METC 2010

I’ve been attending the Midwest Educational Technology Conference in St. Charles, Missouri, for the past two days. One of the highlights of my trip the METC 2010 has been having the opportunity to meet Scott Meech in person for the first time. I first began to communicate virtually with Scott through the I Education App Review (IEAR) community that he founded. Dedicated to exploring the educational value of iPhone and iPod Touch applications in the classroom, IEAR has a growing online community that has a lot of great conversations going on. I provided more details about the benefits of IEAR in a previous post.

Earlier this morning, Scott gave a spotlight presentation at METC where he talked about the IEAR community and highlighted a number of apps that he feels have strong educational potential for classroom use. From the conference planner:

The potential for mobile learning devices such as Apple’s iPhone and iTouch devices are very high. This presentation will take a closer look at the educational possibilities of these devices for students, teachers and administrators. We will focus on the work being done through the online community “I Educational Apps Review.” This community is focused on helping school personnel to effectively and safely use these devices for their personal and educational productivity. Apple’s “Application Store” has thousands of educational applications and yet, are they really educational? We will walk through some fantastic applications and their potential with schools. Additionally, we will discuss issues surounding these devices such as how to effectively implement these devices with students in classrooms to the highlighting of concrete lessons.

I was honored that Scott asked me to speak for a couple of minutes about the importance of the IEAR community and I took the opportnity to urge people attending METC 2010 to join the conversation. I was able to Ustream the presentation and it can be viewed below. Scott shared a ton of great resources during his time and I’d encourage all educators who are interested in using the iPhone or iPod Touch in their classroom to take the time to view his presentation. Thanks, Scott!