I attended BLC 2010 last week and am finally getting a chance to digest and process all the information I have gathered. The following are some notes I took on some of the sessions I attended. They are pretty raw and I only have added a few thoughts since the conference. I really need to explore some of these more fully. There is just so much to learn and think about I just want to do it all and it is pretty difficult for me to prioritize.

Darren Kuropatwa – Design Matters
http://dkuropatwapresentations.pbworks.com/Design-Matters-at-BLC-2010
Slides and Audio are available on the wiki above

Darren’s session are always though proving and inspiring. The focus on this session is how design, instruction, and presentation are essential to learning and student engagement.

Darren recommend the following sites and books.
Colr website  to help with design of presentations
Brain Rules – Book
Made to Stick – Book
How People Learn – Book

My big take away was how to manage a back channel and how to get keynote and PowerPoint to tweet information. I found a nice overview of the process here.

Brad Ovenell-Carter – The Myth of the Digital Native
Brad’s Blog

People get overwhelmed! Focus on the process – not the tools
He suggests adding links to browser tool bar that list folders by process and then a FEW tools that do this.

This is a switch in thinking (marketing) that my district has been trying to make how to shift the focus form tools to process and to streamline and organize the tools we do have. There are only so many online word processors and presentation applications you can use.

Brad’s session helped to coleus our thoughts.

Here are a few suggestions of groupings from Brad.

Research
Yo-Link, Data Bases (those from the library) ,Google – Advanced Search, Alta Vista

Produce
Google apps

Publish
Blog, Wiki, you-tube, Google sites, flicker, glogster

Discuss
Edmodo, Moodle, Ning

Manage
calendar, todo list, rss reader

Angela Maiers – Fluency 3.0
Her blog
Presentation Notes

I did not take any notes here I was focused on what Angela was saying. Please look at her materials – they are well worth your time.

Dean’s session had a similar theme and since I had heard Angela I was able to get some notes down in his session.

Dean Shareski – Google or You? Who Would You Rather Control Your Digital Identity.
His blog
Slides from presentation

What is your identity?

You need to manage your profile and school
Who manages our school district’s rep?

Places to look up your profile
• Klout
• google profile – set that up
• spezify
• persona MIT
• rate my teacher

We do have a permanent record, after all.
When you are Googled do they find you and is it good stuff.

You can’t not play – once you are online you play

It used to be that life was “private by default public with effort”
but now we are “public by default and private with effort”

People who were raised in the first environment do not get the privacy standards of the new environment.

We need to become clickable, need to market and advocate for yourself

On Dean’s blog page what others say- “it always feel a bit weird posting good stuff about yourself, but to prove I have some credibility in what I say, read what other say about me.”

Purchase Domain name for yourself, and your children
One School gets domains as graduation present.

Bud the Teacher says if you are concerned about what people may find then maybe you should be a better person

Digital is different – easily copied easily shared – info shared quickly without thought – action is instant
Digital is easily edited and viewable by millions

In a newspaper we have pictures and names of students and it is considered okay BUT online it is not okay- “do only creepy people read the internet?”
newspapers are now online as well and searchable so it is still okay for students full names to be in newspapers.

Here are links to research about Internet safety – some thing to look out when considering district policy. When getting out of HS – kids want to be found – get blogs and info ready for college searching