Friday, April 27, 2012

Blogging from the conference

I attended the wrap up session for the Technology Learn/Reflect Strand yesterday at the NCTM conference. The attendees were sorted into three groups for folks interested in middle, high or elementary grades. I was in the middle school group which was led by Mike Gould a member of the Professional Develpment Services Committee of NCTM. It was great. I was sorry to leave before it ended because I had to get back to my booth. Mike masterfully constructed a fascinating conversation around the 4 questions that helped organize the technology  theme. In fact it was so good that I told the group as I was about to leave that if I was starting a middle school I would hire every single one of them with a starting salary of $100K. Needless to say I got everybody's attention.

Thursday, April 26, 2012

Wifi in Philly - some bad news? NO!

Thu 11am 117A (CC)
Flash News! Wifi is available at Convention Center - Day 1!


Previously - At the moment I'm working on my presentation and as is my usual practice I'm creating a related website which contains links to all my relevant references during my presentation. Since there is never any guarantee that Wifi will be available in the conference room that I'm speaking in (or any conference room for that matter) I checked in with NCTM and got this reply:
At this time, the Pennsylvania Convention Center does not offer daily internet rates or allow for individual connections throughout the conference. There is complimentary wireless in the concourses, overlook area, and BuzzHub.  The only way to obtain internet in a meeting room is to order it for each room. Ihor, the rates for room 107 A/B are:Wired 1.5 mb/s: $,1050 Wired 784 kn/s: $735 Wireless: $,1000
A grand for wireless! How nice for the convention center to be so considerate. Last June when I spoke at the ISTE conference in the same convention center free Wifi was available in all the conference rooms. To be fair, I don't expect NCTM to shell out the kind of money that ISTE (a tech organization) does. Some day it will be as common in rooms as electricity but more convenient. So much for my having a Twitter backchannel* for my talk. You can use your smart phone to tweet, but it's not the same as with a larger device. You can if you have an iPad with 3G or you can always run out to the concourse to tweet. For those in the know,

#Mathchat
Colin Graham will host his weekly #mathchat Twitter session next Thursday 4/26/12 at 8pm EDT in the topic of using Twitter at math conferences. I hope to "see" you there.

Math bloggers 
Since math blogging is pretty much invisible at this conference (no session even mentions it), I'm going out of my way to promote it at the CLIME booth, during my talk and at the BuzzHub. Please spread the word that you are an active participant in the online math world. Please let me know if and when you have posted about the conference. You can keep track of the tweeting following #nctm12. If you miss a blog you can always check out topsy.com and enter nctm12. I will be posting links to your blogs as soon as I get them.

Things to do
Visit the BuzzHub 
We want to give NCTM some feedback on how well it works for you as a Web 2.0 math conference participant.

Participate in the conference with Twitter 
Make your voice heard! Just type a message in Twitter and end it with the hashtag #nctm12. (Check out current tweets or go to topsy.com to see all the tweets posted so far with the nctm12 moniker.) We're spreading the message that Twitter can be a powerful tool in professional development especially at conferences like this one.

Other technology sessions at conference
As usual CLIME is posting all the technology related sessions. If you are a speaker you can have yours updated. Give me a yell. ihor@clime.org or @climeguy
  • Techology Strand Sessions (Thursday) - link
  • All tech sessions  - link
  • Highlighted tech sessions - link
  • CLIME friendly vendors, too - link
It's never too late to update your speaker information. Just let me know.

*"A Twitter backchannel at a conference can provide participants a way to share ideas and resources from the sessions they attend, connect people who might not have connected otherwise, and broaden the conference discussion to include those not physically present."
Source: Encouraging a Conference Backchannel on Twitter - Derek Bruff


CLIME Connections 106