NECC Day 2

Connections - it's about connections. The second day of NECC for me was a big improvement over the first. I met more people I've been learning from and with, I attended some great sessions, had some good discussions, and generally felt pretty good. Although the night activities weren't as good as the previous, I enjoyed myself.

I did miss a session that I really wanted to attend dealing with NETS and AASL Standards for 21st Century Learners. I'm not sure what happened, but I simply forgot about it until it was too late. Oh well. I do remember people telling me prior to the conference that I would miss things and that I should focus on what I did attend and not what I missed. Fortunately, some of the sessions I missed were uStreamed by someone and I can hopefully go back and watch them - like Stephanie Sandifer's session.

Yesterday I learned a little about VoiceThread from a table presentation held by Wes Fryer. I am really looking forward to showing my teachers this and using it with kids to create some really neat projects.

I also visited the Student Showcase session and talked with a teacher and students who worked on a very cool state project. I worked on a state project kids from my school and we exchanged ideas and certainly picked up tips on how to improve what we are doing with kids!

Hall Davidson did a presentation on cell phones in education and I saw a couple of really cool tools that are just unbelievable. He demonstrated a website that allows users to text in answers to questions or even text in comments and the messages show up in real time on the site. Great stuff!

Yesterday was a great learning day and I certainly have to thank Teryl Magee, Tim Childers, and Tom Turner for hooking me up with Discovery Education. I'm really looking forward to using it quite a bit next year.