Next week I will be sharing a unique learning space with a bunch of great teachers. We will be on the USS Hornet, an aircraft carrier for the final CueRockstar Teacher Camp of the summer.
I am really excited to be presenting with Cheryl Morris. We will be talking about the tools we use to create video and audio recordings. We will also be talking about the pedagogy of asynchronous instruction and the many ways "flipped" tools can support learning in a traditional class environment; our session is called "Flipping on the FlightDeck."
Before we put on our flight suits and face Jon Corippo for inspection, we have some prep to do, and so do the teachers attending. Since I was thinking through all of this stuff I figured I would put it in a blog and share it.
Prepping for Learning at a Tech Conference
1. Make Room for Learning.- Clear your memory on your phone. You need all the room you can for pictures, video, and audio recordings. Upload the pictures from your Bryce Canyon trip to Flickr (1TB) now so you don't have to delete your awesome selfies later.
- Get more storage. You know that 1TB external hard drive you have been thinking about getting? do it now. Here are 5 for under 100 dollars.
- Get more cloud space. Google Drive (5GB), Dropbox.com (2GB), Copy.com (15GB) all offer free starter accounts. The files you store here are also sharable. You are going to make new friends at the conference and you will want to share.
- Clean up your cloud. I was looking through my cloud accounts and noticed about 3 GB of overlap. So I took some of my triple redundant storage down to double redundant.
2. Preload Software and Apps You don't want to be the person hogging all the bandwidth in the room to download a piece of software, so load it ahead of time. Here are a few platforms we will be using in our sessions.
- Camtasia (screen cast and video production software for Mac or PC)- you can get a 30 day free trial version
- ShowME app for IPAD an IWB platform and so much more -Free
- Snagit (screen capture and screen cast software for PC or MAC) -30 day free trial
- Ustream Producer (Live Broadcast platform for PC or Mac)- 30 day free trial
- Reflector App (uses airplay yo mirror your ios device to Mac of PC) -12.99
- Puppet Pals App (a creative movie maker that allows you to build puppet shows on your IOS device) -free all access version 2.99
- Evernote (Mac, PC, All devices store and share resources, record audio and embed into a document then share via URL)
Check out the notes for each session to make sure you are setting yourself up for success! Don't be afraid of over preparing.
3. Plan for Success, Pack like a Rockstar Jon and the Cue crew have worked hard to make this even a success, but there is still room for you to do your part. Here are a few things you can bring.
- Power strip -grab one and put it in your bag
- Chargers for all your devices
- Back up battery
- Projector, yes if you have a spare and want to bring it I am sure it will get used. You could even launch a rouge session at lunch
- Devices- bring all your toys, you know you want to
- Video camera -so many sessions are about creating video, don't just rely on your device, bring your camera.
4. PD best practices Just a few tips for successful learning in a conference space.
- When you are not directly using a device log off of the Wifi, they are planning on wifi for each participant, but if we all have 4 devices logged in it can really slow the system down.
- Speak up and share out you are here to learn with more than learn from. Ask questions, tweet out what you learn, blog the heck out of the day.
- Stay focused on your classroom and how to use the tools presented to meet your education goals.
- Remember to build relationships as well as skills. Skills are finite and need refreshing and relationships have endless potential and refresh constantly.
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