NCaect Reflections

Technorati Tags: ncaect ncaect08 professionaldevelopment web2.0 moodle

I really enjoy going to local conferences - especially K-12 ones. All of my sessions were on Friday (starting at 8:15! AM) so I was able to enjoy my Thursday at some really great sessions. The group behind Teacher Tube, Kevin Honeycutt and of course our keynote Sheryl Nussbam-Beach. I love not only watching great speakers present, but I'm also very interested in fostering professional learning communities. The added benefit of the conference in Charlotte was that I got a chance to have an "adult" (i.e. not a stroller in sight!) meal with my parents and brother. (It was wonderful!)

I was nervous about getting to my sessions on time (Did I mention 8:15 AM!) since I was staying in another hotel. My first session was on Web 2.0, and my worst fears were realized (OK actually my worst fear is no one showing up :) There was no Internet - so I ended up teaching from the hip. I think I pulled it off, and thank goodness I had a good handout! (You would think I would know to use archived or downloaded websites as a back-up - I know now!) My next session on Podcasting I was a bit more prepared to have no Internet & luckily Audacity & iTunes can be "offline."

My last session was on Moodle & the last time I had a session on Moodle, 5 people showed up - so we ended up having a nice roundtable discussion about implementation (I actually think it was one of my best sessions). So I was not prepared for about 80 people to show up! It is hard to encapsulate something as gargantuan as Moodle in a 45 minute session, but I think we got the idea across!

Oh and to top it all off - one of my old teachers was in the audience! I'm not sure who was more shocked!