2nd Annual Adobe Education Leadership (AEL) Camp - San Francisco....Day 1

It is 10:45 Tuesday morning and we just had our first session with the AEL Leadership Camp..... We have a full and packed week that most of us will probably be a pile of gunk at the end of it all....but I know we will all love it.

Megan Stewart (Director of Worldwide Education K-12, Adobe) and our AEL leader...opened our day this morning. Megan went over the 2006 - 2007 year that the AELs have been involved in this year and it has absolutely been amazing! What an incredible group of educators and innovators!

Some of the highlights so far is meeting the new VP of Education (Peter Issacson) who has been with Adobe for 10 years but with K-12 education for 3 weeks. Peter highlighted that Adobe is about engaged learning. Students learning more effectively and students getting the skills they need to go out to the workforce.

Adobe founders wanted these principles as a part of their company: honesty, integrity, community involvement and respect.

We have now setup an AEL blog on the Adobe Blogs website. Check this out this week and future as all the AELs will be putting content up on there.

Just had coffee and we are back....will continue today.

Some AELs having breakfast at Adobe - San Francisco

Next presentation was from Simon Hayhurst (Director of Product Management) on Future Trends in Dynamic Media.

It brought up many good discussions from the AELs. Looking at Visual Communicator which is on of the best digital storytelling tool.

Semantic Web/Web 3.0 ... what is the next step for web rich media?

Simon talked about "little bubbles of change." Change always starts with 1 thing. Over 1 Billion Flash devices in the world today. 400 million mobile devices worldwide.

Question: "What happens when online and offline are the same?"

Media distribution has changed how we live....ie: YouTube and the US elections. The web is becoming a rich interactive medium....problem that many AELs raised is that our schools have these rich web experiences locked down. We need to engage and educated our students/teachers/administrators so we can unlock these experiences for our students.

The next session is a panel session with Kirsti Aho, David Wadhawani, Kathry Schrock, Kim Cavanaugh to discuss education trends with Web 2.0.

Speaker 1: Kirsti Aho
(Director of Content Strategy and Partnerships, Adobe)

The Learning Resources team is changing the way it develops content. They work with the Adobe community to create content that's more relevant and they've invited the community to comment and append content that already exists.

LiveDocs (the web version of current documentation system. Web version of every help page, the latest information on all documentation is now easier to update (ie: with CS3). At the bottom of everypage of livedocs a user can comment. You can also RSS feed these pages (this started with the coldfusion team....harvest the collective
intelligences of the community. All the knowledge is in one place.
http://kb.adobe.com/selfservice/viewContent.do?externalId=tn_18081&sliceId=1

Videoworkshop - came out for CS3. Took a village to build this...45 different presenters presenting content in this workshop. 260 videos a/c all the products in CS3. "A just in time" type of learning thing.
http://www.adobe.com/designcenter/video_workshop/

Wiki for Adobe Device Central CS3
https://learn.adobe.com/wiki/display/DC/welcome was released when CS3 went public.

Speaker 2: David Wadhawani
(Vice President of RIA Platform, Adobe)
Talked about how Adobe revolutionizes how the world engages with ideas and information. (ie: label for water created with adobe, newspaper prob created with adobe products....etc...) Users are community of designers and developers.

A decade of flash evolution and innovation.

• 1996 1st was a passive player (no interaction...multimedia content)


• 2000 interactive content


• 2004 rich internet application


• 2005 communication solutions

Flex and AIR (code name Apollo) became new members of this family.

Examples of Flex applications:

MyGameBuilder - an online game development program that you can create instantly and then share with the community.

(if you don't see the above video...you have YouTube blocked on your system)

PhotoBucket - is a free online video editing program. This amazing online video tool that is used within Photobucket was developed in Flex.

Speaker 3 - Kathy Schrock

Kathy spoke about Web 2.0 and how it has evolved in the classroom. Some of the websites she listed for you to check out.

Zamzar...online conversion tool
http://www.zamzar.com/

Letterpop
http://www.letterpop.com/

scrapblog (online interactive media scrapbooks)
http://www.scraplog.com/

(search BrenniesBytes for the other links that Kathy mentioned....most of them are here, just search Web2.0)

Speaker 4 - Kim Cavanaugh (AEL - Palm Beach County (FL) Schools)

Have students really changed? NO....the tools have just changed. The best thing you can do is get an excited and motivated teacher in the classroom to really make a change for our kids today.

Web 2.0...legal, practical and privacy issues. Most schools deal with anything that is not enforceable....they block it.

We need to find ways around blocking everything from the web in schools. The whole Web 2.0 about establishing identity (we want to know who you are...serve advertising based on what you want). Kim did a search in MySpace for teacher....and came up with an image of a "young teacher" drunk in a bar.....will these things come back to "haunt us?" The "drunken pirate" was a senior at a school in Pennsylvania studying to become a teacher and she was refused to get her degree in Education because of this picture. She was given a general degree and was refused a job because of this picture on her MySpace and other bad choices that were posted on her MySpace site.

Be realistic with the adoption rate within your staff when introducing new digital tools. The rate is usually only 15% of adoption at the beginning, this is a realistic goal.

Tim O'Rilley ideas about the future of Web 2.0:

1. The Long Tail - small is the next big. Small sites have more value because you have the opportunity to pull information from those sites that are the most important to you (ie: your daughters hockey site.)

Small pieces are loosely joined.

2. Data is the next Intel inside - the data is important, not the processor. How do you get in and manage that data.

Own your own data....so important for a school system. Those data bases are soooooo important to be "within" the school.

Avoid proprietary systems like the plague.

3. Users add value - they do it without knowing it. People aren't thinking how they are using the tool to help the company. Involve, engage, and reward your audience.

Experience REALLY MATTERS for your audience. A positive user experience is really important...if you don't get it right (with the best interest of your users at heart) it will never move forward.

4. Network Effects by Default - 15% Gather information as you go.

5. Some rights reserved - avoid siloed data

6. The perpetual beta - change is good. Timeless trumps training....new feature on a program..."boom" it is on the site.

7. Cooperate, don't control - mashups R us. The idea that you can take data from different sources and use it to suit you.

8. Software above the level of a single device

9. Content Aggregation

10. Removing Barriers

11. Consuming Services (yahoo pipes) A persistent search feed using Google and Yahoo news. RSS output on the left and search information on the right side.

The last session of the day is with Anuja Dharkar (Curriculum Strategy Manager for Adobe) and Lynn Nolan (Director, Education Leadership for ISTE).

Anuja introduced the new Career and Technology Curriculum that has been developed by Adobe along with ISTE and many of the AELs.

These are available (link above) from the Adobe website free to download. They will also be shipped out on DVD with all CS3 products.

Lynn Nolan talked about the age of creativity! Shifts from the industrial age, information age, communication age to the age of creativity.

This is a roadmap for the students for the future. This Standard Statements and Indicators are examples of activities that can take place for the teachers to use within their programs.

Original NETS lead with technology tools. Moved from teacher directed to student performance in the new NETS.

In September, ISTE will be releasing a publication that will have all of these standards explained....these standards are only a guide. Areas that may be a concern....there will be a need for implementation resources (like the Adobe Curriculum), understanding what these new standards will look like in the classroom. David Warlick blogged "A Magnetic Field of National Educational Technology Standards." prior to NECC 2007 and many people went online and commented to these questions. ISTE took this opportunity to respond to this blog and embrace these issues.

My head is full! That was day one! Now we are off for an activity of Geo-caching, dinner and then more sessions tonight!