Another Weekend & Another OC PD Opportunity

The weekend after edCamp OC, it was time for the OC Cue 2011 Tech Fest. I had debated throwing a few suggestions into the mix as a presenter for this one but never got around to it so I headed down to Santa Ana to take in some sessions and spend some time with friends.

occue-techfest

Session 1

After registering for the event, I headed to room 610 for Greg Dhuyvetter‘s session on PowerPoint. About two years ago I blogged about how I love PowerPoint and I’ll tell you a secret, I still do. The session was not all about never using PowerPoint (whew!) but how to use it effectively and creatively and why other options might be better than PowerPoint for some things. Greg used and suggested Prezi as an alternative to PowerPoint for presentations. I do have a Prezi account but I haven’t used it much. I think I’m much too linear to get Prezi but I really should try it again sometime. I may be biased, because as I said, I do still love PowerPoint, but I think a lot of the objections raised about PowerPoint (not just in this session) can apply to any presentation tool. The effects in Prezi can be overwhelming as can animations and transitions in PowerPoint. You can have too much text and read your text on any type of presentation tool. PowerPoint is more linear than something like Prezi but it can be made more interactive and less linear if slides are designed correctly.

I am issuing myself a challenge to create a presentation both in PowerPoint and Prezi to learn Prezi and to see what I can and can’t do in PowerPoint vs. Prezi. Why do I still love PowerPoint? Well, I have it everywhere – at school, at home, etc. I use it as school with students for much more than just creating presentations – maybe it’s time to revisit PowerPoint on this blog.

Session 2

I didn’t have to move very far because I stayed in the same room for the next session which was Technology and the Developing Needs of Adolescents presented by Stephen Davis. Stephen had the attendees contribute to a Google doc as we discussed the physical, intellectual, emotional and social needs (PIES) of Middle School students. Seeing my Middle Schoolers only twice a week for 45 minutes at a time, it can be hard to fit all of the intellectual topics in. However, after this session, I am looking at ways to fit in even more – ways to meet not just the intellectual needs of my students but ways to blend in the physical, emotional and social needs whenever possible, too.

Session 3

After a great lunch with Jen Wagner and a teacher from her school and some time spent in the Student Technology Showcase, I headed back to the same room for Jen & Sean Williams‘ session, Digital Footprints and the Impact of Online Navigation. I was interested in this session because it was a session that had been given to parents at some schools and I am in the process of trying to put together a parent education night on Social Networking and Digital Footprints. The session actually ended up with Dennis Grice stepping in to co-present with Jen since Sean ended up not being able to be there.

This session was a very casual conversation since most of the people in the room knew one another and the information provided gave me a lot of great ideas to use when I have this same type of discussion with the parents at my school. It also raised a lot of questions in my mind again on when we as educators should should start helping our students to develop a positive digital footprint. One of the slides showed some statistics which included the fact that 43% of students have shared their first names online. We have recently started allowing this at our school Is that wrong? Should we not be? When is it okay?

Session 4

Guess where I was for the final session? Yes, I stayed right in the same room and attended Jen Wagner‘s Googling Forms Effectively session. I use Google Forms a lot in my class and with various projects online but Jen reminded me about the go to a new page on an answer option in forms that I haven’t tried out yet. In the past, I’ve just added questions that had instructions about only answering this one if you said yes to a previous question. I need to try the new page option sometime to see if that works more effectively for what I need.

It was a great day with a lot of learning and time spent with some wonderful Twitter friends including @jimconn @Matt_Arguello @jenwagner @cbell619 @danielabolzman @bbarreda @dgrice @GDhuyvetter and @rushtheiceberg.

February 15, 2011 Reflections No Comments on Another Weekend & Another OC PD Opportunity

Presenting For the First Time … Again

Back in the days before I was a teacher and before I was a mom, I was a computer programmer & designer and wrote business applications for a variety of different industries. Part of what I did during that time was to develop “train the trainer” classes and presentations. I would travel to various offices and train the people that would actually be training our customers or train the sale people who would be selling the software. Sometimes these were hands on classes and other times they were short presentations on the software. I also attended trade shows and technology conferences and would put on demonstrations of our software for people who visited our booth.

So, I had presented before but I had never presented at an educational conference – that is until the T.E.L.L. Conference on October 9th.

Last year, I attended this conference and decided this year that it was my turn to share at this conference rather than just attending again. I debated what I would present but since I had spent quite a bit of time during the summer learning online with a variety of free resources I thought something about being a lifelong learner for free would be a good subject to cover. I know at my school there is little (if any) money for conferences or other forms of professional development and I’m sure that we’re not the only school where this is the case.

With my subject decided, I collected resources into a Live Binder and created a presentation in PowerPoint and ran through the presentation until I knew the material. Did this make everything go exactly as I planned? Well, not exactly:

  • Most of the attendees at my session did not have laptops or even cell phones with texting ability so there went my techie interactive question. I should have known this would be the case and not planned on using an online tool but I think at least one person in the session thought it was a fun.
  • For some reason my sound driver decided that it was corrupt the morning of the conference, so there went the video I was going to use to introduce YouTube and how you can learn anything on YouTube.
  • I had too much material for the length of the session. I wasn’t sure how many questions I would get so I planned more material than I would need – too much more. Next time I’ll remember less is more – I feel I really rushed some things and would have liked to have had more time at the end for additional questions. I wonder if Prezi would have been a better choice for presenting since it’s not as linear as PowerPoint and may have been better for skipping things as time ran out? I have never been able to wrap my head around Prezi but I think I need to look at it again.

I enjoyed the experience and hope to present at more conferences in the future. I have debated throwing my hat into the ring for the CUE LA Tech Fair but I see you have to bring your own projector (which I don’t have) and I’m not sure where my presentation idea would fit into the Curricular Areas on the Presenter Registration Form. Maybe I’ll think about the CUE OC Technology Festival instead.

In addition to presenting, I also attended the keynotes and some sessions at T.E.L.L. ’10 – I love being able to share something I’m passionate about and learn something on the same day. It doesn’t get much better and here were some of the highlights of the day for me:

  • Brent Coley‘s Keynote, “Educational Technology: Without Why, How is Irrelevant”, was inspiring and full of advice on both why and how to use technology in the classroom. It’s great to have someone who is actually using the technology in the classroom be a keynote speaker.
  • Kevin Honeycutt closed the day with a fun ending Keynote that unfortunately was marred by technical problems since he was presenting remotely. I just wish he could have been there in person or the connection had been better.
  • I didn’t get to participate live but I have watched the archive of Diane Main‘s session, “Google Earth For All Grade Levels” and it was amazing. I just wish Google Earth worked on the computers in our lab. I can only run it on my laptop but I think I’m going to adapt some of the ideas and use Google Maps with my students.
  • Sean Williams‘ session, “Give Your Students A VoiceThread”, has inspired me to use VoiceThread again. I do have a class subscription on VoiceThread but haven’t used it yet this year. I loved the ideas on differentiation and the examples Sean showed were great. And, don’t tell Sean, but I hope to someday be as good at presenting as he is!

I would love to have attended both of Dennis Grice’s sessions and both of Greg Dhuyvetter‘s sessions and any session that Chris Bell does is always worthwhile. I lurked a bit outside of Stephen Davis‘ session and it looked amazing – if I hadn’t been trying (in vain) to fix my sound driver I would have attended that one!

Thanks to everyone involved with the T.E.L.L. ’10 Conference – I had a great time, learned some new things and look forward to next year in Orange County!

October 18, 2010 Reflections 1 Comment on Presenting For the First Time … Again