The New York state educational technology conference, NYSCATE (Nov. 22-24) always has a top lineup of speakers and keynotes. This year is no exception. The featured keynote is Sir Ken Robinson, a world-renowned advocate for creativity and innovation in learning.

I’ll be there as well, participating in the Constructivist Celebration, two sessions, and a panel. My Monday session is on teacher professional development in a “technology ecology,“ and on Tuesday the topic is games in education. The panel will tackle an intriguing question – What does it mean to be literate in the 21st century (and what does Web 2.0 have to do with it?)

In a special Sunday session, we will explore the second year outcomes of the NYSSTL program (New York State Student Technology Leaders). In more than 30 middle schools in New York, this innovative model for student-centered technology is showing that students can be 21st century leaders. The session will showcase video by two teachers who are working side by side with these student leaders.

Continuing in the creativity theme, if you are anywhere near Rochester on Sunday, Nov. 22 — don’t miss the Constructivist Celebration @ NYSCATE — it’s back and better than ever! Gary Stager and award-winning children’s book author Peter Reynolds will host a full-day workshop at the Strong National Museum of Play. This is the perfect place to explore creative, playful, constructivist learning with computers. The $100 registration fee includes lunch, creativity software from your favorite companies, and new this year, a free TechYES Mini-kit. TechYES is our middle school project-based technology literacy certification program. This is hundreds of dollars worth of the best creativity software and tools PLUS a great day of tinkering with technology.

And a note for you Stager fans, this will be your only opportunity to hear the always entertaining and thought-provoking Gary at this year’s NYSCATE.

The theme of creativity resonates strongly throughout NYSCATE, and the best way to encourage creativity is to allow (and teach) children to be creative problem-solvers in their own lives, both personal and academic. At Generation YES, we are sure there is no better way than to invite students to become leaders and allies in the effort to improve education with new technology.

As you can tell, I’m excited! NYSCATE is one of my favorite education technology conferences of the year and I can’t wait. If you’d like to hear more about what’s going on there, or meet me at NYSCATE, I’ll be there Sunday –Tuesday (Nov. 22 – 24).

Sylvia

 I want the visual representation to be more fluid than the above, where web tools can live on different levels and change levels, depending on their usage. I'm sure we could make a case for each of the tools to live in each realm of the hierarchy but in the interest of time and space, I created the following. The arrows are meant to indicate the fluidity with which the tools can travel through the different levels. The middle line is meant to separate the higher cognitive levels from the lower ones, but only with the understanding that it would be for that particular tool on a particular level, and does not consider the multiple ways that the tool could possibly be used. Again, this is meant to be a discussion starter as we evolve the representation of web tools with visuals that are meant to help us understand the interconnectedness of technology resources.  

 This is based on the 2009 "25 Tools" list which is available here: http://www.c4lpt.co.uk/25Tools/index.html

This week’s “faceoff” on Mashable is between Microsoft Office and Google Docs. While we’ll share with you the final results soon, so far, many of you seem to think that Docs is a viable alternative to Microsoft’s long dominant Office suite.

And, Google thinks so too, at least within the next year or so. The company’s President of enterprise products tells ZDNet Asia that Docs will push 30-50 updates in that time, at which point he believes the web-based office suite would be capable of serving the “vast majority’s needs.”

Of course, Microsoft isn’t going to sit quietly while that’s happening. Office 2010 looks to bring Microsoft’s web and collaboration capabilities up to par with the likes of Google Docs, and offer them for free to anyone with a Windows Live account.

It’s going to be an interesting battle to watch play out, though convincing the masses to “go Google” is a lot different than simply having the functionality in place so that it’s a realistic option. Meanwhile, stay tuned for the final results of our faceoff and go vote if you’d like your opinion to count.

Tags: Google, google docs, microsoft, microsoft office

We’ve been witnessing some blockbuster fights in our Web Faceoff series. For last seven weeks, we’ve pitted two popular web or tech apps against each other and allowing you, the reader, vote on who is more worthy of the title of Web Faceoff Champion.

Two weeks ago, Windows 7 managed to outgun Mac OS X Snow Leopard, and just a week ago, TweetDeck took down Seesmic. It’s a new week though, meaning that we have a fresh set of competitors: Microsoft Office vs. Google Docs.

We’ve been curious about what Mashable readers think about the two. On the one hand, Microsoft Office has been around for ages (in Internet time) and has an array of features that has built it deep loyalty. On the other hand you have Google Docs, which takes document-building to the cloud and makes it easy to collaborate with colleagues on almost any project.

Therefore, it’s time for these two document-building tools to duke it out. The polls close at 12:00 PM PT on Friday, so made your voice heard before it’s too late. And as always, we welcome you to defend your pick in the comments.

Web Faceoff: Overall Results

Week 2:
- Tumblr vs. Posterous
- WINNER: Tumblr, 1809 votes (Posterous: 1496 votes, Tie: 256 votes)

Week 3:
- Pandora vs. Last.fm
- WINNER: Last.fm, 1187 votes (Pandora: 1156 votes, Tie: 122 votes)

Week 4:
- Twitter vs. Facebook
- WINNER: Facebook, 2484 votes (Twitter: 2061 votes, Tie: 588 votes)

Week 5:
- WordPress vs. Typepad
- WINNER: WordPress, 2714 votes (Typepad: 267 votes, Tie: 357 votes)

Week 6:
- Windows 7 vs. Snow Leopard
- WINNER: Windows 7, 3632 votes (Snow Leopard: 3278 votes, Tie: 121 votes)

Week 7:
- TweetDeck vs. Seesmic Desktop
- WINNER: TweetDeck, 3294 votes (Seesmic Desktop, 1055 votes, Tie: 260 votes)

Tags: Google, google docs, microsoft, microsoft office, web faceoff

I think we need to refocus professional development on learning how to learn with technology. The vast majority of professional development focused on technology is focused on creating a product, i.e. movies, podcasts, documents, etc. Until education seriously believes in

Cross posted at The Innovative Educator There are many places on the Internet to find and view videos some are general purpose (like YouTube and Vimeo) some specific to education (such as TeacherTube, SchoolTube, Annenberg,

Recently at the beginning of a day long workshop, I used a Google form to get feedback on this question:

If there was one part of your personal learning practice that you wanted to focus on today, what would it be? What questions would you seek to answer?

Now I’ll be the first to admit that it’s not a perfect question in terms of trying to get some sense of the personal learning lives from the teachers who were participating. But in the context of a discussion we’d been having about the passion-based learning opportunities that the Web now affords, I was hoping to learn what they wanted to think more deeply about when it came to their own interests and their own learning. Unfortunately, most of what I got back (on the first go round at least; I asked them to do it again) was about how to use the tools in the classroom, and very little about what they wanted to learn about learining around their own passions with others who share them.

I know that over the years, I’ve thought about and written about this quite a bit here and elsewhere, this idea that teachers need to see themselves as learners first. In our PLP cohorts, Sheryl and I are constantly working to get teachers to be selfish about the learning at the outset, to not see the experience as simply a way to learn tools that they can then bring into their classrooms. (We didn’t call it “Powerful Tools Practice” for a reason.) And I usually end most of my presentations with that plea as well, most times only to get asked a question about how to overcome the difficulties of making this work in the classroom. It’s always a struggle.

Anyway, it’s interesting to review some of these responses that did attempt to reach beyond tools:

• How to take the learning practices that I’ve been taught by senior teachers, as I am a new teacher, and make them work in concert with the needs of my students when in the face of so much negative energy from my coworkers?
• We are dealing with numerous “tools” that help us find, sort and use information in a directed manner. Is there a “best” approach to pulling these together to enable us to better deal with and share these in one place.
• Interested in gathering ideas about how to motivate groups of teacher to value the importance of developing their own PLN. Often educators understand the idea of developing a PLN but they are not consistent about maintaining it. The shift from sit n’ git to planning a goal and following a custom path seems foreign.
• I really like having ammunition for the folks who say learning 2.0 is eeeeviiiil, that the state of education is going to pot and literacy is at an all time low.

Obviously, these reflect a lot of the messiness that exists right now around technology and the Web in learning practice. (That’s why I picked them.) But it still leaves me wondering why it’s so hard to get educators in particular to be selfish about this stuff. Maybe it’s not in our DNA?