I am currently attending a session on Moodle. We have discussed using Moodle within our system and wanted to find out a little more about the open source product. Below are a few notes I took:

Bethany Smith, NC State College of Education
http://cedmoodle.ncsu.edu/

• Open Source alternative to Blackboard
• MySQL and PHP based
• Easy install and is built for multiple platforms
• CSS based which allows easy customization

"It's all about scaffolding."

• HTML editing built in
• There is a repository of Moodle themes online.
• Each class can have a different theme.
• Blocks - add-ons or plug-ins
• Podcasting block
• RSS feed block
• Wiki block
• Forum block
  

• Good to create a "sandbox" to play in.

DPI is currently using Moodle
Have several people using Moodle as their own website.

Free hosting for Moodle for educators:
http://www.globalclassroom.us/

You would think a technology person would think to have their laptop charged enough to use during an opening keynote. Well apparently not. I began typing what you see below during the opening keynote at NCAECT this morning. I was also chatting and watching the keynote through Ustream which is really nice.

I'm sitting here at the keynote session at NCAECT trying to gather my thoughts for this afternoon. The theme this year is "Shift Happens: Gear up with Technology."

Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach "http://www.21stcenturycollaborative.com" is the keynote speaker and is currently speaking on "Schooling for the 21st Century: Unleashing Student Passion." I'll be taking a few notes to hopefully intertwine into my presentation.

-iPods in vending machines at the Dallas airport (Wow, that's pretty wild).
-Church online using Ustream
Kids can present projects, school board meetings.....

And then, the power went out on my laptop.

Other than that, the conference seems to be going pretty good so far. I attended several sessions today and plan on attending several tomorrow if I can get there in time (due to traffic). I am really interested in the Mac OS X Server 10.5 "Leopard" session. We just purchased an XServe for the county and I will be the primary stakeholder. I am very excited about this opportunity.

Found a new technology toy, er, I mean tool to use. I just signed up and tested out my new Ustream account. Man is it cool. This site allows me to broadcast a feed live over the Internet to anyone who is willing to watch (maybe one or two?). I beginning to brainstorm on ways our schools could use this tool in the classroom. Student Television Broadcast could easily be shown live in order for parents to keep up with the news at their student's school. How about streaming a school board meeting? Or even stream a staff development workshop that would allow others throughout the county (or beyond) to participate? What about athletic events? The sky is the limit with this Web 2.0 tool!

I really hope to be able to use this site during my presentation. My thought is to stream my presentation for a few teachers who were unable to make it to the conference, and my wife who just doesn't get enough of me at home :)!

I came across this video of Sir Ken Robinson speaking at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) on "Do schools kill creativity." He brings up some very interesting points starting from the beginning with making the statement around 3:15 in the speech when he makes the statement "Creativity is now as important as literacy and we should treat it with the same status." I'm curious how on the thoughts and reactions that would spawn in our schools today.





He goes even further in the talk to describe intelligence. According to Sir Ken, three things are known about intelligence.
1. It's diverse. We think about the world in all the ways we experience it. We think visually, we think in sound, we think kinesthetically, we think in abstract terms, we think in movement.
2. It's dynamic.
3. It's distinct.

Even though all three of these are important, I would like to focus on #1 with intelligence being diverse. Do we in education try to educate (not teach) our students in diverse ways? Do we believe that all students learn alike?

Talk about timing! I just received a newsletter through my email from eSN (eSchool News) dealing with schools adding digital arts to the curriculum (http://www.eschoolnews.com/news/top-news/index.cfm?i=52989&page=1). If you have not registered for this publication, I strongly suggest you consider it. Anyway, this is a very good article dealing with the implementation of digital media (especially video) in today's classroom.

I sitting here trying to organize myself for my presentation coming up at NCAECT (North Carolina Association for Educational Communications and Technology) on Thursday. My deli.ico.us account has been my primary source of organization, but I feel a little limited using just that source. That's why I have resurrected my blog from Blogger and hope to continue to post periodically to keep up with the ever-changing technology and how it can be utilized in our schools. I'll be posting more very soon.