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So Thursday and Friday, I will be presenting at the Illinois Technology Conference for Educators at Pheasant Run in St. Charles. Please stop by.

Presentations are as follows:

Thursday, March 1, 2007



Improving Extended Response Using the Collaboratory’s ePortfolio

9:45 AM to 10:30 AM

Coral Room

Participants will learn how the Collaboratory’s ePortfolio can help their students become more comfortable at writing and contributing to peer review, and get a better understanding of a good extended response answer. They will leave the session with their project and ePortfolio ready for their students to use.

About the Northwestern University Collaboratory

11:45:01 AM to 1:15 PM

Expo Center – Table 7

This poster session will include updated information about the Northwestern University Collaboratory. Please stop by and hear about new Collaboratory features, partners and projects. Learn how to help your students build ePortfolios, share book reviews in the Internet Book Club and build math and writing skills using extended response.

Friday, March 2, 2007



Celebrating National Poetry Month with Our Classmates, Our School and The World!

10:45 AM to 11:30 AM

Coral Room

April is National Poetry Month and the Collaboratory is celebrating by encouraging students to find their inner bard and share and discuss their poems with other students online. Participants will learn more about the Collaboratory, the National Poetry Month Project and how to participate in Collaboratory sponsored projects.

One of my bestest friends in the world, Shiow-Jiau Yung, is doing the Multiple Sclerosis Bike Tour again. She really rocked it last year, and is planning on repeating her success. It’s an excellent cause, so I encourage you to throw a few bucks her way. Knowing that she’s got so many supporters will help Shiow pedal those 175 miles in no time. Besides, who wouldn’t want to support this face?

For those interested in starting their own small business in the Chicagoland area, I highly recommend going to Northwestern University’s Small Business Opportunity Center. The project teams are incredibly hard working, really care about doing what’s best for you and are very reasonably priced. They also have an annual conference that is highly informative and a great place to network. I really thought they did a great job with this year’s conference.

Last Friday, I presented at the Statewide No Child Left Behind Conference at the Sheraton downtown. My presentation, Online Student Learning Portfolios, was very well received and I had a great audience.

The lunchtime speaker at the event was Joseph Fatheree, the Illinois Teacher of the Year and a technology teacher at Effingham High School. It was encouraging to see students rise to the challenges he put before them, and address the problems they saw with poor and homeless youth.

February 14-16 is the Illinois Online Conference for Teaching and Learning. This morning, I presented on Connecting Classrooms Online Using Collaboratory Sponsored Projects. Despite severe technical difficulties (I couldn’t see my slides, but my audience could), I had a really nice crowd, who were (oddly enough for online) very warm and receptive. The presentation was recorded for posterity, so I’ll post that as soon as it goes up.



I’ve been very impressed with the conference, the quality of the presentations and the participants. I’ll be sure to be back next year!

Computer scientist Jim Gray is missing after sailing off the coast of San Francisco. Gray is responsible for putting together the Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS), which the Collaboratory has incorporated into our research documents, allowing high school students to do real astronomy research on more than 100 million celestial objects. You can help with the search for Jim Gray by using the Amazon Mechanical Turk site.