Tuesday, February 13, 2007

A crashed server, thoughtful presentations, and touching base with old friends!

As a massive winter storm currently rages across Ohio, I am warm and toasty in a lovely hotel room in Columbus for the annual eTech Ohio conference.

On Monday, Chris, Tracy and I paneled a session on the new entry-year teacher online course that we're currently developing. With three units complete, we were ready to show all attendees the potential of this new elearning course. Unfortunately, we had to ask folks to visualize the engaging learning environment as the elearning server crashed. To Chris' and my dismay, the server was still down late that afternoon as we ramped up for our elearning presentation. Isn't technology grand!?

The day was not lost; I arrived in time for Will Richardson's keynote and later attended his session on blogging. I truly appreciated his thoughtful questions and references to good pedagogy.

The conference has been a great time to touch base with old friends and colleagues. Mike and Ron from Polaris, Lois and Anita from Cleveland, Paul (my former manager from my days in the Educational Technology Office in Cleveland who I hadn't seen in years)who's now with Educational Funding Group, and Tamera who participated in my blogging workshop last year. She's really taken to blogging with her Spanish students and is presenting on blogging this year! Seeing each of them was special indeed.

Tomorrow's my presentation and then we're headed home to what they say will be an additional 20 inches of white stuff. Hopefully we make it down the driveway!!