The first summer conference I attended after our district finished was Midlands Summit. This was my first year attending the conference. I was very impressed by the featured speakers that included George Couros, Alice Keeler, Michael Jaber and more.
Kristen, Jessica and I presented three sessions:
- Turning the Tables: Reverse Panel on Edtech
- Roll the Dice with App Smashing
- Discover, Transform, Excel @ PD
Jessica created this really cool Thinglink instead of the traditional slide style presentation.
For Roll the Dice I define app smashing, show several examples and then challenge the group to create their own app smash product to share. When time allows we have a little app smash award ceremony for the best examples. This was a session Kristen and I did with our school two years ago and is a fun, interactive lesson. The challenge we faced at Midlands Summit was the variety of devices in the room, some tablets that I had never even seen before. I tried to share more than just ios apps, but there were many beginners in the room that had trouble getting started on their own product. I even had a few teachers sneak out when I turned my back. I guess I was pushing them way out of their comfort zone!
You can see the slides here.
In Discover, Transform, Excel @ PD we share some of our favorite professional development plans from this year. We were hoping to reach other instructional technologists with this session because so few conference sessions are created just for this group. We had two people attend. There was lots of competition with featured speakers or at least that is what I'm telling myself. But we had a great time and both attendees left talking about how inspired they were with our PD ideas. Yay!
You can see the slides here.
At the Upstate Technology Conference we shared these same sessions, Jessica offered a session on Flipboard, and Kristen Hearne led a session with our iStudents. I was so excited and proud to see so many of our iTeachers and teachers presenting at the conference.
I enjoy attending conferences to connect with my PLN face to face, learn new ideas and share our experiences.
Great post dear, we can improve our knowledge by attending Conferences. The structure of a conference and its content varies greatly depending upon the goals and the field which it is related to. There are many types of conferences. For example, an academic conference usually focuses on a single subject. In fact, an academic conference may only cover just a single topic form a particular subject.
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