Wednesday, October 7, 2009

Wish List? Tweet It


Richard Byrne, a social studies teacher in Maine, was able to attend the National Educational Computing Conference (NECC) in Washington, DC the summer of 2009, thanks in part to twitter and other online technology. The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE), which organizes the annual conference, launched the Newbie Project. It’s co-founder, Beth Still, used the power of Twitter to find enough people willing to donate $1 or more to send Byrne to NECC. Two weeks after Still announced the effort on her blog and began tweeting, several dozen people donated $750, enough to cover conference registration and airfare. Still continued her effort and eventually a technology company donated $700 to cover food and lodging for the newbie.

Byrne said in an interview, “Hopefully Beth’s project convinced people that the professional connections you make online can be just as meaningful as professional connections developed in person.” The Newbie Project is again fundraising via technology to send more first-timers to its 2010 conference in Denver, CO. (Photo: NECC 2009 Exhibitor's Hall, by Oksana Hlodan.)

Evolution Symposia Media

The American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS), in conjunction with the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent), will again co-sponsor an evolution symposium at the 2009 National Association of Biology Teachers(NABT)professional development conference. The symposium will be held on Friday, November 13 in Denver, Colorado. "Evolution in Extreme Environments" offers presentations and a workshop on evolution in five extreme environments.

Those unable to attend this year's NABT conference will be able to participate in the symposium via live webcast on Friday, November 13th from 8:30 am to 12:30 pm, MST, for all or part of the webcast. For full program information and the link to view the live webcast, visit NESCent.

The presentations from previous symposia are available on the NESCent website. The presentations are movies of each speaker, both audio and visual of the scientists, synchronized with the slides from their PowerPoints. Teaching and learning resources and references related to the symposia are free for anyone to view and use. (The photo is the cover of a CD from the AIBS media library. It is not a supplement to this year's symposium.)