I went to the best…workshop…ever. Yes, it’s long: it’ll add up to 16 hours by the time the 4-session series is over. But one of the participants described it as like being on Oprah.
First, we saw a promo video of the Echo Livescribe, a pen that not only records audio but also links it to what you’re writing for selective playback. You can create pencasts, share notes and audio in a variety of ways, and generally do a much better job capturing meetings and classes without having to play back a whole audio file. (You can select a word or doodle in your notebook and play the audio from that moment.) Then we each got one, and the accompanying notebook. I keep a universal notebook for meetings and such. I’m switching to the Livescribe notebook. Starting now. I’ll buy a second one for teaching. Now much of my anxiety about finding the right student note taker for a student with accommodations is gone.
Next, we saw a promo video of the iPad 2, and I thought to myself, “No way. These other participants are just getting their hopes up.” Maybe, but they weren’t let down. What a treat! I’ve already bought a couple of apps to make Web Development easier to teach. I can float in the class with coding references at my fingertips, and we can test sights on the display. And conferences? No more need to schlep a heavy laptop. Even a light laptop feels heavy after 6-8 hours. My shoulders and back should ache much less.
We have homework to do before our next workshop: using the pen and iPad by creating a 4-slide self-introduction on the iPad and using the pen for just about anything. Hm, I don’t know if I can bring myself to do that! 😉
Now, back to my regularly scheduled research and writing.