The Duck Tour was great with a very humorous guide (see photos of Duck Tour with guide in second photo driving boat!). The best part was catching up with Chris, the Groomsman, and Linda for a couple of beers and a burger at a great bar in Boston. They have been a great couple to meet. He is a graphic designer and she is a journalist and they are about to uproot and move to London! I hope they keep in touch.
This morning at conference has been a bit mixed. The first session on celebrating learning in a Liverpool school context. They do a bit of trans disciplinary work with presentations. This was followed by a key note from John Davitt. It was extremely entertaining and he used some neat presentation tools, but it didn't really go anywhere. I'll need to visit his sites to explore his work further (www.newtools.org for tools) and johndavitt@mac.com to contact him.
From there I went to a session from a librarian, Joyce Valenza
Designing Projects for the 21st Century Learners
www.schoollibraryjournal.com.blog/134000034.html
http://informationfluency.wikispaces.com, on designing 21st Century learning assignments. This obviously requires the use of Web 2.0 tools and involves publishing to authentic audiences. This had built on the other sessions and brought a few things together.
The next session was by Jim Wenzloff Jim@novemberlearning.com on Web 2.0 For Dummies. This brought some morwe clarity about where to start on the journey of using these tools everyday for teaching and learning. I'm looking forward to taking some time to explore the tools we have been presented with. I was particularly impresed with www.gcast.com which is a phone up pod cast which can then be loaded onto a blog. Another excellent reason to have cellphones in class!
The final session for me today was with Bob Pearlman again http://bobpearlman.org/BLC2008.htm www.bobpearlman.com which looked at the way in which secondary schools could assess the 21st century skills when using a totally project based learning approach. I have really liked what I have seen from Bob's two presentations and could be something we ccould definitely move towards in our Years 9 and 10 with the more adventurous also moving that way in senior years.
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