I’ve been at the ISTE 2010 educational technology conference for several days. On Monday I made an hour presentation on mobile technologies such as the iPhone and had a good crowd of 130. On Tuesday, I did a three hour paid workshop for 30 educators. There was high interest in the platform.

This year, there were 17,000 people attending the conference. It was a very large crowd! It always amazes me how many tech companies are at these conferences to show their new hardware and software. The exhibit floor is huge. Here is a small glimpse in the exhibits area.

Can’t see it? Try this.

This is an interesting twist on a popular game. In previous versions a person would learn to play a game with a guitar shaped controller. Now however, the person will actually be learning to play a guitar or keyboard using real instruments. Games are becoming real learning tools.

We’ve had great discussions in class about 21st century learning and the idea of multi-tasking. I’m reading a book that favors allowing kids to multi-task. Stephanie sent me this interesting article about a guy who is trying not to multi-task and finding good benefits. I think this discussion will go on for a long time as we find out more about the brain and how we interact with the world.

I was reading this interesting article that talks about the idea of multitasking and the distraction of gadgets. It’s a very good article with much food for thought. However, I got distracted with the distractibility test.

Here is an interesting test to see how distractible you are when doing a task. This goes along with our topics in class. Give it a try and if you want, share your scores anonymously below. I scored a 2 on both.

Mike sent this to me and I thought it was very interesting. Technology has made a big difference in this urban school that was under achieving.

I’ve been a carpenter and handyman for three decades so I quickly caught on to a problem on CBS Evening News tonight. Katie Curic showed a circle of how big the oil spill hole was and noted it was 19 inches. I used a photo program to copy her forearm and shoulders to measure the diameter. I think the circle is closer to 3 feet using 12 inches for a forearm and 18 inches for a shoulder width. So, did CBS do this on purpose? If so why? If not, how could they make this mistake?

This is funny but has good points.