The Techno Cheetah

I’ve been home for a little over a week now since the NECC conference in San Antonio and I’ve had some time to digest all the information.  First, I just could not get over how big the conference was.  It was amazing to me the number of people that are interested in educational technology and came from all over the globe to learn more about it. According to this article from the ISTE website there were:

12,654 registered attendees

577 international attendees from approximately 57 nations

88 registered journalists from around the globe attended NECC, plus hundreds of dedicated bloggers

The size of the vendor hall was also mind-blowing.  It was an amusement park atmosphere only without the rides and people are trying to sell you things   I tried to capture the size of the vendor hall but I don’t think the pictures really do a justice.

Again, from the ISTE article:

The largest educational technology event in the nation, spanning five and one half football fields, featured 1,340 booths and 479 companies displaying hardware, software, educational and technical publishing, and equipment/services emphasizing the use of technology by students and education professionals.

The Office of Media and Educational Technology has set up a blog where attendees from the Howard County school system wrote about what they learned at the conference.  You can read about two of the sessions I attended (here and here) as well as what others HCPSS employees learned at the conference.

I’m excited to use some of the ideas I came away with this upcoming year.

Wednesday evening’s enrichment fair was a terrific showcase of all the wonderful work our students have completed this year.  I saw many new and creative projects on display from the G/T program, the homeroom classes, and related arts.  Congratulations to Mrs. Colman and Mrs. English for organizing the event and to the students for all their hard work.

At the Educational Technology display, there were multimedia projects on display.  Did you know that you can view these projects on Bellows Spring’s website? Click on the following links to go view the projects online:

3rd Grade’s U.S. States Voicethread Project
4th Grade’s World Countries Voicethread Project
The Cheetah Chat, The BSES Podcast Network – includes 5th Grade Podcasts on health and science.