I attended a number of workshops at NavCon but three stand out… workshops and spotlights given by Greg Gebhardt & Bettina Sho, Steven Harris and Tom March.

The Spotlight presentation given by Tom March on Web 2.0 was well attended. There were a quite a number of enlightening moments and items that provoked thought. Tom is an eloquent speaker and an enthusiastic educator. He spoke on his CEQ*ALL approach to teaching, learning and curriculum integration. He pointed us to his 2nd10 and its rich set of resources as well.

I attended an excellent workshop given by Steven Harris of St Bernard’s Catholic Primary School in Berowra. He demonstrated how Web 2.0 technologies can be integrated into the Year 2 classroom. His workshop was well documented and backed up with excellent data. His examples were excellent and overall he generated a great deal of interest among the participants. It is worthwhile to explore his Pageflakes site [click cancel when the log in window appears].

One of the best moment’s of the conference was when I attended Greg Gebhardt’s spotlight on Web 2.0. I have wanted to meet Greg and Bettina and although I missed the workshop given by Greg and Bettina on the first day I was determined to catch up with them both. During lunch on the second day I sat down with Steven Harris to talk about his work and the types of applications he was using in the classroom. While we sat there two other delegates took a seat and began talking. During our conversation it dawned on me that they were Greg and Bettina. We had a great chat and shared some productive ideas. We are all like-minded educators ~ there was a synergy if you like and in many ways was the highlight of the three days. Greg created a NavCon workshop page page specifically for the conference and it is rich with Web 2.0 resources and examples.

Greg, myself and Bettina

Drove over to the NavCon Conference venue to prepare for my first workshop. It was podcasting and vodcasting. Now, to podcast you need ftp access. There was none available at the venue and I had to set up a server on my laptop and ftp to that. It was a little frustrating but the workshop went reasonably well. I demonstrated three methods for creating a podcast on the Macintosh.

GarageBand~iWeb combination
Quicktime~Podcast Maker combination
PowerPoint~ProfCast combination

Each method has its merits however I prefer the second and third options. You can produce a podcast/vodcast rapidly with the last two combinations. There are a number of Macintosh diehards that believe that one should always use the GarageBand and iWeb combination to produce podcasts. In fact there is a hard core group of Mac diehards that believe only Apple applications should be used when working on a Macintosh. That is a little extreme. I find that they are out of touch with reality.

Regarding the preference for using GarageBand~iWeb I tend to disagree as not many teachers have the time to work with such tools. There are two many variables to digest and if they do not possess a .Mac account they need to master additional elements of ftp as well. I have been a Mac user since February 1984. I also teach in the classroom. I am aware of the demands placed upon classroom teachers. Technology is a tool that can be used to facilitate learning. It should not get in the way. Sure, give the students a quick demo of GarageBand and iWeb and let them run with the apps. If you are a teacher that likes to publish then ProfCast is to the tool for you.

Shao Ping and I drove to Terrigal last Tuesday to attend the NavCon2K7 Conference. The conference is being conducted at St Edward’s College in Gosford. It is an amazing school with magnificent grounds and extraordinary facilities. It is right on the Brisbane waters. My friend Siva woud love this school. If one walks across the school oval you will reach the shoreline of Brisbane waters. The shore is rich with mangroves.

After registering Shao Ping and I went back to the motel and then went down to Terrigal Beach. We went for a walk, took a few photographs of the beach and then strolled along the foreshore shops. We bought some groceries and then looked for a place to eat. We decided to eat a restaurant called Terrigal Thai. It was at the end of an arcade. There were three Thai restaurants on the foreshore. Two of them were called Terrigal Thai, metres away from each other. The dinner was quite nice.

I sent this email to Eurekster, creators of the Swicki, a moment ago.

“This afternoon I gave a Web 2.0 Presentation to a group of teachers and academics in Singapore. I have flown from Australia to give this presentation. During the presentation of Swickis one of the sponsored links at the top of two search pages was: ‘Your Porn Surfing Activity Has Been Traced. Click To Remove’. That advert unnerved me. That advert sabotaged the entire presentation and was the worst possible advert for your product. How could teachers and academics use a product that posts embarrassing adverts like that? Shame. Shame. Tell me now what are you going to do about it? That advert appears on every result. Why?”

It was an appalling moment. The sponsored advertising is a bad move. The advertisements are located at the top of the results. That particular advert is most annoying and since it is a tech advert relating to hard drive “cleaning” software it appears on results generated by the tech related Swickis on my site. I shall remove the Swickis that I have established. That is the end of the Swicki for me I feel. All that potential lost due to advertising. I felt that the Swicki was a great idea with potential. Not now.

I gave a presentation on Web 2.0 this afternoon. The session was recorded and the software combines the video of the presentation with the powerpoint live. I do not particularly like to use powerpoints and I felt constrained. I needed to flick over to Firefox to demonstate blogs, wikis, flickr and the like. It was disjointed somewhat. I was not too happy at the end. The feedback was okay. I guess my enthusiasm managed to help mask some of the perceived anomalies at my end.

One thing was particularly bad. Swicki results now have sponsored links and they are not intuitive like Googles adverts and some of the sponsored links were appalling. I am going to investigate this further.