deal of room for anonymity. Thank goodness for the name tags, otherwise, we would never have known who the body in the lobby was. But it was an AECT name tag, so we knew it was one of ours.

Who could have done such a thing? Who could possibly become so angry with an AECT member, the kindest, most gentle people in the world. Fortunately, there happened to be a detective's convention on the third floor. One of the greater of the detectives volunteered to help us out.

There was not much time to investigate, since we needed the crime to be solved before the next session. We could not possibly concentrate on our work with an unsolved murder hanging over our heads. We like closure before we move on.

Realizing that time was limited, our investigative guest decided to skip the search for clues and go totally on instinct. The great detective spun on his heals, pointed with the tip of his Meerschaum pipe, and declared, "the presenter did it."

It was obvious that the presenter had done it. It was a perfect guise. No one would suspect her since she appeared to be at the front of the room at all times....or was she?

Ah, everyone thought, just as I suspected.

Google Workshop - Hour Six, is it

Now, a shared Google Document.

http://docs.google.com/

Three authors, Jennifer Banas, Bill Freese, Sung Hee Park, are working on a single document. The rest of the room has been broken into similar teams. It is an odd experience. We tried the experiment of having one person change the spelling of a word while another person was replacing the word. We got a message telling us of the conflict, and that one person's modification was discarded. The revisions tab allows tracking of changes, including who did what. Handy for grading.

Our collaborative document is now available at http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dcdnmpzk_0cd9nvr. And now it is successfully posted as a blog post, sent here from Google docs.

Google Workshop - Hour Five, the one after lunch

We are learning to use Google Earth as a teaching tool. We have seen examples teachers have used with class content which has a geographic component (journey of an explorer, melting of a glacier). We have now learned to create, annotate, save, upload and post a link to a Google Earth location. So as a teacher, I could give an electronic handout with links to locations on the globe that were relevant to the content.

My office on Google Earth To make this link work, you will need to have Google Earth installed on your computer. If your browser asks what to do with the file, you can either download it and then open it, or just directly open it with Google Earth.

Google Workshop - As hour four progresses.

Now, blogs. On this one, I am ahead of the game, since we created blogs for the Montana Thai Action Learning Network. In fact, I am blogging this on my blogspot blog. But, there are new things to learn. We started creating blogs at http://www.blogger.com.

I have just learned how to make a blog private (information I needed last week) and how to set up a blog with multiple authors (information I needed three weeks ago). This is a very useful workshop. Oh, and we are supposed to post our picture from the workshop here.

This picture was taken by Dr. Shiang-Kwei Wang during the AECT Tuesday workshop. Hey, it was really early, and I got to bed really late last night. I tried to smile. Really.

We just learned how to put a little survey question on our blog. As per the little multiple choice question in the upper left hand corner of this page.

Google Workshop - Hour the Third

Our next task is an online web photo album.
I downloaded Picasa from http://picasa.google.com/web/mac_tools.html. Evil Windows version also available. Links at http://icttools.googlepages.com/onlinewebalbum.
Our instructors have put us all on their album, which you can find at
http://picasaweb.google.com.tw/icttools/AECTWorkshop.
Access at http://picasaweb.google.com.
I have just added a photo of me at the workshop to my new website at http://bill.freese.googlepages.com/home. Enjoy.

Google Workshop - Hour Two

I am sitting between Tamme McCowin and Jennifer Banas. Tamme is one of those "run ahead of the class" students. I am being my usual "do exactly what you are told" kind of guy.
All of us have posted Google pages, which are linked from http://icttools.googlepages.com/googlepage.

Google Workshop - First Hour

New Literacies = those Internet skills, of course.
Online handouts are at http://icttools.googlepages.com/ .
Now we create Google webpages.
http://pages.google.com - Free Webspace - 100MB!
And now, a few moments later, I have a website at
http://bill.freese.googlepages.com/home.

Arrival at AECT

Monday, 10/22/07, 7:50 p.m., Salt Lake City Airport, Gate C4

Forgot I had a flat pocket knife in my card wallet, and got a very serious patting down at Gallatin Field Security. The 2:45 p.m. from Bozeman was delayed on the way here. Something about Santa Ana winds. I boarded about 4:10 and arrived in Salt Lake City about 5:30. Since my connecting flight left at 4:37, I was rescheduled for the 8:50. Story's like this never make any sense to non-travelers, so let's just say a lot of down time. I dined in concourse C at the Squatters Pub Brewery. I had the bourbon burger (cheddar and onions sauteed in bourbon ($10) and two glasses of Robert Mondavi merlot (@$6) for a total of 23.73, which, I assume, includes one of those "sales tax" things. Being a guy not used to traveling on the company, I forgot to keep the receipt, so that one was on me. You can thank me any time, MSU.

I walked all over the airport killing time. We expect to begin boarding in half an hour, says the announcement. Wireless access is available in both Gallatin Field and here for $7.95. Thus, I am typing this into a word processor, with the intention of posting it later.

Tuesday, 10/23/07, 7:00 a.m., Hyatt Regency Orange County hotel, room 1526

Internet access costs $2.95 for 15 minutes. $9.95 for 24 hours. $39.95 for four days. Wireless or wired. The wireless signal I picked up was weak, and even then turned out to be from the Marriot across the street and also pay only. Maybe I can find a cafe with free wireless. I think I will blog in bursts.

I took the Supershuttle from the airport, a trick Denby Starkey taught me many years ago. Takes a little longer, but you see more of the town, and it costs a whole lot less. ($10) Seats way more comfortable than the airplane. Driver was a very nice fellow. One couple was being dropped off at somebody's home, so got a spin through a little residential neighborhood.

Hyatt first impression, huge and horrible. Lobby is vast, and, at night, dark. Registration desk is one pool of light among many. Friendly staff, though. Corridors remind me of computer game graphics. Look nicer than they are. Arrive in the room dying of thirst. Find two bottles with this message:
"Aquafina
Purity Guaranteed
Enjoy A Refreshing
1-liter Aquafina for $5.00
this bottle of clear, crisp, cool refreshment is
provided as a service for our Guests.
If consumed, a charge of
$5.00 will be billed to your
room. For your convenience
our staff will refresh daily."

This is not a welcoming kind of thing. "You look thirsty, weary traveler. For five bucks you can have some of this water." If I am buying water from them at $5.00 a liter, they are not just refreshing it for my convenience. I spent the rest of the evening being afraid to use anything in the room without reading it carefully first to see what it was going to cost. The ice machine on my floor was broken. The vending machine offers Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi, Pepsi, Mountain Dew, Aquafina, and Aquafina. I tried a couple of other floors, found ice, but could find nothing with fizz that was not caffinated. I drank the tap water, and woke up this morning regretting it.

I scouted out the location for the Tuesday workshop and found a couple of AECT folks setting up in a room full of projectors and cardboard boxes full of tote bags. They seemed very nice, which helped to relieve some of the oppression of this hotel. My sensation at the moment is a lot of nice people working inside a vicious machine.

The bed was very comfortable. Five pillows. Good mattress. Slept like I always do, loglike, despite the odd thump the ventilating system makes each time it kicks on or off. In the morning I discovered that the bathtub has a nearly straight up and down back. Very uncomfortable. Lots of hot water. Bumpy "massage" bar of soap. Not at all like a massage. Label on soap says nothing about extra charges, but I am worried.

Garden Room 2
Sarah McPherson intros Hui-Yin Hsu and Shiang-Kwei Want of NY Institute of Technology.

Intros. Lots of handouts. AECT has free wireless here. wOOt! I will post this during the intros.

Where are we?

This map shows Bozeman, Yellowstone National Park and Miles City, as well as Helena, which is the location of Montana's state capitol, and Billings, which is Montana's biggest town. Belgrade is so close to Bozeman that it would be on the northwest edge of the yellow Bozeman dot on this map. Map made with Google Earth and Photoshop.

Bread and Soup Party - Photo from 300 Miles Away

My sister Amorette and her husband Steve started doing an annual bread and soup party here in Belgrade many years ago. Now they are back in my home town, and the party this year was at my mother's house. Yvonne Hauwiller knows my brother Bart's wife Shelley, so when Yvonne and Nun made the trip to Miles City, they joined my family for dinner. Bart brought me into the party for a few minutes using Skype. Not quite as good as being there, but I did get to see Nun and Yvonne and a lot of familiar faces from home.

MEA/MFT

Today we all went to the Montana Education Association / Montana Federation of Teachers convention in Belgrade. This was handy for me, since I live in Belgrade. I gave a presentation on Web 2.0. For handouts, I created a tag on my del.icio.us page, MEA-MFThandouts, and put that tag on all the information I wanted to distribute to the class. My handout was a single sheet of paper with that address, del.icio.us/willfree/MEA-MFThandouts. This solved the problems of paper waste, not knowing how many people would be attending and how many copies to make up, and copyright, since I did not give out copies, just a link to links to the content. The folks who got the handout only have to type in one address to get access to everything. And I can even add content to the handouts after the presentation is over, which I will actually do.

After the presentation, I sat at the Department of Education booth on the show floor. Nun, Yvonne Hauwiller and Jioanna Carjuzaa came by, but I did not get to see any of the other Thai folks today. Next week, I will be in Anaheim, California for a conference, so I will not get to see you all again. But I will try to stay in contact through this group.

Party at Brody's

OK. Looking at this video, I think I may have had a little too much wine. I should always remember to take the pictures before I pour a drink. (In fact, I usually do.)



The important thing is that everybody had a good time. And I wish I could post the taste of the excellent Thai food we got to enjoy.

The Intellectuals

Just finished putting together presentation for Montana Education Association / Montana Federation of Teachers tomorrow. Too tired to do the video tonight, but could not wait to put in this picture. I like those attitudes.

Our visitors from Thailand were very pleased to see snow today. It was just on the edge of being rain. We hope that they will get to see real snow this weekend.

This is our class today. We are all bloggers now!

Blogs are up

We have posted our blogs. You can link to them from our group's Learning Journal page. This was really the main goal, since it allows everyone to post their thoughts on the day's learning.

We did have some technical problems in the process, particularly getting everyone into the Google Group so they could take part in the discussions. Not everyone had an e-mail account that we could access here in the US. This meant creating an e-mail account, with userID and password, and then using that account to create a Google Groups account, since Google Groups wants to send a verifying e-mail to each group member. A reasonable system, but with a room full of people, it can mean a lot of userIDs and passwords. A single letter wrong somewhere, and things do not work. I think the next time we do this, we will try to work with the participants well in advance by e-mail, getting all the accounts set up before anyone is here on the ground.

Making Blogs

We are creating blogs at this very moment. It is both easy and hard.

What a Day!

I have spent the day teaching things I have never taught before, both to visiting Thai educators and to my Instructional Technology students. It is fun, but it can be a challenge. So, I thought I would top it off by posting my first ever Google video in my new blog. I can't sleep properly if I do not learn at least one more new thing before bed.

A tower and a flower

I am posting this to make sure I can post a picture from Flickr and a video from YouTube in a Blogger blog.

Thai educators arrive - Orientation

I have just spent a very pleasant day with ten visiting educators from Thailand. Nine of them arrived yesterday. One, Nun, has been here for a couple of weeks already as part of a longer six week stay. I helped Nun with the technical aspects of a presentation she gave last week, so we have already spent quite a bit of time together surrounded by computers and video equipment.

We hear that the flight from Seattle was a bumpy one. Jim Vernon and I met the nine new arrivals in the parking lot of their hotel. They also got to meet Jim's dog, Johnny, who seemed to get along well with everyone. We followed their van up to campus and joined them in the conference room of the Office of International Programs at Montana State University where we had an orientation. The OIP folks did a very professional job getting everyone settled in, taking care of travel documents and providing everyone with maps of Montana, Bozeman and the campus.

Dr. Brody oriented everyone to the program which we will follow over the next two weeks, and assigned everyone the task of being able to summarize what they hope to get out of the program. The emphasis is on active learning and the take away message for the day was "active learning requires active teaching."

We had a tour of the MSU campus, lunch at the Bamboo Gardens, then a walk down Main Street, up Pete's Hill for an overview of the town, and back to the hotel by way of a lovely residential neighborhood. The day was all sunshine (perhaps a bit too much at times) blue skies and autumn leaves. I had no camera with me, but plenty of pictures were taken. Our visitors seemed pleased with the general friendliness of the people we encountered on the walk. All in all, a fine introduction to Bozeman. Tomorrow, the serious work begins.

MTALN

Dr. Michael Brody and I are creating MTALN the Montana State University Thai Active Learning Network. This network, organized around a Google group and Blogger blogs, will be used to record and enhance interactions between educators in the Department of Education at Montana State University, and educators from various teacher training institutions in Thailand. We have a Thai educator with us right now, and a group from Thailand will be arriving on the MSU campus October 14 for a two week visit. This is the second year for this program. It is our hope that these Internet links will allow each year's participants to stay in contact with us and with each other.