Tennessee Educational Technology Conference 2010

I spent much of Thursday, Friday, and Saturday schmoozing and attending sessions at this year's Tennessee Educational Technology Conference at the Nashville Convention Center. Let me just say this: Any conference that centers around educational technology needs to make sure their gathering place provides ample free wi-fi for its attendees. I know it's an old building, but they've done better at that in the past. Many of the attendees at these things need to be connected and they don't need to have to pay for a very laggy top-floor-only connection or plug into a hardwired laptop on the vendor floor. Just sayin'.

That's better. Now. This was a great conference for me because I

1. met Debi Crabtree, Virtual Learning Coordinator for  Hamilton County Virtual Schools (and I'm still wondering why they can call their program a "school" and we can't) and her partner in presentation, Betsy Norris, and to sit in on several of their 5, count 'em, 5 presentations;
2. got to watch my boss, Kecia Ray, present twice;
3. discovered, thanks to Debi, CompassLearning, an online course provider that Debi says is "the most interactive and engaging content out there." I'll be reviewing that content this coming week for our own program; and
4. attended friend Rusthon Hurley's keynote address, where he emphasized the power of video in education.

I only had my Samsung "dumbphone" with me for picture taking, though I did also snap a couple things with the Mac PhotoBooth program, so though I apologize for the quality of the snapshots, I'm posting those four pics right here:

e4tn presentation re a new Middle School beta

program for online learning

e4tn demos their LiveScribe exploration

Debi Crabtree shares Web 2.0 resources. I even learned 

a few new tricks. I am grateful to Debi for her sharing spirit and 

her eloquence and I soooo look forward to our future

collaborations!

Rushton Hurley wows a packed house

Thanks to the organizers of the conference for a rich learning experience, despite the missing ubiquitous wi-fi. Sorry to my tweetz and other PLN for the lack of communication during the conference! I'll share out some resources here later!!!