This is the one blog post where you can find all of the information about my presentations and activities at the Virginia Society for Technology in Education conference being held November 30-December 2, 2009 at the Hotel Roanoke and Convention Center.

• Scratch Workshop, Workshop Outline (Playbook)
• Learning Hacks
• Digital Culture in Your School(s)
• Pioneer Technology Innovations 2009

Thanks go out to GES and the wonderful Thanksgiving meal I was served today by parents. I was delighted to be invited to this annual event and socialize over a delicious meal with some colleagues.

Al Doss, one of the folks that has helped create and maintain VSTE Island (in Second Life), has made this great promotional video for VSTE 2009 in just a week!

If you have a SL avatar, please join us on VSTE Island tonight (Monday, November 23, 2009) as I talk about what I’ll be doing at this year’s conference, and you can ask questions!

It’s difficult today to turn on the television or browse some websites and not hear or see mention of apps. What are these things? Where did they come from?

I find the history of the word interesting. I’ve linked there to a picture of the precursor to Mac OS X: OpenStep which was originally called NeXTStep, the OS for Steve Job’s earlier computer, the NeXTStation/NeXTCube, etc.

As you can see here, the applications (i.e. programs, executables) are followed the extension .app. In fact, on a modern Mac, your applications are also labeled the same way, although you may have chosen to keep the default setting which hides this extension.

So, this is where the extension or label or name comes from: NeXTStep executables. Then the full name got dropped (perhaps because they’re small?) on the iPhone. And now more smart phone manufacturers are talking about apps.

The open source movement has come to children’s books.

Check out Wikijunior books. (via GHS Matt Covington)