Illinois Education & Technology Conference 2008

Illinois Education & Technology Conference 2007

I attended the IETC on November 15-16, 2007 presenting on Web 2.0 ~ Kids Love It, But... Why?  (click the title to get to the conference session presentation notes.) This session is on increasing student engagement in lessons and their learning by reaching students and using technology to draw them into a lesson.  As educators we need to "shift our thinking" between internalization and utilization to effectively reach today's students.

As a highlight, the Keynote ("Engage Me or Enrage Me")by Marc Prensky had the exact same theme (often using the exact same word choices) as my presentation.   On one hand, I love being validated.  On the other, I did disagree with one of Marc's central viewpoints.  Marc presented that teachers should NOT take time to embrace technology and make it an integral part of their personal learning ... that teachers should provide focus and guidance for the learning process and let the students embrace and run with technology to  present the information they have learned.  I completely disagree.  In my opinion, (and research I have done) students are frustrated that they often know more about a program or tool than their teachers... this issue is further compounded when a teacher provides a direction for the output product of a lesson (i.e. a digital story) and can not educate the students on how to complete the assignment because they themselves do not know how to use  a program or technology they are assigning... If teachers do not know how to use an integral component of a lesson ... how can they responsibly provide an evaluation and feedback for learning to the student?

Sessions attended:

• Moodle 101
• Using Web pages to foster student learning
• Educaching
• Social Bookmarking (David Jakes)
  

Midwest Educators Technology Conference 2007
I will be attending the The METC will be on February 26 - February 28.  The conference is being held in St. Louis, MO. at the Sheraton Westport Lakeside (I believe... but I could be wrong on that one).  I will also be blogging and hope to do a little podcasting as well.

Great sessions Today.

• Leadership Breakfast
• Digital Students: Digital Tools
• One to One: TabletPC's from a Student's Perspective
• Blended Learning
• Blogging and Podcasting

Steve Dembo's Presentation on Blogging and Podcasting capped a wonderful day.

Illinois Technology Conference for Educators 2007
Back to back conferences this year.  After a few hours of sleep, (hopefully after a nice train ride) I will be waking up to attend the last two days of the IL-TCE conference March 1st and 2nd.  This should be an interesting conference as they are adjusting the general sessions to one and a half days from two.  Again, I will be blogging from there as well as podcasting.  More as the conferences kick off.

Illinois TECHForum 2007
I have been asked to participate in blogging this event as well as to facilitate a round table discussion.  The Illinois TECHForum will be at the Eaglewood Resort in Itasca, IL on April 27, 2007. The topic is yet to be decided, but  look forward to participating in this event.

Illinois Education & Technology Conference 2006
Attended Nov 15-16 - More information coming