Thursday, March 11, 2010

Thoughts on NCTIES 2010

Our Instructional Technology Department recently attended the NCTIES conference in Raleigh, NC.

For me this years conference was different from the previous years that I have attended. We had our usual vendor floor, concurrent sessions, poster sessions and featured speakers. I checked out some of the sessions and attended the luncheon with Ron Clark the special guest speaker. Which for me was eye opening because I had not attended any of his workshops or speeches before, and the amount of energy he displayed could make you tired in a few minutes.

Normally I try to attend as many sessions as I can to learn as much as I can about current uses of technology in the classroom and the such. I did attend a couple of sessions that I will share in another entry, but this year I seemed to be socializing more. Now what I mean by socializing is that I talked to more people this year than I have in the past. With volunteering at the North Carolina Special Interest Groups (NCSIGS) Table I talked with lots of different people from around the state. As well being on Twitter, Facebook, Ning and following other Blogs I got the opportunity to actually meet some of the people I have only known as an Icon on a computer screen. Making a connection with those other educators seemed to dominate my time during the conference and has added another level to my PLN, where I now have the faces to go with the icons on the screens that I am reading about.

No comments: