NECC and Tech
I haven’t yet really had the time to fully digest all of what took place this summer at NECC 2009 in Washington. I attended with Bea Cantor and we’ll certainly have a lot to apply towards professional development this year and beyond.
A record 18,500+ educators and exhibit personnel attended the 30th anniversary NECC 2009 held in Washington, DC. Deputy CEO and NECC conference chair Leslie Conery called it an “odds-defying” event in difficult economic times and lauded educators for their energy and commitment.
This week I have been leading two back-to-back courses with teachers. Our 4-day course is on Moodle for Digital Learners and is going well. Today teachers explored some of the different modules and activities available in Moodle in small groups. Tomorrow we continue with teacher presentations and then we’ll discuss online course design. Friday teachers will be starting their own courses.
Our second class is curiously named “G21 Stimulus Package,” and is focused on a lot of different elements and tools for creating first-class G21 projects. Our G21 projects are focused on targeting a number of 21st century skills within a project-based pedagogical approach. Today we looked at and considered Apple’s Challenge-Based-Learning approach (CBL). Wednesday, our final day, we’ll be mapping out G21 projects and critiquing the approaches of our workshop members.