The Life and Times of a Digital Immigrant

If you are a Information Technology/Educational Technology professional or a tech savvy teacher, this is the conference for you!  Held on the bluffs of the Mighty Mississippi River, Memphis City Schools invites you to apply to present at the Mid South Technology Conference December 9-10, 2009 in Memphis, Tennessee.  The theme for this year’s conference is Building Technology Communities.

This conference is for educators, district administrators, building level principals and IT professionals both locally and nationally.  We welcome you to submit a proposal for a 1, 2 or 3 hour session.  Keynote speakers this year include Alan November (November Learning), Hall Davidson (Discovery Education), Bill Rust (Gartner) and John Seely Brown.  It promises to be a powerpacked 2 days of networking, learning, and fun.  To submit a proposal, click here.

If you are a vendor and are interested in exhibiting, we welcome you to download the packet.  We are anticipating participants from Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana, and Kentucky (just to name a few).  So this a great opportunity to share your product with K-12 institutions and other organizations.  We are also welcoming any companies who would like to be a sponsor at the conference.  Click here to download more information about sponsorships.

To get more information, please visit www.mcsk12.net/techconference.

Be sure to look for the article entitled, Memphis Expands Digital Media Programming in this month’s THE Journal.  It speaks to the collaborative partnership between Memphis City Schools and Discovery Education as the school district focuses on creating exemplary schools that showcase effective technology integration.

For the second year in a row, Memphis City Schools won Sonic Foundry’s 2009 Rich Media Impact Award for Scholastic Achievement!  For Jeff, Scott and I, it was a night of celebration and excitement about how far we’ve come with Mediasite, as well as a look to the future.    The Scholastic Achievement Award recognizes a school district or other organization serving the K-12 educational community that harnessed the power of rich media to improve communication, learning and outreach.  To see the awards ceremony, which was streamed live, click here.

DAY 1 - Initial Robot design and development    

Medtronic Mentor, Rex Armstrong brainstorms robot design with Robotics Team members. 

Other mentors pictured are: Kevin Humphreys (Medtronic) and Dan Kohn (University of Memphis)

Holly Springs High team working

DAY 2 - Robot development continues

 Holly Springs High and H. W. Byers team building

 students from BTW and Hamilton working together

students from MASE building their robot

Thanks to a generous donation from Medtronic, three MCS schools (Booker T. Washington High, Fairley High, and Hamilton High), along with the Grizzlies Academy and Memphis Academy of Science and Engineering (MASE), a local charter school, will compete for the first time in two FIRST Robotics competitions.  The Memphis team also received sponsorship from NASA.

According to their website, “FIRST Robotics Competition (FRC) is a unique varsity sport of the mind designed to help high-school-aged young people discover how interesting and rewarding the life of engineers and researchers can be.

The FIRST Robotics Competition challenges teams of young people and their mentors to solve a common problem in a six-week timeframe using a standard “kit of parts” and a common set of rules. Teams build robots from the parts and enter them in competitions designed by Dean Kamen, Dr. Woodie Flowers, and a committee of engineers and other professionals.”

In the last couple of days and tomorrow, these teams have come together with local and regional engineers and engineering instructors to design and begin constructing their robots. Joined by the Holly Springs High and H. W. Byers High team, students collaborated and discuss ways to construct and program their robots for competition.  These three days will not be enough - students will work after school and on weekends for the next month to build and test their bots in preparation for competition.  It is hopeful that these three teams will form an alliance in competition.

Teams will travel to Minneapolis, Minnesota and Milwaukee, Wisconsin in March to compete with schools from around the country.  Only selected team members will make the trip to competitions.  Although they have received generous donations, they still need funds for travel.  To procure these funds, students have created a marketing team, who is designing a promotional package to present to local and national corporations.  “We are in need of mentors and corporate sponsorship”, said Jada Askew, Academic Coordinator for School Operations (and my sister).  If you know of a company who is willing to support these kids, please contact Jada Askew at askewjada@mcsk12.net

If you are as old as I am, you remember The Electric Company on PBS.  Who could forget the two silhouettes putting together words? Those were the good ole days…Well, guess what?!  They’re back!  Beginning Friday, January 23 (that’s right, this Friday!), Electric Company 2.0 will be coming to a tv near you.  Due to the literacy problem we are facing in the country, the guys and gals at PBS have revamped the classic tv show to help a whole new generation how to improve their literacy skills.  And it’s not limited to your tv, mobile devices can also be used so kids can stay plugged in.  Lastly, if you’re feeling nostalgic, they even have the old episodes!  So, get your kids ready - HEY YOU GUYS - THE ELECTRIC COMPANY IS BACK!

As I sat in a computer lab, amongst friends, I witnessed the swearing in of President Barack Obama.  Overwhelmed by emotion, what a sight!  As I watched the millions of people who made what seemed like a pilgrimage to Washington, DC, I was awestruck by their endurance and comittment.  Tears threatened to flow and did in this room as we listened to his address.  What a great day for our country.

Picture courtesy of NubianGraphics.com

On today, at  11:00 am (CST), our first African-American President, Barack Obama, will be sworn in as this great nation’s 44th President.  I, like so many others, will be glued to my computer screen to watch this historical moment.  For many this will be the first time they’ve witnessed an inauguration of a President.  My first was President Bill Clinton.  I’ll never forget the pomp and circumstance surrounding the occasion.  Most memorable for me was Poet Laureate Maya Angelou’s inaugural poem.  I still get chill bumps from the memories!  For those of you who don’t remember it, I’ve added it below.

 Also intriguing is the way the internet has changed the lens in which we view and participate in politics.  I have already accepted my invitation on Facebook to view the inauguration live on CNN.  They have the most comprehensive coverage of inaugural events beginning at 8:00 am (EST).  If you can, I encourage you to have a television on or your computer ready so you don’t miss this moment in history.  I can’t wait to see what memories I’ll cherish from today.

In 2007, I like so many others stumbled upon Karl Fisch’s powerpoint entitled, Shift Happens aka Did You Know?  It relayed every point a tech teacher/coordinator/director was trying to get across to non-technical people.  This powerpoint was later converted to flash (2.0 version) and now has again been revised with new stats.  Linda and I found it today and now are sharing it with you (Note: If YouTube is blocked by your school district, you won’t be able to view it.  Go to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jpEnFwiqdx8 when you get home).  Use it to start conversations about technology integration in your school/school districts.   Also visit Karl’s blog for more updated information.

I know…I know..some of you have been waiting on me to decide which phone I would buy - the iPhone or the Epix?  After weeks of research and after playing with the Samsung BlackJack II, I finally made a decision….

Yep, to probably no one’s surprise I chose the iPhone and with the exception of one little mishap, I haven’t regretted my decision.   I’m still learning all of the features and it doesn’t do everything I want it to, but I can live with the options I don’t have.  If you are a iPhone newbie, one of the things I highly suggest is that you don’t download apps to your phone.  Please go to iTunes and download them there.  One of the issues I had was the Apps I downloaded to the phone stopped working.  I had to go to iTunes, download the Apps all over again and sync my iPhone to get them to work.  Luckily I did this before hard resetting it and losing everything.  Another great thing I did was to put all my contacts in my Google account.  I then was able to sync and all 300+ contacts were loaded to the phone (wahoo!).  Of course I have duplicates since 250 numbers were on the sim card, but the point is I didn’t have to manually put the other 100+ numbers in!  The other plus was the fact that I don’t have to buy a ringtone, I use Garageband to create them and voila!

I do have some cons though - I can’t listen to my music through my bluetooth, which is a bummer.  Also I can’t forward text messages from my friends (that sucks!), and I can’t do group emails (but Jason’s gonna help me with that).  Also I’m terrified of dropping it and cracking the screen (so I’m being  EXTRA careful), but other than that, this was the right choice for me!  Thanks to the Nerd Herd for contributing to the “Felicia iPhone Fund”, I can assure you it had an impact on my decision (lol!).  Stay tuned as I learn more about what the iPhone can do for you!