How did you do that? Penn State 1 to 1 Technology Conference

I have to get better at chronicling all the exciting things going on in this building and outside.... must get organized!

Zac Chase and I were asked to speak at the Penn State 1 to 1 Technology Conference last week, on Tuesday and Wednesday. Hopefully you tuned in because of our many tweets and pownce updates.

Here is the link to the wiki that describes what we were talking about.

I do not want to rehash what it is that we talked about, that is available already. What I want to concentrate on is how we did our presentation; both the modeling of how we teach and learn at SLA along with how we set up the technology we used.

Zac is a genius and knows so much about presentation, he is well practiced at improvisation and is so much fun to watch. His energy is felt in the room when he presents. I think what is also important is that he can tell a story well. He was able to put together some slides that he could riff off and he came up with ways to have maximum audience participation. Here is the set up, Zac presented most of the information, I was there for tech support and I was the chat room moderator. I was fielding questions and moving the back channel to our topics and points. I was also available to provide information for the more technical questions.

This is exactly how our school is set up. Teachers teach, I am support and indepth tech knowledge. I also make sure everything works all the time. This is paramount because as soon as a tool is unreliable teachers will not use it and they will not include it in their lesson plans. The session was also set up just like one of Mr. Chase's SLA classes. He made sure to get people talking and moving, so they learn more and feel ownership of the the information being presented.

Here is how we set up the tech side of the presentation. We used the following tools:
Ustream
Mac Book
Mac Book Pro
Projector
PB Wiki
CamTwist
USB Flash drive
SlideShare

Ustream enables us to record our session as well as webcast the session live. Ustream will archive these recordings and this has many uses. You can embed the code into blogs and teachertube and wikis, making it a versatile way to get video in the classroom.

By downloading and installing CamTwist we were able to webcast what is on the computer's desktop. Helpful for having people watching at home follow along. I really like this easy to use powerful piece of software and recommend it to everyone.

We used the two computers,one was webcasting and showing the slide show. I was on the other one moderating the webcast and the Ustream chat room. I believe it is helpful to have a moderator in these chat rooms because it will keep people focused and moves the conversation to a higher level. It is also helpful for the presenter, the moderator is able to bring up questions when there is a lull in conversation in the room.

Some of you maybe thinking and I do get this question, "Why even show up at all." We are human, we have an innate need for community. We need to show up and be present for that face time because ideas and interaction form creativity. Yes, it possible to do all this with a web cam and cyber space, but we need a common meeting place where we are physically together, it makes it real and meaningful.

Please let me know if you have any other questions about the tech set up.