Wednesday, November 10, 2010

2010 Global Education Conference

Time: November 15, 2010 to November 19, 2010
Location: In Elluminate - see website for room details for each session

The 2010 Global Education Conference will be held November 15 - 19, 2010, online and free.  Details about the conference are available at http://www.globaleducationconference.com.  The conference currently has scheduled 50 keynote addresses and over 300 general sessions  from 62 countries.  Sessions will be held in multiple time zones focusing on teachers, students, curriculum, policy and leadership and global issues.

The conference is a collaborative and world-wide community effort to significantly increase opportunities for globally-connecting education activities and initiatives.

There is no formal registration required for the conference, as all the sessions will be open and public, broadcast live using the Elluminate platform, and available in recorded formats afterward.  Actual session links will be posted the week of the conference.  See the full hour-by-hour schedule in your time zone at http://www.globaleducationconference.com/schedule.html  and read more details about the sessions at http://www.globaleducationconference.com/all-sessions.html.

The Twitter account for the conference is http://www.twitter.com/globaledcon, and the "hashtag" for the conference is #globaled10.  The conference Facebook page is http://www.facebook.com/pages/Global-Education-Conference/125602090788788?ref=ts.

We encourage all to actively publicize the conference!  Help us spread the word.  Press releases, flyers, graphics and badges are available at http://www.globaleducationconference.com/press-and-promotional-materials-web-badges.html.

Monday, November 8, 2010

Mad about Madison - A Unique Look at Professional Development

I've just finished taking a class focused on GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation Program,) an image editing application.  GIMP is a free software alternative to Adobe Photoshop so it makes it an appealing choice for teachers who want to introduce image editing software to students.  GIMP allows essential image editing tasks such as resizing, editing, and cropping photos, photomontages combining multiple images, and converting between different image formats. GIMP can also be used to create basic animated images in the GIF format.

Lots of kids are talking about GIMP and using the application at home.  I thought it was time to learn how to use the application and consider using it in Tech Class.  At first glance, it appeared a bit cumbersome and although I had access to tutorials on Atomic Learning and YouTube, I decided to seek out an expert and take a class from one.

Enter Madison, a sixth grader at the school I teach and resident expert in GIMP.  Together, on Thursdays after school for five weeks, Madison patiently taught me the ins and outs of GIMP.  I asked loads of questions and most of the time she had answers.  When she didn't, she did what most teachers do, she figured it out.  I appreciated Madison's willingness to help a teacher learn something new.  Her excitement about the application is what piqued my interest in the first place. 

I'm highly competent in the area of technology, yet I keep wondering what more I can learn from my students if I take the time.  I love learning what's new and relevant in their lives.  At any rate, this new route to professional development has been a great way to sneak some learning in and that's why I'm mad about Madison.