Community Buzz
SIGCT Members: Get Involved!
SIGCT will be sponsoring a larger number of sessions, along with a membership breakfast Forum and a half-day workshop at ISTE's 2007 Annual Conference (NECC). These events are oriented around the SIGCT mission of supporting computing teachers within the K–12 curriculum.
The sessions include topics relevant not only to high school teachers but also to educators including computer science topics in the pre-high school curriculum. They range from specific language tutorials to more general concept discussions. The panel currently includes a textbook author, a high school author, and a developer of software used by many in Java classrooms. The half-day workshop will focus on a new environment that would be useful to teach computer science concepts in the 7–12 grades.
The Breakfast Forum, planned for Monday morning, June 26th, is intended to encourage the SIGCT membership to network, hear a panel discussion related to teaching computing concepts (who, what, when, where and how), and work together in smaller groups to formulate direction for SIGCT activities in the coming year.
If you have any ideas for the Forum agenda, we’d love to hear from you. You can email the SIGCT President, Joe Kmoch, at joe@jkmoch.com. You can also take a look at our wiki and consider commenting on the many ideas posted there: http://sigcs-ct-futures.wikispaces.com. Use this wiki to gather ideas, widen our community and provide support for our expanded SIGCT!
Leadership Summit on Learning Technology Development, Research, and Dissemination
This year at ISTE’s annual conference (NECC) in Atlanta, ISTE’s special interest groups on innovative learning technologies (SIGILT), handheld computing (SIGHC), teacher educator (SIGTE), and telelearning (SIGTEL), and ISTE’s International Committee will host the first Summit on Innovative Learning Technologies. The purpose of this day-long gathering is to mobilize international and national leaders in learning technology innovation to develop a collaborative community that fosters improved processes and tools for:
- Field testing promising innovations in learning technology, especially with regard to the most pressing educational needs of students.
- Encouraging more research and evaluation to assess and validate promising learning technologies in terms of impact on learning climate, learning opportunities, learning results and/or other key outcomes.
- Cataloguing promising and proven innovative learning technologies relative to international and national technology and content standards, so that teachers and administrators seeking to improve students’ learning climate, learning opportunities and learning results in a given subject and grade level can much more easily locate technologies relevant to their priorities.
- Promoting the dissemination and availability of this information on promising and proven innovation in learning technology.
The summit will be held during NECC 2007, starting with breakfast at 7:30 a.m. and concluding at 12:30 p.m. If you're interested in getting involved in this initiative, please contact Bob McLaughlin at mclaughb@nici-mc2.org.
ISTE in MySpace: Reaching Out to a Connected Generation
Many adults in the education world have been reluctant to join in on the MySpace craze. For its part in schools across the U.S., MySpace has thus far been regarded mostly as an unwelcome guest. One need not look far to learn the horror stories of misuse of this popular social tool. In the wrong hands, MySpace is indeed a weapon. However, the merits of MySpace are hard to ignore. As an organization promoting technology in education (and connections among our members!), we were interested in exploring this popular medium, and understanding how people use MySpace to communicate with friends, coworkers, family, and in our case, members. Educators might feel the same inclination. In order to better understand why the younger demographic is so interested in MySpace, and for what they are using it, a good course of action is to explore the space itself.
For those of you reading who are not familiar with the Myspace sign-up process, it’s quite simple. You need a confirmed e-mail address and about 5 minutes of your time. From there, you fill out information in your profile, add pictures and videos, and, if you’re HTML savvy, edit your profile’s look and feel. The nerve-wracking part comes in when you begin to realize, much to your chagrin, that you have not yet been sought out and “friended” (the lingo comes with practice). In fact, your friend number has been hovering around two for just about a week now. You begin to realize that MySpace is a bit like a hobby, or a pet. If you don’t put in the time and energy, the rewards are minimal. The purpose of MySpace is communication, and although it grows in the most organic of ways, you have to sow the seeds. Perhaps you start with a coworker or the friend who urged you to create a profile. From there, you browse their friends, and you start sending out invitations (it is indeed something to get used to that your newly acquired friends have to “confirm” your friendship). As you are “friending” people, others start to notice you in your mutual friends’ lists. From there, 2 friends become 50, and so on and so forth, until you’re accepting invitations from people you don't know.
However, once you’ve established yourself on MySpace you can begin exploring the more interesting aspects of the site. Although primarily used for friend-to-friend communication, there is a networking aspect to MySpace that makes it more useful in the professional world. One profile section asks, “Who are you looking to meet?” Here people usually publicize their desire to connect with like-minded individuals. More and more often, MySpacers are checking the box next to "Networking" when completing the sentence, “I am here for….” It is this aspect of MySpace that has allowed many organizations to build their own spaces to attract potential members and communicate in a more open way with their current members.
Many nonprofits are using the social tool to extend the reach of their respective causes. Organizations like Greenpeace and The One Campaign have thousands of friends on MySpace. They use their blogs to update subscribers about volunteer opportunities and donation drives. Recently, the American Library Association announced its own profile on MySpace. Through discussion groups and profile searches, nonprofits can connect with the people who are passionate about their mission. A new generation is being connected to those who share their passions with increasing ease.
ISTE’s mission on MySpace is to connect with two distinct populations: those who have never heard of ISTE, and those who have heard of ISTE and can benefit from informational updates (members and non-members alike). We plan to regularly post to our blog with news about ISTE’s Annual Conference (NECC), advocacy opportunities, and useful links and resources. We can also use the Bulletins feature to inform our MySpace friends about book sales, membership discounts, and early registration deals. The video space can hold clips from NECC, as well as any other free educational content we might come across. For members who check their MySpace as often as they check their e-mail, this might be a great way to browse through many of our resources in one place.
If you’d like to become ISTE’s MySpace friend, you can send us an invitation at www.myspace.com/iste_org. Be sure to subscribe to our blog, and stay tuned for bulletin updates and more!
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