EdTech 2007 Highlights

This year's EdTech was pretty rewarding for me, so I'm going to include a summary of the sessions I attended.
Wednesday 12 noon: I was a volunteer "card swiper" at my first session at the pre-conferenece. This session was conducted by the keynote speaker, Deneen Frazier Bowen. It was entitled "The Power of Story: Digital Style". It was very powerful. As students personalize a story when they create it, it becomes a powerful learning tool.
Wednesday 2:30pm: I was a volunteer swiper here as well. The room was so crowded that I was not able to take in this session, but will follow up on her online handouts whenever they are posted. This session was entitled, "Free Technology Tools: Past, Present, and Future".
Thursday 8-9am: Website Work
Thursday 9:30-10:30am: Building Accessible Websites: This session was conducted by Christine Moore of College of Charleston and had a lot of resources I found useful. I hope to have a future blog/podcast about this topic. Of course the World Wide Web Consortium was an important recource.
Thursday 10:30-1:15 Exhibition Hall Time - I actually won something!! - A cold laminating machine - really cool.
Thursday 1:15-2:15pm: "Classroom Adventures with GPS" - Great presentation, very informative. This is a great tool for the classroom. I missed Kevin's session on a similar topic, but I'm sure his was great as well. I would recommend checking out the online handout when it becomes available in a few weeks.
Thursday 2:30-3:30pm: "Feed the Mind with RSS". Good summary and application of rss with referring to bloglines and googlereader.
Thursday 4-5pm: Website Work.
Friday 8:30-9:30 am: The session I wanted to attend was a "no show", but it worked out nicely as I benefited greatly from the session I attended - "Creating On-line Photo Galleries with Free Web Services (Flickr, Photobucket, Picasa). This was a very informative session. The slideshow on my previous post was made during this sesson. I would recommend getting the handouts (I'll give you the link to check to see when these are posted - may take a few weeks).
Friday 9:45-10:45am: Website work.
Friday 11-12noon: "From the Computer Classroom to Online Learning: Learning to Use Technology with Technology". This session was presented by a couple of professors at USC-Aiken as they discussed the transformation from face to fact instruction to online instruction. They use Blackboard, so it was good to see their use of Blackboard for instruction. I got some ideas for the online Blackboard course I teach for the district.
The conference ended at noon. I enjoyed talking to vendors and actually won two items; a cool laminator and a digital photo frame - quite exciting.
During this visit I was able to spend time with relatives I have here at the Beach. We had a great time together. Disappointingly, I did not set one foot on the beach and only saw the beach from a distance through misty rain.
At some point in the future, you may search and download handouts from the edtech sessions here.