Reflections from the MLTI Summer Institute
Jul 25th, 2008 by Mark Spahr
Yesterday, I was able to go to the MLTI Summer Institute in Castine. It was a great day of learning and connecting, even if it was a really steamy day (with no air conditioning!). Here are some of my thoughts about the day:
- Live blogging. I live blogged both sessions that I attended using Cover It Live. This was really easy to set up and the interface worked flawlessly. I sent out tweets, annoucing that I was live blogging and actually had some hits from people looking in. Michael Richards joined the morning session from his home (more on this later). I was a bit surprised to have one MLTI person ask why I would live blog and did I really think anyone would look at it. So far, the response I have had has been positive. Both live blogs have had several replays, and yesterday, I had the most hits on my blog in one day ever (Thanks to Jim Burke and his Learning in Maine blog for linking to and promoting my live blogs!).
In the morning I attended the session entitled Promoting literacy with cartoon, comics, and graphic novels. Barbara Greenstone presented and I thoroughly enjoyed her work. So many times you go to a workshop and they show you this “awesome new application” or “this cool new website.” Then they leave you to figure out how to actually use it with kids. This was not the case here. Barbara shared ideas and examples of ways to actually use the tools in the classroom. This was also the session that Michael Richards joined via the live blog. He was able to interact with the workshop by posting comments to the live blog. Very cool!- At lunch, I was able to meet Jim Burke face to face for the first time. It is always great to meet someone in person who you have connected with online, and I enjoyed our conversation.
- For the afternoon session, I attended An Educator’s Perspective on Gaming, with Dr. Ruben Puentedura, Doug Snow, Ann Marie Hutton, and Jeff Mao presenting. When I walked into the room, I was a bit excited because they had several gaming consoles set up with projectors. There was a lot of theoretical information presented as to what is a game and what makes a good game. There was some really good information here and I plan to use some of it to support some writing I am planning to do soon (hopefully). We did get some time to actually play some games. Wii Sports was a favorite in the room, as was Lego Indiana Jones. Jeff Mao joined the conference virtually via Second Life. Second Life is cool, but I still am not convinced that it is something I would use (although I do have to confess I haven’t used it at all). There was one idea presented that seemed to have possibilities for students. Apparently, there is a group(s) that put on Shakespeare in SL. They record their performance so that it can be viewed like Machinima. One advantage of doing this in Second Life is that it eliminates budget constraints for the production. Set and costumes are limited only by the imagination of the designers and not by the funds available. Don’t have someone who looks right for the part? Create an avatar designed to look like your vision of the character (hmm… now that I think about it, there may be some good uses for students. I am going to have to ponder this one). Overall, I do wish that there was more of an emphasis on ways to use games in the classroom and less of the theoretical stuff. But overall it was a good session.
- Most of the teachers from my school were able to attend Thursday. One bit of feedback that I have received in talking to them about their experiences was that a lot of the sessions seemed geared towards middle school. Now I understand that middle school has been the emphasis since the inception of MLTI (it is where the laptops are 1:1), but now that Maine’s high school teachers all have MLTI laptops, this is going to need to change if MLTI is going to get the high school teachers on board. Other teachers said that it seemed as if there were a lot of the same offerings as last year. Personally, I had no trouble finding something that was of interest and new.
Overall, I had a great day in Castine. Thanks to everone who worked so hard to put on the conference. I have already started lobbying my principal to let me attend all three days next year.
