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NECC, Here We Come!
Helen and I are getting ready for NECC. I can’t believe it’s here already! We’ll be driving down to San Antonio together on Saturday evening and are preparing for no sleep and lots of sharing and learning! We’re bummed we’ll miss the Edubloggers and the Twitter meet up. How unfair! But we do hope we run into old and new friends! If you see one or the both of us, please say hi!
I’m up late-ish for some unknown reason and found myself catching up on my feeds. I read this one on Learning is Messy. A few useful tips if you’re going to be attending a conference for the first time. Well, even if you’re not new to conferences, I like the tips.
#1 - Unless you have to be there, spend as little time on the vendor floor as possible.
#2 – Make a schedule of all the sessions you want to see … then be ready to ignore it … or at least a lot of it.
#3 – Don’t be afraid to hang out and put your 2 cents in.
#4 – Bring a cheap plug strip.
#5 – Don’t stress … YOU ARE GOING TO MISS SOME COOL THINGS YOU WISH YOU HADN’T MISSED! It’s OK
Well, there was a lot more on each point on the site, so be sure to check it out. But to these tips, I add…
- If you DO plan on browsing the vendor area, bring labels with your contact info so you can stick those to all of those cards for drawings and door prizes. I do tend to walk the floor but mostly because I seem to win something every year Yay me! And I’m a wee bit on the greedy side. But Brian is absolutely right about taking home junk you don’t need or want. I’m in the process of changing schools and while organizing, I found two bags of past TCEA years that were left untouched. Geez.
- If you’re a blogger, consider live blogging the sessions and keynotes you attend. It serves two purposes - 1. you’re taking notes that you can reflect on later and 2. others who can’t attend those sessions can be a part of it virtually. Even if you read a live blogged session later, the live blog feel gives you a bit of a sense of being there. Helen and I have used CoverItLive.com with success. Honestly, I haven’t tried any other live blogging software but we don’t get anything from CoverItLive either. :) Anyway, you can tweet that you’re live blogging and others can “listen in” and comment or question while you’re taking notes. Very cool!
Okay, so only two more suggestions. It’s late-ish and I’m tired. See you at NECC! I hope!
New Mobile Broadband!
So, for various reasons I won’t bother listing, I decided it was high time to get a mobile broadband card and service. I’d been thinking about it for quite some time, but the extra monthly expense has kept me merely thinking about it. So yesterday, I was reading Pogue’s Posts and David Pogue reviewed the Sierra/Sprint Wireless Compass 597. I usually read his posts the day they come out, but this was from last month. Not sure how I missed it the first time, but I read it at just the right moment. At lunch today, I went to a local Sprint store and signed up. I’m posting this using my new connection. As you can see, it’s not super duper fast, though I was running a few things at the same time during the connection test - including Google Earth - so I’m not being fair. Either way, I’m already so excited about my new found freedom! And I can hardly wait to answer my 8 year old’s at least weekly question, “Do we have Internet in the car?” She’s going to be thrilled to get onto Webkinz on her way to Nana’s house! And even more thrilled to be AT Nana’s house with access to Webkinz! Nana and Papa don’t even have a computer!
Flip Video Day Two
My little Flip bubble started to deflate when iMovie ‘08 wouldn’t play nice.I was also able to import with no help into iMovie HD and export for iMovie ‘08 but that wasn’t really what I wanted. But thanks to a few twitter friends, I downloaded Pernian which let me use QuickTime Pro and convert the file. And then was pointed to an Automator application that did this for me. I could have used the Flip software to go straight to the web in a number of formats, but I really wanted to be sure that I could play nice in iMovie ‘08.
I was doing all this playing with software, I forgot about the camera! So this afternoon I handed it to my eight year old showing her three buttons - on, record, and zoom. To say she had a good time is to say the sun’s surface is a little warm. She made 10 short, ridiculous videos. The quality isn’t horrible. Better than my digital point and shoot, I think. I’ll have to take video side by side to be sure. But I’m PRETTY sure. Now that she has 10 videos that she’s noticing she was paying little attention to where the camera was pointing, I have a feeling we’ll see some better work come from her. And I’m excited for it because she’s a creative little girl.
I don’t have high expectations for the Flip. It’s a nice, sturdy, cheap camera with cute accessories (feel free to buy me the underwater casing or the tripod, or even a skin). It’s very easy to copy videos to your computer. The software comes on the camera itself so you don’t actually need anything else unless you want to really edit. I may have over bought, like Bill. I bought the 60 minute and for what I plan to use it for, the 30 may have been plenty. If I were going to video one event longer than 30 minutes, I’d probably be using a “real” camera. But in regards to quality, I found this blog entry very interesting.
And with no further ado, here is one of Meghan’s movies, recorded on the Flip, converted with FlipConverter, imported into iMovie 08 in 16×9 aspect ratio and published to YouTube.
A PS to this post… I’m super excited about my daughter playing with this, because I want her to start doing things like this.
Update: This example was uploaded straight to YouTube from the Flip Video software:
Flip Video Review
I just, as in less than 30 minutes ago, received my Flip Video from Amazon.com. Here is my first video.
No, nothing worth watching at ALL. But gosh it was quick and easy. I could have published straight to YouTube (had it not been blocked in district) or a few other video sharing sites. Haven’t tried importing into iMovie yet. That’s next. So I guess this isn’t a review, just yet. More like a preview of a review. Stay tuned!
