The 2 Guest Speakers from MB. Education

On Wednesday, two gentlemen came from MB. Education to speak to the class about new technology. The first speaker, must have been Darren Kuropatwa and the other gentleman was Rob C. Fisher. Darren was a very passionate speaker and it was quite evident that he must love his job and enjoy what he does. He kept the class quite interested in his presentation. I really enjoyed some of the topics that he spoke about. Among some of the things that were discussed were digital footprints, publishing student work, RSS feeds, RFID's, ugly stuff, The Story of Wolves, the Story of Russia and the Story of Sticks.
Hearing about digital footprints again was something that we must realize is an important issue for our students and us personally. Students have to be warned about the dangers of posting pictures that could haunt them for the rest of their lives. It was good that Darren showed us the 2 sides of the coin such as publishing student work that is meaningful and positive versus posting student work without their permission or even your own children's embarrasing videos.
The RFID question that Darren asked us, which was "How many know what RFID chips are?" got me curious and interested in searching more information about it, just because I saw no hands go up in the classroom. His description of them was that Wal-mart uses them to keep inventory and it is technology talking to technology. The RFID tells the other machine, "Hey I'm right here and there are this many of us." That was Darren's description as I remember it.
All in all, I enjoyed Darren's talk and stories. He said that his stories about the wolves, Russia and sticks were about technology, content and pedagogy, in that order. What he said really got me thinking that as educator's, we really have to be careful with how technology is used. Just like he said, "flood the internet with the professional and positive things that you do."
Rob C. Fisher's presentation was cool too because he showed us ipadio, which to me was just exciting. The video he showed us on the six sense was also mind-blowing. Immediately after class I just had to tell my spouse about what I learned that day. I would recommend that you check out the video through TED talks. Just search for "six sense". You'll love it. Over and out.