I wrote (most of) this on the plane ride home after the Google Apps for Education New England Summit last week…
If I’m going to blog publicly, I can ask myself… what did I learn this weekend? I usually learn something new at each summit… from dropping in on sessions, or from good questions asked in my own sessions… or, of course, from new tools or features released since I last ran my sessions. :)
Thanks to an attendee question, I relearned how to search the Google News Archives using the new interface. If I post this to my blog, I’ll have to re-record a new video of it. It’s awesome. In short, though, you can now access the Google News Archives by simply visiting Google News, and clicking on the drop down arrow in the search box. One of the options is to search in the archive – and you can limit your search by date as well.
Here’s the video… my first screencast using my new Linux laptop. I used RecordMyDesktop to create an ogv file and then uploaded it directly to YouTube. I forgot to turn up my audio input first… and YouTube seems to have crunched the resolution down pretty far, but considering I wasn’t up for a second take, I’m pretty happy with how it gets the point across. :)
Given my difficulty in articulating what else I’ve learned this weekend, I think another take away is this: I’ve got to make it more of a priority to spend substantial time in the other sessions in order to learn something new each time (and to take advantage of where we are, and who we are with). It will also help me have an even better idea about how each presenter runs their sessions and how the events are going. Right now I stick my head into every session (when I’m not presenting) to see how it’s going. I busy myself taking pictures (as unobtrusively as possible)while I get a sense for how the energy in the room, but I don’t usually stick around for the content. Most of the content is of course familiar to me, but I still pick up nuggets here and there, and there’s no doubt in my mind that the speakers at these events have vastly different experiences and expertise from mine – that I could benefit from if I put more time into listening.
That being said, I did learn A LOT this weekend, but not necessarily about educational technology. I continue to learn a lot about business… and about people (and organizations)… and about myself. These things just might not be appropriate for an educational technology blog. Depending on the reflections, though, they might work here (it is an “and life” blog too after all), or they might work on a separate blog – or perhaps on an anonymous blog. Or perhaps only in a private file – in a hidden directory on an encryped drive. I’ve been doing some journaling too. ;)