I just got done being an active participant in Wes Fryer’s presentation at the Mid-America Technology Institute – 2006 in Kansas … and I never left my family room in Reno, Nevada. I responded to Wes’s questions, role-played with an attendee of his presentation (she was a principal questioning the noise level in my classroom while my students participated in a “messy” project and I had to respond to her concerns). I was part of his presentation for maybe 10 minutes – then I ate breakfast and read the paper.

There is so much that is powerful about this experience, but I’m going to focus on one aspect of it here. IT WAS EASY! Wes contacted me via email last evening asking me to talk about “messy” learning and assessment during his presentation using iChat. We would be able to hear and see each other. Great! One problem – I’ve never used iChat before. I know the software comes on my Mac computer, I’ve just never had an opportunity to use it. So I wondered if Wes would really want to chance his presentation during my learning curve with iChat. So I opened an iChat account (free – took 3 – 5 minutes), hooked up a digital video camera to my computer with a Firewire cable, typed in Wes’s address in iChat and found out he just happened to be on – so we had a 20 minute conversation about what my part of his presentation might look like. At the specified time this morning I logged in and we were on.

Knowing Wes he will probably post about this and may even offer a podcast of his session. Way cool! Thanks Wes!

I can’t wait until Skype adds video conferencing – imagine being able to do what we did this morning with up to 99 different locations at once!

Learning is messy!