lisablog

NECC 2007
__Sunday__ Who's bright idea was it to meet at 5AM to begin our flight to Atlanta? Karla went down yesterday, Dorothy and I are coming down today. Karla had a direct flight to Atlanta, while Dorothy and I had to make a pit stop in Indianapolis. As much as I like direct flights, breaking up the flight was pretty nice. We arrived Sunday afternoon in Atlanta. After checking into our hotel we headed over to the Conference Center to check in and begin looking through the mass of information provided in our conference bags. Dorothy, Karla, and I worked to make sure that we had addressed a wide variety of areas of learning.

I attended the Leadership Orientation and Networking Session. I met a variety of individuals including some technology directors from around the country and actually learned more about the ISTE and John Hopkins collaborative. We then headed over to the Opening Keynote which we were introduced to Andrew Zolli a futurist who took an interesting look at demographics and generations, you can listen to his podcast on the iTunes music store- it is free. Our opening reception was held at the very awesome Georgia Aquarium.

__Monday__ Oh alarm clocks at 6AM are painful. My roommates were privy to my smacking the alarm clock to shut it off. Lucky them! I still however, was the last one to roll out of bed. Karla got to the conference center so early that she got a free padfolio from ISTE. I guess the early bird gets the worm.

My first session was about Leadership 2.0, this leader provided me with the knowledge about how to be the technology leader in a 21st century school. I then went to a session where the subject was on technology standards for Technology Teachers, yes I too have standards. My final session of the day was called “Birds of a Feather” there I learned about how to make a ‘web presence’. Dorothy and I returned to the hotel to begin working on our web presence- you can check them out on our school website, under community, [|staff webpages].

__Tuesday__ In the morning I met with Karla as we disseminated the information that we had the previous day (it has been really go-go-go), it was a good chance to reconnect and begin planning our next day. The first session I went to was AMAZING, it was talking about how to get girls interested in technology. I then met up with Dorothy to go to a session on data-driven decision making where I learned something interesting about how incredibly important research is- good thing I like research. The final session I went to talked about how to measure the value of technology, this summer I am working on the model proposed in this session. I can share more if interested.

__Wednesday__ I started my morning by attending the Technology Leadership Forum, there we talked about how to to use innovative technologies. My group planned how we were going to implement Google Apps in the classroom. To relax my brain I went to “This is NOT your Grannie’s classroom” where I learned about how to effectively engage students. The closing keynote on Wednesday was powerful to say the least. Dr. Tim Tyson a principal for a middle school Georgia. I left the conference with many ideas to begin using at St. Raphael’s.

Also check out my new blog, http://www.srsmn.org/lisasjogren/wordpress