TechEd 2008 - April 15, 2008
April 15th, 2008This one is for the record books…
It is almost over. Can you believe it? After over a year of preparation and development, we are about to put TechEd 2008 to bed.
I think you would agree that today was another great day. Starting with some interesting keynote presentations from Tim Magner on the new School 2.0 website developed by ED.gov. We will make sure to get a copy of his presentation to post on our website.
Bernard Percy was also a hit and shared some great quotes and hilarious images — all of which were somehow related to his presentation on Authenticity in Education. His powerpoint should be posted for download later tonight.
I received some great feedback on the sessions today and the exhibit hall.
Please continue to stop me as I am running around, I love talking with you sharing your great experiences.
Cheers,
Matson Breakey
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Very Cool Exhibit Hall…
I finally had a chance to walk the exhibit floor and, let me tell you, there are some great companies represented and some incredible innovations on the floor.
I don’t have a chance to list them all, but some of our sponsors like Desire2Learn, Learning Objects, OmniPlatform and AT&T were sharing some incredible visions of where technology in education can take us and how to get there.
Then some companies have products like Caption Mic which absolutely blew me away.
The capability of the captioning software in recognizing the speech and creating instataneous text on the computer monitor… wow! I wish I has that when I was in school!
And others like nComputing which touts an incredible way of turning one computer into 30 for the cost of a few tanks of gas!
So, if you haven’t spent much time on the exhibit floor, I encourage you to do so… it is time well spent.
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Session Highlights
Wednesday is a light schedule, but there are still some great sessions not to be missed…
SPOTLIGHT SESSION - 8:00 AM
Why Gaming for Executive Education and Management Training?
VENDOR THEATRE - 9:15 AM
Free Professional Development & Free Tools for K-12 Educators
SPECIAL INTEREST SYMPOSIUM - 9:30 AM
Digital Inclusion: A Case Study in Riverside, California
And of course there are other great sessions like the 8:00 AM presentation about Sakai and Open Source solutions and a presentation from Xythos software about the Power to Collaborate, no matter where you are.
I hope you get a chance to enjoy these and the other great sessions!
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The Closing Keynote Presentation…
There is some great news and some bad news on the Closing Keynote front…
The bad news first….
Our much touted Local Avatar guest speaker (aka Dr. Bob Bramucci’s Second Life Avatar)
had to cancel. While this is rather dissapointing, I am sure the only real reason
you want to attend the closing keynote is for the Grand Prize Giveaway!
Which is the good news!
We are still giving away that very cool Alienware Area 51 m9750 Laptop! So you are not going to want to miss it.
The information Steve Poizner promises to share with us will shed some light on California, the education system and the where the economic crisis is headed.
See you there!