Sunday, February 24, 2008

MACUL - Guerrilla Sessions

MACUL is just a couple weeks away and I can't wait. Last year one of the things I was looking forward to most were the Guerrilla Sessions. It looked like they wouldn't happen and then there was some internet buzz and the MACUL Borad found a room for the first Guerrilla Sessions. I was excited.

Unfortunately there ended up only being one impromptu session and I missed it. The folks from the Geek!ED! podcast did one where they recorded live at MACUL. I would have been there, but I was presenting a hands-on session at the same time.

I still really like the idea of Guerrilla Sessions. Basically, these sessions could be on the cutting edge of new technologies, so new they didn't really exist before the session submission deadline. Or maybe they're a bit geeky/technical, or maybe a little too short for a full one hour session, or maybe the presenter has good ideas but was a bit intimidated by the quality of MACUL presentations and consequently didn't write a session proposal.

This year I have ideas and I plan on doing at least one Guerrilla Session, maybe two. One I'm planning on for sure is:
How do I, as an educator, exercise my fair use rights with DVDs? There are times when I need a small section of a DVD that I legally own for use in my classroom. I can, of course, cue up the DVD to the proper section, but this is cumbersome and wastes valuable teaching time. It is much more effective to extract just the small section I need.
I'll be shooting for a good time on Friday for this one, keep your eye out if you're interested. Does anyone else have any plans?

3 comments:

Sherry McVay said...

Hi Steve,

Your session sounds great, that topic interests me as well. Here is a conversation from the MACULspace site about a session I hope will happen this year focusing on the XO Laptop from the One Laptop Per Child project.

http://maculspace.ning.com/forum/topic/show?id=612492%3ATopic%3A25055

Anonymous said...

To Sherry & Steve

Barbara LaBeau and myself both have purchase the XO computer and would like to do a session with others who my have XO's. We are both doing two regular presenations on Thursday and will also be recording podcasts (you may have received an email from MACUL about them)both days. For us setting up an XO session would be best on Friday..... I'm going to check out the topic you listed. Please feel free to email me barnever@gvsu.edu

Russ Barneveld

Steve said...

That would be outstanding. I'd love to see and maybe play with an XO.