Please help us plan TTIX 2009 by completing the TTIX 2008 Survey. Even if you didn’t attend TTIX 2008, you can help by suggesting a month for TTIX 2009!

Here are some photos of TTIX08 on Flickr.com:

• Marc’s TTIX 08 pics
• Mariluz’s TTIX 08 pics
• John’s TTIX 08 pics
• Tyrel’s TTIX 08 pics

If you have more TTIX 08 photos, flickr ‘em up and post the URL in the comments!

Here’s a recap of Thursday’s Speed Demos. Please comment with updated info, as my memory is incomplete:

• Darren Draper - OpenPD
• Debbi Miller - Camtasia of Chemistry Lessons
• Dave Walker - Quicktime Producer
• Clayn Lambert - Moodle’s Workshop tool for peer review
• - Lightscribe digitize-able pen & paper
• Kevin Seal - Pandora music lessons
• Ruth Rominger - Hippocampus learning object repository

I know there were a couple more, and I forgot some names, so don’t hesitate to comment with updated info.

For Friday’s lunch, we’ll be doing more open mic speed demos, and will film and upload the video to to Friday Speed Demos page here on the Web site.

Many professors are lookiing for clips, documentaries, Youtube snippets that attact, hold the attention and keep students returning for more. The search can be slow going but fortunately repositories are appearing which makes the search less time consuming and more often successful.

TTIX08 attendees poured through Intellicom’s Gabe Zaldivar’s presentation materials looking for useful materials available through Intellicom. Gabe made clear that interested persons and their institutions can get a complimentary 10 free trial that provides complete access to all Intellicom’s materials. Subscribers to the fee based service get a free month before the service begins to get comfortableand familiar with available materials.  Interested in checking out the goods? Visit www.intelecom.org  or call Gabe at626 796-7300  ext.113.

You know those cool 1gb USB jump drives that we’re giving out to participants? Well, our staff members Shawn Kemple and Rick Curtis have set up Ubuntu Linux on a jump drive for me, and we now have a few Ubuntu-bootable USB jump drives to give away as prizes.

These are very cool: you plug the USB drive into your computer, restart your computer, and let your computer boot up off of the jump drive instead of your normal OS (e.g. Windows), and, shazaam! You’re running Linux! In fact, I’m typing this right now from within Ubuntu Linux off of the jump drive!

This is a great way to try out Ubuntu Linux, one of the most popular alternative Operating Systems, so be sure you sign up for the contest and engage in TTIX08!

I’ve just added new Presentation Pages for the Keynote Speakers and the Early-Bird Workshop.

As with all TTIX08 Presentation Pages, these pages hold a live chat window, the session evaluation form, space for comments, and, after the session, video archive file(s).

• Early-Bird Workshop: TTIX Social Software Run-Down
• Keynote - Thursday, 9:00am: Bob Clougherty
• Keynote - Friday, 3:30pm: Sandy Mills-Alford

TTIX has always been a lot of fun.  Two years ago I thought I had a pretty good topic, but only 3 people showed up to my session.  I think there’s something to be said about having an eye catching title.  Last year, 3 days before the conference my wife had a bout with appendicitis and needed to have an emergency surgery.  Thanks go to Jared and the rest for filling in for me, while I took care of my family.

This year I’m looking forward to a great session and, fingers crossed, no unforeseen illness or accident that will keep me away from UVU.  It sounds great to call the school by it’s new name.  I hope that many of you will join me on Friday as I show some great new ways to use Google as a classroom resource.  There’s a lot more than a simple search engine from Google.  See you Friday.

Jennifer Jones blogged about her experience with backchannels during conferences and meetings. Her observation was that if you’re not familiar with backchannel, the practice of participants communicating in the background of your presentation, your first exposure to it can be confusing, irritating, or distracting. But it can also be revelatory and enlightening. Comments on Jennifer’s blog pointed to advantages and disadvantages of the backchannel (instant formative feedback, parallel learning, impact on working memory, multitasking, perceived rudeness, a backdoor, etc). Chris Lott took up his own analysis of the backchannel, concluding that backchannels provide an opportunity for leadership to emerge, information to be shared and cross-referenced, and greater ideas to develop.

Since there will be chat technology on each presentation page at this year’s TTIX conference that will facilitate a backchannel in each and every session, I thought it would be interesting to get the opinions of TTIX participants and presenters, both before, during, and after the conference. What has your experience with backchannels been?

Presenters should login to the TTIX 2008 blog in order to upload any shared presentation files, edit the posted abstract or bios for their presentation, and add tags/keywords to their session information. We’ve tagged sessions already with our best assessment of keywords, but presenter input is likely to be more accurate.

An online walk-thru of the upload and editing process is now available with step-by-step instructions.

Folks who use Twitter can “tag” their TTIX-related posts with:

#TTIX08

This will allow you to follow TTIX-related Tweets via sites such as Twemes.com. Twemes provides an RSS feed of #tagged tweets as well.

Bloggers and photo-sharers can tag their posts, images, and other media with:

TTIX08

This will help us aggregate related posts and media.