TCEA 2008 preso deadline tomorrow

Published by in edtech on April 30th, 2007

If you are interested in presenting at the 2008 Texas Computer Education Association’s annual conference in Austin (scheduled for Feb 4-8, 2008) you have until tomorrow (1 May 2007) to submit your proposal! Yikes!

I submitted proposals for sessions on “Digital Music Creation: Engage, Inspire, Have Fun!” and “Welcome to the Global Education Conversation!” I hope to team up with others on a preso about “Cell Phones for Learning” and “Global Voices: Distance Learning Projects With Interactive Podcasting and VOIP Tools” as well. I first shared the session on digital music making with my then 8 year old son in Plano in October 2006. I’m sharing this in a couple of weeks at the Texas ESC Region 1 Technology Conference in South Padre Island, and again on August 3rd at the Oklahoma A+ Schools statewide conference. Having more scheduled sessions for that presentation gives me incentive to continue expanding my Garageband (and Fruity Loops) musical knowledge and skills! The session on the Global Education Conversation focuses on the K-12 Online Conference, and I shared that for the first time a couple of weeks ago in Holland, Michigan.

It’s so hard to submit presentation proposal ideas almost a year in advance! Who can predict what topics will be most relevant to discuss at an educational technology conference held 10 months down the road?! Such are the requirements of large conferences… I understand. It makes me appreciate the “just-in-time” nature of learning in the edublogosophere, that is for sure!

As I continue to share presentations and learn from educators here in the southwestern United States and elsewhere, I am increasingly convinced of two things:

  1. The most important thing we can do with and for other educators is help “plug them in” to the professional learning communities thriving and growing online.
  2. The most important thing we can do with our students to advance the cause of constructive educational reform is help them appropriately share their voices online via digital storytelling projects and contests.

I am SO looking forward to the 2007 K-12 Online Conference! I love meeting people face to face, and I enjoy educational technology conferences, but I have to admit my learning curve grows the most from asynchronous learning opportunities like those afforded by K-12 Online– when I’m able to time and place shift as desired, and learn as I can find/make time. I also consistently find that traditional face-to-face, “sit and get” professional development with teachers is very limited in many ways. Most significantly, when it comes to web 2.0 tools and connections, I find that teachers get overwhelmed very easily. Everyone needs to grow/develop their background knowledge/schema for new concepts over time, and that can’t happen all at once in a 45 minute presentation or even a three day conference experience.

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On this day..

4 Comments »
  • vejraska

    Oh rats! I was really hoping to meet you at METC 2008, but that is scheduled for the same dates as TCEA! I am sure we will eventually bump into each other…perhaps in SL. I agree that it is hard to soak it all in at big conferences….they get me juiced up though, and then I can come home and connect on a deeper level to educators online, and at my own school. It’s great to be able to discuss the most current ed tech issues, and then go have a catch with my son! Life if good!

  • http://www.educatingthedragon.edublogs.org Simon

    Wow, TCEA? they are getting themselves so organised. I wish I said a little more time to organise my thoughts. Over here in New Zealand we are discussing and developing Skype Talk and Write, organising what curriculum impact it can have on regular and smaller schools. It would have been good to discuss its contextual application with such an audience as the TCEA. Maybe I’ll await the K12 online conference and sign up for a presentation there. I agree with you with the edublogosphere. Sometimes it makes me realise how much I don’t know and how much i need to play catch up.
    I don’t know who said it but they were right: “If you knew you knew nothing that would be something, but you don’t.”

    How many educators are missing out because they have not become part of the conversation? Too many.

  • http://www.wesfryer.com Wesley Fryer

    How remarkable it is to have educators from Missouri, a state away, and New Zealand, half a world away, in this conversation thread. I know this is something we can take for granted today, but it never ceases to amaze me. Vejraska, I am hoping to attend and present at the MOREnet conference in October, so perhaps we can connect there! I do wish we didn’t have so many edtech conferences in early February. I didn’t realize METC was the same week as TCEA, our OTA (Oklahoma Technology Association) conference is also that week, as it was this year.

    Simon, I’m interested to hear more about skype talk and write. I haven’t used interactive whiteboards in many constructive ways for online learning in the past, but that is probably because of my own ignorance in how they can best be used. I saw a few weeks ago that the 3.0 version of Skype for Windows supports many new plug-ins, and some of the interactive whiteboards (perhaps “talk and write”) looked intriguing.

  • http://www.educatingthedragon.edublogs.org Simon

    Skype Talk and Write’s potential, I am convinced has far from beinig realised.

    I’m convinced I am only exploring the tip of an iceberg. If anyone else is interested what we are beginning to do with it is being explored at http://www.skypetalkandwrite.wikispaces.com

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