I am speaking and doing workshops this week at the WEMTA conference in Madison, Wisconsin.  I am posting a few of my resources and handouts here as way to extend the conversation beyond those attending my sessions.

First up is my workshop on Podcasting with Purpose (WEMTA Podcasting Handout (PDF) ) where we will be exploring the basics of podcasting, evaluating and assessing podcasts, and producing a podcast.  We’ll also be talking about logistics and getting parents on board (Podcasting Parent Information Letter ) with the process.

Here is the handout from my session on Podcasting for Success – Strategies, Activities and Ideas

I am in St. Louis, Missouri this week for the 2008 Midwest Education Technology Conference. Yesterday, I shared ideas about Podcasting with Purpose and GarageBand Mechanics. Two of my favorite presentations and it was great to see all the enthusiasm in Missouri for getting constructive and creative with these technologies. Today I also had the opportunity to share even more ideas in a general session titled “Technologies That Are Changing Education” in which I explored applications that I feel are having a tranformational impact on classrooms. It’s one of those “mind dump” kind of presentations where we get to go on a little journey together to imagine what school could look like if we begin to redirect our attention toward cycles of inquiry and creativity.  I’ll be adding the links we covered in a future post.  Check back soon for more. 

I’m baaaaack! After a very busy February traveling all over the place sharing ideas about technology and learning, I’m finally back and caught up enough to get in front of a microphone. This show features several useful tools and strategies for educators who podcast:

iStories at Apple Learning Interchange

Radio Rookies

Innertoob.com and Crowdabout.us

Episode 38 – Listen

Here are a few notes on my recent trip to Australia and, in particular, my time in Adelaide, South Australia. I have been very lucky during my career to have had the opportunity to meet and interact with hundreds of teachers and students, but I have to say Adelaide has a special place in my heart.

Adelaide is a beautiful city with incredibly friendly people, great restaurants, and lots of fun places to hang out and experience the rich culture of Australia. I was especially impressed with the teachers and students who participated in my master class and workshops. The students were very articulate and creative and had LOTS of great ideas for launching their very own podcasts. They were also some of the most polite students I have ever run across. From the 1st year students all the way up to the year 12 students, I received warm “welcomes”, hand shakes and “thank you’s” from nearly every student. The people of Adelaide are a class act!
The master class and workshops were sponsored by the Technology School of the Future (TSOF). This is a fantastic organization chocked full creative and professional (and FUN!) people focused on bringing technology into the learning experiences of children in South Australia.
Karen Church was our main contact with TSOF and she treated me and my friend Tom, who was nice enough to travel with me all the way around the world, like royalty! Karen, along with Peter, Jim, James, Richard, Enver, and many others were a great team and took care of every detail you could imagine. We also got to meet up with Karen’s family for a day at the Cleland Wildlife Reserve where we had our first close encounters with Kangaroos, a Koala (named Banjo!), Wombats, Emus and other assorted Aussie creatures. We also spent a great afternoon tasting wines in the Barossa Valley region just outside of Adelaide. Beautiful places. Wonderful people. Did I mention it was also SUMMER there!?

Thank you Karen and all the wonderful people we met along our travels! We can’t wait to come back again someday.

Here is part two of the Keynote. This half has some useful integration ideas for bringing podcasting into the classroom. I hope you hear/see something you like and can use in your school.

If you have some ideas you would like to share, please feel free to drop me a line at dschmit@intelligenic.com or call my listener line at 1-(831) 303-2994.

You can view the video here.

Part 1 – Earlier this month I had the privilege of speaking at the Beyond 4 Walls Podcasting Conference in Carrollton-Farmers Branch, Texas. It was great to see so many people excited about the possibilities of podcasting in learning environments and to receive such an enthusiastic response from them.

Thanks to Maria Henderson of Apple Computer and the technology team at Carrollton-Farmers Branch for inviting me to share the day with their participants.

Special thanks to Richard Sands of the Technology Services Division at Carrollton-Farmers Branch ISD for taping the presentation and making it available.

Click Here for the Video

On Monday of this week I have a great honor of helping open this year’s Nebraska Association of teachers of mathematics conference in Kearney, Nebraska. I have to admit that I was more than all little nervous about standing in front of all those mathematics teachers. I have delivered lots of presentations and speeches before and I’m actually pretty good with math and I have always had wonderful math teachers. But, there’s something about math teachers that makes me nervous. I think it’s that I know how logical and smart they are. Math teachers don’t get caught up in all hype.

So, I was nervous. What a relief it what is when I saw 200 plus smiling faces that seemed to be interested in what I had to say. My presentation was focused on making a connection about the potential of podcasting to enhance the experience of mathematics educators and mathematics students. After all, isn’t that what were really about? We don’t do what we do just for the sake of technology. We don’t spend hours producing, podcasts just to prove that we can do it. We are all working to find you applications for podcasting because we believe they can enhance the experience the student. I believe that when students create authentic products like podcasts, they’re getting a taste of what is like to be a creative professional. They’re exploring their voices, their ideas, and their understandings in order to fulfill and outside mission.

I will admit that when I first learned about podcasting, math wasn’t the first subject I thought about. My mind actually went toward social studies, language arts, foreign language, business education, music, and even science. But math? As it turns out, there are whole lot of applications for podcasting in mathematics.

One of the most exciting applications that we talked about was the use of a professional organization like NATM as a network of professionals who are all pulling together their best practice and their best ideas into a single channel as a distributed professional development channel.

Another idea that I shared with the group was the idea of using smart board technology as basis of a video podcast. Smart boards allow teachers to record both their voice and writing on a smartboard as a movie. This approach will allow teachers to share the steps required to solve a problem or given the opportunity to describe a concept in both of verbal and a visual way.

We also considered student created podcasts including examples of sports shows with a statistics focus, math exposés, math quiz shows, and podcast dramas with a math focus. I even got to meet one of our podcast drama winners from last spring, Angela Mosier of Westside Middle School in Omaha, Nebraska. Her students had produced a great set of podcast dramas that illustrated scientific notation and exponents.

All in all, I’d calculate the day to be both productive and fun.