Monday early afternoon

Again, only had a bit of time. I spent a good deal wandering and just looking at what all was there. Stopped to chat with a few people, dropped off my card, etc etc. Two booths I visited and spent a bit of time at:

Smart Technologies

Smart Technologies is the maker of SmartBoard - the interactive white board. I’ve actually had the chance to use a SmartBoard before, and it’s really neat. Lafayette has one in their language labs, and I got to play with it while I was there a year and a half ago.

I saw a good deal of new features I hadn’t known about. The software comes with a program you can use to make slides for a presentation right there. You can also open up a powerpoint or keynote presentation. They now have a recording feature to record the presentation for later playback. I asked about podcasting capabilities, and right now it just saves the presentations as a .avi file. No quick “click here to upload” button yet, but when I asked the representative said she wanted to take it back to their development team because it would be a useful function. Whether anything will happen with that is a different story however…

Another thing I hadn’t known about is the ability to use the Smart software without a SmartBoard. It can be used with a tablet PC and a projector to use in, say, a large lecture hall. You have the same annotation and recording capabilities. This looks an awful lot like Lecture123, another product we’ve been evaluating.

Task Stream

Task Stream is the commercial ePortfolio product that Helen Barrett recommended to us in the workshop on Saturday. From what I could gather, this might be a product we could conceivably use. We are working hard to get a usable ePortfolio system implemented at Rutgers. Though we love our open-source Sakai, and the open-source ePortfolio software we’re trying to use now (can’t remember the name off the top of my head…) fits in easily with it, Task Stream has some really great features. I’ll have to drag Jesse back there and get his opinion on it, since he’s been the one more involved in ePortfolios.

Monday Morning

We didn’t have much time to spend in the vendor fair so far this morning, but we did get a chance to visit some of the booths.

Best Buy

We mainly went to Best Buy to get some really big bags.

They had Dance Dance Revolution displayed, and were talking about how some schools have been using them in physical education programs, etc. Not great for our purposes in higher education, but the game has demonstrated some results in helping get kids more active.

Google

I am a fan of Google. I love the applications they have developed. There was not a lot there today that I wasn’t already familiar with, but I did learn a few cool things.

They have Google Docs and Spreadsheets on demo, of course, which allows online collaborative editing. You can work on a document online with others you have invited.

Google Earth was on display as well. I never thought this had much use in higher education, but it was always fun to play around with. Apparently though there are some who are using it for landscape and architecture. It can be used in conjunction with another product, SketchUp, for use with 3D images. This could be particularly useful in architecture.

I tried out Google Blogger for the first time. Now, I don’t generally blog much, and I only used it to make one post, but it doesn’t seem too drastically different from other blogging tools you have out there (such as WordPress which we are using for this blog). Jesse would have loved it had Google Blogger been able to be hosted on your own server, as opposed to having everything up on the company server. I think one of the main advantages of this tool over others is probably that it’s easy to use with the vast array of other Google products.

I joined the Google for Educators group on Google Groups. More or less a listserv, with some nice additional features in your typical Google style.

And last but not least, I checked out the station on Custom Search Engines. This was pretty neat - you can set up a group of websites to use when performing searches. So say you frequently do searches on a particular subject, and you have a handful of sites you know are reliable and thorough. You can put those sites in a group, and do searches on just that group. It cuts out on all the irrelevant and unreliable information you can get doing normal searches.

I completed a scavenger hunt in doing tasks at each of these stations, and got a Google tote bag! The scavenger hunt to get a goodie was great marketing, not to mention fun and creative, in my opinion. Did I mention I really like Google?

Parallels

We went to Parallels mainly to see a demonstration of its capabilities with 3D graphics and gaming. Right now, I have to run my games in Bootcamp — which is alright, but can be a nuisance when I have to restart my computer every time I want to go in and out of a game. (Yeah, I have a MacBook Pro and am actually running it in OS X and not Windows…surprised myself there.)

Well, they didn’t have anything to show us, but the new version will have those capabilities! Though it was suggested we test it out on the demo version first.

Apple

We hit Apple quickly on our way out. It’s the largest booth there, so the ten minutes we spent at it wasn’t nearly enough. We saw a very neat new device by Bretford that will be released shortly. It lets you sync files from up to 40 (I believe) iPods at once. You can also download onto multiple iPods as well. This has some wonderful possibilities (have all of your students podcast on a topic!). Not to mention it looks so cool to see that many iPods all neatly tucked away in a drawer. Here is a shot of it:

Monday 8:30-9:30
Cristian Rizzi

What kinds of skills will our children need in 20 years?

• problem solving
• metacognitive skills
• able to use technology
• teamwork
• empathy & passion
• ability to find & filter information

21st Century Learning Skills Initiative

Students are being well-prepared academically, but not prepared for the work force. Group of corporations & educators got together to figure out what we need to teach our students to make them employable.

What they came up with:

3R’s

• Reading
• Writing
• Arithmetic

Also 7 C’s

• Critical Thinking & Problem Solving
• Collaboration, Teamwork & Leadership
• Cross-cultural understanding
• Communication & Media Literacy
• Computing & ICT Literacy
• Career & Learning Self-Reliance
• Creativity & Innovation

There is a difference between learning something and understanding something. If you understand it, you can use it. Collaboration and project-based learning helps students understand.

Think Quest - Project-based learning competition. Website building competition, challenging students to create innovative and educational websites to share with the world.

eDivide - gap between people with access to technology and those without increasing.

• Physical Barriers
• Digital Barriers
• Human Barriers
• Socioeconomic Barriers

Website was created by students working together in a project-based environment, one of the group winners of the Think Quest competition.

What is 21st Century Project Learning?

Students working in teams to experience and explore relevant, real-world problems. The teacher’s role is to be a coach, facilitator, guide, adviser, mentor, or conductor. They should not be directing and managing all the student work.

Key Features of Project-Learning:

• project-centered
• learner-centered
• question/problem
• real-world
• relevant
• open-ended
• focused on Higher Order Thinking Skills
• Collaborative
• Creative
• Multiple Perspectives
• Communication-driven

Oracle Education Foundation (behind Think Quest and Think.com) will be at the vendor fair booth 2232. A team of students involved in the Think Quest competition will be there at 1:15.

Link to session page here.

I stopped by the rSmart booth this afternoon. I spoke with the representative about our Sakai implementation at Rutgers and Blackboard’s legal actions against D2L. She gave me a t-shirt that I thought was pretty clever: