Looking Back At 2010 And Looking Forward To 2011...

Image From CC Search-Flickr (User Kadath)

Seems like it's the cool thing this time of year to look back at the previous year, where we have been and to look forward, to where we are going. I want to be hip. So here is my reflections on 2010 and my predictions for 2011.

I wrote a post on December 28, 2009 where I talked about tools that I thought would have a break out year.

How did I do?

Voicethread- I still don't think this wonderful program gets the attention it deserves. There was a lot of buzz about it every now and then on Twitter but I still don't see it's widespread adoption as a great storytelling tool and feedback tool. If you aren't familiar, Voicethread is a program where you drop in some images and then can record text, audio or video around the image. The best part is that others can do the same. Think about it in a lower elementary classroom. Kids draw images representing what their year will be like. Then the other kids in the class record their thoughts around the image. Very easy and lots of potential. Here is an example I use a lot where I asked people to give me their thoughts on what a PLN (Personal Learning Network) means to them.



I still believe this is a great and easy tool for anyone to use. Need ideas? Check out the Voicethread In Education wiki for some.

Skype- I do think I got this one right. Skype took off and more and more teachers are using it in the classroom. Even Skype itself got in the game late in the year and created a place for teachers to sign-up to connected with other classrooms. I have noticed there are less people talking about it being blocked, which is a positive. They have rolled out 10 way video calling but you only get it for 30 days unless you pay. Bummer. They are moving more and more into the mobile market and now you can do video calls on the iPhone. I see more great things this year for the program. If you need ideas, check out one of my favorite ways to use it, Around The World With 80 Schools.

Ning- What can we say about Ning? They decided to go to a paid service. So many educators ditched the service all together since the free options for educators doesn't really have all that they need. Many people looked at free options like the Buddypress add in for a Wordpress blog. That seems to work well, if you know what you are doing. I think the bigger story here is the fact that social networking in the classroom really took off. Through the use of Twitter, Facebook and other sites, educators are starting to see the power of social media to extend learning beyond the classroom. So if Ning is gone where can you turn to introduce social networking to your students? Here is a great list created right after Ning went paid.

Diigo-I am gonna say that I got this one mostly right. Diigo did have a break out year. More and more people started using the great education features. It wasn't until the end of December that they really started to grow with the mostly correct announcement that Delicious (another social bookmarking service) was being shut down or sold off by Yahoo. More and more people jumped ship and imported their bookmarks into Diigo. I think more and more people will begin to use the service and more and more educators will see the power that those features have in the classroom. Look for great things from Diigo this year.

So what do I see for this year? Well I learned my lesson last year so I will try to be less tool specific but I think there are somethings to keep an eye on for this year.

QR Codes-If you have been keeping up with my blog I have written a lot (here and here) about QR Codes. (I even have a Livebinder full of resources.) I see these popping up in more and more places and I think this could be the year that they really break out into the mainstream both out of the classroom and in. Education author and all around awesome guy, Jeff Utecht, wrote that this is the year of the QR code. Check out his thoughts.

More Social Networking- I believe that more and more educators will see the benefits of having a place where their students can meet online to share information, gather or just chat, outside the classroom. Some are already using spaces where kids are like Facebook but I believe services like Edmodo (one of my favorites) will continue to grow and gain in popularity.

Tablets- The iPad is wicked cool. While there are some imitators out there, I haven't really seen good competition. (The Samsung Galaxy is about the closest.) Expect that to change in a few weeks at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. This is the chance for us to see what will be hot in electronics this year and I expect it to be tablets. Once the price is right I think these will replace netbooks and laptops in 1:1 programs in schools. That is, as long as the apps keep up. And that is key. Apps are what make the iPad so great. So education related companies are going to have to be innovative in the apps they create for these devices.

I do have a wildcard piece of tech this year to keep an eye on. The Xbox Kinect. This is basically a camera system that you connect to your Xbox and play games without an controller. Cool stuff. The use in physical education is obvious. But I am thinking about the use in Special Ed and physical therapy. Lots of potential there and I bet we will see at least one education company develop learning games for the Kinect. And it acts as a webcam so it could fit easily into the classroom.

So there it is. My reflections on 2010, and my thoughts on 2011. What do you think? What did I miss? What did I not consider? What do you think will be the "big thing" in Edtech this year. Leave some comments below.

Happy New Year!

Final Reflections From Denver And #ISTE10

I came home from Denver and ISTE10 on Thursday afternoon and I really needed this long to decompress and reflect on my experiences. This was my first time to the conference and I knew it was going to be amazing before I even got there.

As I mentioned in my last post I got to head out to Colorado a few days early to spend some time with people I only knew from Twitter. Before we go to Estes Park we were sitting in a restaurant and I casually asked Beth Still honestly how big this conference was. Now you have to understand, I come from a very small and rural part of North Carolina so a gathering over 100 people is huge. She asked me how big I thought it was and I guessed 5, 6 thousand people. Everyone at the table gave a little laugh. Confused, I asked what everyone was laughing and was told that there would actually be between 12 and 20 thousand people.

I was glad to be a part of what has to be the largest technology and quiet frankly the largest educational conference in the world. Now that my reflections are some what complete here are some of my general thoughts on the entire experience.

-EdubloggerCon: It is well worth the extra airfare and hotel room to spend one more day at the conference. After this event I knew it was going to be difficult for the conference to replicate the learning I experienced there. Nothing is planned until that morning. Yet with the level of the sessions there you would never know. Each session I attended was like none I have ever been to anywhere before. The advice I have is go to something outside of your comfort zone. There was a session lead by Jon Becker on whether or not we should use the term PLN (for Personal Learning Network). Many in the session got very angry with Jon and I was in the beginning but as the session went on my thinking got stretched more and more and I really like that. Not only that, we talked about his session for several days after the hour and ended. That is what learning should do. We shouldn't walk in to an hour session, listen to something and then after the hour, it's over. ISTE could learn a lot from the Unconference style of EBC. So, my advice, head out a day early and take part in EBC. Well worth the time, effort and money.

-Bloggers Cafe: Before I went out to Denver someone told me that most of my time would be spent in this area of the conference. And they were right. On Sunday I spent over 4 hours sitting there and meeting and talking to some of the greatest technology and education minds on the planet. This was also where I watched the disastrous keynote and had a good laugh listening to the commentary from everyone. Each day of the conference for me started in Bloggers and I found myself there several times each day meeting people or just hanging out. It was in a great location, very central to the conference so everyone had to walk by at some point. The name is misleading. I am sure some blog posts were written there but I feel like more connections were made between people and it was more of that EBC/Unconference atmosphere that many craved. My advice, if you didn't hang out there, make a point to next year, you might just want to bring some comfortable furniture from another part of the convention center.

-Social Butterfly Lounge and #Edchat: This was the first year for the Social Butterfly Lounge and it seemed to be a very popular place. Dawn and Katie over at ISTEConnects did a great job organizing several mini session of popular social media tools like Twitter, Facebook, iPod/iPad Apps and Foursquare. I, along with several others like Kyle Pace and Mary Beth Hertz lead sessions that introduced these topics to people or just offered our advice and insight in how educators could use these tools better. This space also lead to some impromptu sessions too. I ran into Vicki Davis and she filmed me teach someone how to install and use Foursquare. (You can watch the video here.) This was also the space that ISTE kindly donated to us to do #Edchat on Tuesday. And I have to say it was a complete success. We had about 100 people, in the flesh, participating. It was a chance for them to get together, talk but also tweet about this week's topic. I am so grateful to Katie, Dawn, and ISTE for helping us get that event together so quickly and allowing us to use the space. I hope that this can be an annual event.

-Connections: In my last post I wrote about if you can have real relationships with people you only knew through social media. After spending over a week with people I only knew from SM I truly believe you can have those relationships and I saw it at ISTE10 as well. It was so awesome to see people who had never meet in person meet just walking by each other. It really was like old friends reuniting after time apart. I just wish ISTE had made it easier for us to spot each other by putting our Twitter names on our badges, but that is a suggestion for next year. A good idea I saw a lot of is if you don't use your regular picture on your profile to change it just for the conference for people to find you. I have to say besides EBC and the learning there, meeting so many people I know from and talk to through social media sites was the best part. I love just meeting people and talking to people. It makes our connection all that more real.

-Sessions: I have a confession. I went to 3 sessions (not including the one I was a part of) the whole 4 days I was there. Yep, just 3. Two of them were laptop sessions and the other was a ballroom session. It isn't that I just had no interest. It was that many of the session would appeal to people who had limited knowledge of the topics covered there. Honestly, there were poster sessions that would have been awesome general sessions. I think ISTE could do a better job of providing more sessions that are less tool orientated and more action and integration orientated. There were tons of "Lets Learn This Tool" and not enough of "You Know This Tool But Let's Look At Ideas On How To Integrate It And Use It With Kids." I also like controversy (hence my attendance at Jon's session at EBC) and I just didn't see enough of that either. I would really like to see more sessions that are unplanned and that just happen. But that is the beauty of Bloggers. No session, cool. Head over there and strike up a conversation.

What a great conference. Really. Hanging out with the Blue Bunnies from Simple K12. All the tweetups, meeting people, even the free stuff on the vendor floor really helped make my first ISTE conference experience one to remember. I am already looking forward to seeing everyone again in Philly!

Even if you couldn't go there are tons of ways to get in on the stuff that was there:
ISTE Vision has video archives of several session, most not to miss.
ISTE Connects has lots of summaries and links from several of the session. Lots of great resources here.
The main ISTE10 Conference Website has tons more information including links to resources uploaded by presenters. Do a search for a session and see if their stuff has been uploaded. (It should be by now but they have until July 9 so head back often.)

Oh, and it isn't too early to start planning for Philly. So head over to the ISTE11 site and see all the great things planned for next year. And start saving those pennies so we can meet, either again or for the first time in Philly!