Random Ramblings

Whew! I didn’t realize how tired I was until I returned home to 2 very excited four legged girls. They had been without momma for 3 days (which is eternity in dog years). The NCETC conference was everything I had dreamt and more. I learned so much. Now, I have to find time to disseminate all the information. I don’t know where to begin.

I did accomplish a task that I didn’t think I could – and couldn’t have before David Warlick’s session on Tuesday morning. I created a page on my blog of notes from the sessions I attended. Then, I linked it to my wiki. Look at me go! Not nearly as difficult as I had thought. But, if you had suggested I do that last week, I would have laughed and said I couldn’t possibly achieve such a thing. Look how my life has changed in just a few short days. My blog is blogging right along, David Warlick has quoted me twice in his blog, and coolcatteacher commented on my blog. Never, ever would I have thought this brand new ITF from a small county in North Carolina would have this attention.

Although the first three days of the conference were very interesting, Thursday was a much more productive day . I finally was able to attend a session by Patrick Crispen. Of course, being the dork that I am, I was busily typing my notes when music from a webpage started playing. Silly me forgot to mute my speakers. UGH! How embarrassing. I apologized to the people around me and couldn’t for the life of me mute it fast enough. I did get a tongue click from the lady across from me. Again, I’m very sorry, but I was so excited with hearing Patrick’s presentation that I went to jello and couldn’t do anything. Talk about brain freeze!

After starting my day with Patrick Crispen, I ended it with 2 sessions by Tammy Worcester. As I wrote in my Thursday notes, she’s wonderful. She’s definitely a teacher’s teacher. Real life examples that we could take back to our classes to use tomorrow. Great stuff. The only problem I had was not being able to type as quickly as she spoke. I did have my speakers muted this time. I took many notes and you can find them on my page titled Thursday Conference Notes. Make plans to catch her sessions at the next workshop. She’s well worth it.

During Tammy’s session, I emailed my Technology Director and asked her if we could purchase Tammy’s 4 book set. Not only did she buy our department one copy, she purchased a copy for each of the county’s six ITF’s! Cindy is great. She catches our enthusiasm and lets us run with our ideas. Pretty tough job when you have someone like me going a thousand miles an hour. Sometimes, it’s even hard for me to keep up with me!

The finale of the conference was a comedy presentation by a group called Wavelength. Funny, funny, funny. They are an impromptu comedy group that aims it’s comedy toward education. We laughed and laughed. Of course, what teacher doesn’t enjoy someone poking fun at the school board and the superintendent? One brave principal even participated with the group as they were joking about No School Left Standing (that’s the educators version of No Child Left Behind). Definitely make plans it see them if you have the opportunity.

I know I haven’t talked about all the sessions, but I’m a bit on the tired side. I have to teach 7th graders how to make spreadsheets at 8:00 in the morning. I don’t know where the time went, but I truly enjoyed my first technology conference. If you get the chance, read my conference notes pages and my wiki.

Until next time ~ Danita

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 30th, 2006 at 10:13 pm Filed under Blog and. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.