Upstate Technology Conference 2009

The Upstate Technology Conference 2009 was a fantastic conference and one of my favorite events of the year. I love getting to meet with other people from around my state that I only see online but not in real life. On Wednesday night we went out to dinner at Wild Wings and got to enjoy a real life visit. You can see my pictures of the conference here: UTC2009 Pictures

On Thursday I was schedule to present The VoiceThread Venture at two different sessions. I was thrilled with the turn out for the session and the response to the presentation. I felt that at the end, many of them were really excited about trying this out in their classrooms. I tried to show examples of how it is used at different levels so that everyone could see how this tool could be adapted to any subject and at any level. You can see my presentation below:



Here is a summary of the sessions I attended and my comments about them:

It all started on Tuesday afternoon when I went to Hide and Seek 2.0 which was a preconference session. I learned about geocaching and now I’m really excited going geocaching on my own (with my hubby of course!)

On Wednesday after teaching my morning grad class, I went to the session Using Photostory3 with Audacity presented by Robert Burdette. I have never used Photostory so I was interested in seeing what it could do and how it could be used in the classroom. I am also interested in seeing how I can merge my Audacity sound files with it.

The next session was Can We Work Together? Using Collaborative Tools presented by Cathy Nelson Fran Bullington. I really liked this because I learned more about Google Apps and Google Docs. I have not used Google Docs and Forms but I can see how it can be very useful in class.

The last session for me that day was No Budget Broadcasting presented by Chris Patterson Sara Adkins. It was really exciting to see how this teacher had students produce a daily TV broadcast on a shoestring budget. I like the way certain segments could be prerecorded and then spliced together.

The next session I went to was Q&A with Chris Craft. He gave a great explanation of how he did certain things. He opened it up for people to answer questions and share ideas and concerns. I loved how this was an open session with no major focus so the audience could direct this to where they needed it to go.

The last session of the conference for me was Buying Tomorrow's Computer Today... CHEAPER! I liked this one because I learned the different features that I should be comparing when I buy another computer. I imagine I will be looking for a new computer within the next year and this helped me get a better idea of what my needs are and what features will be needed.