Agate – One Year Later
I came to this conference last year and wrote a post about my experience at it. I am now going to quote myself from that blog post.
“Either I am an internet addict or everyone else at this conference in Missoula, MT is digitally illiterate.”
That might be the first time I have ever been quoted:) Blogs are cool because you can look back and see what was happening and what you were thinking. AGATE is our State’s Gifted and Talented conference and I think it stands for Association for Gifted and Talented Education. I was among a scattering of teachers who were using a computer at that conference and it seems that there are even fewer at this conference. I am definitely the only one on twitter here and who uses his computer to connect to a larger network of teachers. It makes me long for NECC and being surrounded by people who understand the term PLN. I believe there is a huge disconnect between teachers who utilize a PLN and teachers who do not. One of the teachers I work with though brought his computer, and I think today, we are going to attempt to share a google doc with one another.
Last year, I spent some of my spare time at the conference discussing etherpad with Vyktorea while we slashed our way through Azeroth. This year I was given a tour of the nervous and muscular system of a person suffering with ALS (Lou Gehrig’s Disease) by Colleen Champ. She is an incredibly talented artist working on her doctorate in Massachusets. I took a picture of the model from the body’s control center.
Colleen's ALS Sim
People sometimes don’t see how virtual worlds can and will be applied in education. I bet the ability to shrink down to microscopic size and tour the muscular/nervous system of a person afflicted with Lou Gehrig’s disease might be meaningful to someone. The people my computer connects me to is what “twenty-first century skills” are all about. The fact that I could be taken on a tour of something so cool from so far away is still astounding to me. Last year, a tour through Azeroth and this year a tour through Lou Gehrig. Thank you Colleen and Catherine.
On a personal note, reading through last year’s blog post reminded me that Henny Zimer will be two years old in about a week. I am thinking I might get him another bicycle…or perhaps a hewlett packard desktop with 6 cores…3.3ghz each.
might be henny's new bike if he keeps gettin checks from Slammed
