Welcome to NCS-Tech!

It’s hard to believe that about 24 hours from now, my daughter Holly and I will be preparing for what is, I think, our 7th NJEA Convention together. We’ve been attending since 2002 – before I was even a teacher. (I found some old photos of our past visits: here, here, and here; wish I had more pics.) I’m really looking forward to seeing everyone in “High Tech Hall,” the brainchild of NJEA’s Darryl Ensminger and Rosemary Knab, who, among many others, have been working for the past 12 months on details surrounding the biggest, best, most comprehensive technology-focused NJEA convention in history! I’m proud to have been part of the planning team, bringing my experience with social media and web 2.0 tools to this talented group. It’s going to be EPIC…

I’ve already written about our plans for High Tech Hall, so I’ll try not to repeat myself, but will say that I’m feeling a very strange sense of calm this morning, given all that has gone into preparations for this event, and the fact that I’ll be presenting three times in the next two days:

At 10:15 am tomorrow, I’ll be leading a workshop in High Tech Hall’s “Classroom #2″ entitled “Skype in the K-12 Classroom: Collaborate, Communicate and Innovate!” I’m very familiar with Skype and so I’m not nervous at all about the content, but, because I’m a lifelong learner and I need experience with the SMART Board, I decided to deliver my presentation using one. (I’ve never done that before … yikes!) In a nod to differentiation and Web 2.0, I’ve set up two “parking lots” using http://wallwisher.com/ for my audience members (newbies and experienced people alike) to share thoughts and ask questions during my presentation. And, because I don’t think THAT’s enough, we’re going to have someone from the audience sign up for Skype, install the software on my laptop, and make their first Skype call – live – as part of the presentation. You can check out my slides below.

My second presentation is a hands-on demo all morning on Friday (8:00 am to noon) in the “Technology Integration Showcase” of High Tech Hall. It is called: “FLIPpin’ SWEET! Student Created Video in the Classroom.” I’m bringing a small fortune of my own personal technology to this session, where participants will be designing, shooting, producing and viewing their own movies with Flip video cameras. I’ll be assisted by my teenage daughter Holly, an accomplished Flip video camera user in her own right. I produced a DVD last night featuring student-created video that I’ll be running on the 32″ LCD monitor at our table. We have laptops, my own Flip cameras, headsets, etc. and we’ll be making movies left and right. It’s going to be awesome!

Then at 1:00 pm on Friday in Room 404, I’ll be speaking on a panel entitled “Teacher Leader Pioneers” moderated by Peggy Stewart, NJ’s (2005 NJ state teacher of the year, Chair of the NJ Professional Teaching Standards Board, and a trustee  for the New Jersey Center for Teaching and Learning) featuring teachers Heather Henderson, Melissa Axelsson, Michele Fishman, Kevin Lamastra and myself. Our discussion will focus on these four questions:

• What makes you a teacher leader?
• What evidence do you see re: teacher leadership & its impact on school, community, student learning or job satisfaction?
• What should a teacher leader know and be able to do?
• How do we build capacity for teacher leadership?

To prepare for this session, I consulted my Twitter network over the past few days, and will be reflecting on their input as I formulate my own answers to these questions. (Honestly, this session is the one I’m most nervous about.)

I’ll be shooting photos like crazy (naturally) and uploading them to the Flickr set I’ve created for the convention. I doubt I will be able to best my performance from NECC 2009, but I’ll do my best. :)

I’m also looking forward to dinner tonight with fellow presenters Lisa Thumann, Susan Ross, Damian Bariexca, Susan Wahling, and Arielle Goldstein. We’ll be at Angelo’s Fairmount Tavern tonight around 6:30 pm or so!

See you in Atlantic City!

-kj-