Saturday, March 28, 2009

Second Fiddle to Dave Warlick?

Innovation.

Encouraged, demanded, rewarded, and necessary.

In final preparations for the Near East South Asia's Educator's Conference, I knew I wanted to do something I've never done before. I am so over PowerPoint, even on an interactive white board.

I remembered Amanda's "sexy" presentation courtesy of twitter-buddy DearLibrariAnn. I knew a good deal of the final touches could be done on the 21 hour flight to Cairo, and was quite pumped to see that Prezi.com offered a downloadable version. I know Delta offers inflight WiFi, but I want everything ready to go when I hit the ground and reconnect with my husband.

Interestingly enough, my twitter world was abuzz as colleagues attended the EARCOS Teachers' Conference in Borneo AND Dave Warlick was presenting in his normal integrated, multi-techno function. I wasn't streamed in, but everyone was raving about his prezi presentation at the same time I was working with this startup to get my access code.

It's in beta testing, but I've worked with an internet-based software company long enough to know that a good thing is a good thing! Period!

I let Prezi know that they were getting a lot of love in twitter.

Encouraged a twitter search of "dwarlick" to see the PR he was giving their "startup".

Suddenly, the line went quiet, the call had an urgency to end, and my log-in seemed to be an issue of the distant past. To Patrick's credit, everything was launched and good to go, but I could see that their philosophy of accepting those with lots of cash or lots of influence was right on.

So all those rankings in social media mean something afterall, as my tech mentor Jeff Utecht shared over three years ago! It was a passing moment, but made me vastly aware of how interconnected everything is - the fact that I could simultaneously work, follow conference chatter in Borneo, and be whelmed by Dave Warlick in Saskatoon at an IT Summit just made me feel infintiely finite.

And connected.
screenshots from Tweetdeck and Prezi.com
Photo from takuya miyamoto's flickr

2 comments:

Jeff said...

It's pure craziness that's all I can say about.

How do we get students connected in to this amazing world? How do we get teachers to take the risk and get connected into this amazing world?

Ah....answers hopefully you'll be able to provide to your new colleagues in Shanghai next year. :)

Alicia said...

It was just a funny moment that could be purely misinterpreted.

I think the students are already connected - we just need to take the chains off of the school doors and let them apply that connectivity in school.

Schools with Title I funds should have an accountability to make sure their learners are digitally literate . . . and I'm looking forward to the challenge of these conversations and more in Shanghai!