Welcome to NCS-Tech!

Good morning all!

When was the last time you had a day when EVERYTHING went just right? I don’t just mean a day in the classroom but an event, something logistically massive, planned for months, involving many people from all over the state, most of whom operated in a volunteer capacity with little in the way of clear command and control or infrastructure?

Well, that was our day yesterday (Thursday) at the 2009 NJEA Convention in Atlantic City!

Let’s be clear: the EXTREMELY talented team of NJEA staffers behind this including Michael Cohan, Darryl Ensminger and Rosemary Knab deserves a healthy pat on their collective backs for pulling off a VERY successful first day at the Convention. I’m pleased to have had the opportunity volunteer my time and lead the use of social media (Ning, Wikispaces and Twitter, mostly) to ensure everyone remained in touch and knew what was expected of them. Effective communication FTW!

Lisa Thumann was fantastic in her FIVE presentations in Classroom 2, delivering oodles of Web 2.0 goodness to the masses, most of whom (judging by the questions & answers) were just starting to build their educational technology knowledge base. Her sessions were almost always filled to capacity and beyond, with people standing in the back, taking everything in via the GIGANTIC, DUAL SCREENS that were only a PART of the visuals in the classrooms – a world class setup better than most I’ve seen at TECHNOLOGY conferences across the country:

My 10:15 am session on Skype went extremely well, thanks in large part to Bob The Sound Guy, an audio wizard who literally worked behind the scenes to make sure everything projected well. We had a tiny bit of feedback a few times but overall it was a fantastic experience. I’ve never had a “sound guy” for a presentation but I definitely recommend it!

Sue Ross from Middle Township Middle School rocked her hour-long session on Google Apps … again, the technology just WORKED … all the laptops had wired network connections and were plenty fast … her well-planned lesson was extremely popular, you could see it in the eyes of the participants and hear it in their comments to each other. “Kids would LOVE working like this!” Great job, Sue!

The only trouble I saw presenters have came at the end of the day in Robert Goodman’s session, “Science and Math-The Smart Way.” He could NOT get his Vista-powered laptop to work the SMART Board at all, it was quite unfortunate. He powered through the material just fine, but he was clearly disappointed that he was unable to show the interactivity made possible by his IWB.

The “Showcases” were also extremely popular (and extremely tiring!) – some of these folks went the ENTIRE DAY WITHOUT A BREAK (the attendees just kept on coming!) but that didn’t dampen their enthusiasm or resolve. They kept smiling, happily answering many of the same questions over and over and over and over and over and over and over until the day finally ended. I shot a lot of pics in the showcase yesterday of EVERYONE (not just Damian as shown above) so check out the collection. Again, the comments I heard from people were universally ecstatic! Everyone loved this small-group, relaxed and informal learning. Best of all, the showcasers were demonstrating REAL CLASSROOM PROJECTS AND APPLICATIONS people could relate to. It was truly a sight to behold!

On tap today: more classroom presentations and showcase goodness. Holly and I will be rocking our morning session, FLIPpin’ SWEET: Student-created video in the classroom! – people are going to be shooting, producing and watching their own movies on the convention floor. It’s going to be great fun! I’ll have a few minutes to grab a quick bite (mmmmmm, burger!) before my 1:00 pm panel presentation and then we’re done.

Helping plan this event for the last 12 months was a lot of work. It has been so worth it though. We are already starting to get excited about 2010. It’s crazy! Somebody stop me! :-)

See you at the Convention!

-kj-