Ohio eTech Conference 2012 (Day One)

So, I just came home from the eTech Ohio Conference in Columbus, Ohio.  It ran from 2/13 – 2/15, Below is a re-cap of Monday’s events.

I  must say, I think I learned more from the vendors in the exhibit hall, than from the presentations.  I will write about a  few of the vendors in a post later…But there were a few presentations that were a stand-out!

On the first day, I attended an 8:00 am session on how to “ditch the OS and go straight to the browser” by Anthony A. Luscre.  I attached a link to his presentation.  Pretty good stuff.  But I noticed that I was having an extremely difficult time with the wifi in the building.  I tried to tweet about it, but all my tweets were saved as drafts and I started to go through Twitter Withdrawal as I called Verizon to secure my own personal hotspot!

It was over in time to for me to see the keynote speaker,   Dr. Michio Kaku only to run out 20 minutes into it to attend another presentation about using QR codes in the classroom by Michael Roush.  This session proved to be more interesting than the first, but I was totally intriqued with what Dr. Kaku was speaking about.

So…note to conference schedulers…try not to schedule any presentations during a keynote speaker!

By this time, it seemed that the wifi was working, but I also had my own Personal Hotspot in case it failed again.

Note to conference people:  Wifi would have helped in the Exhibit Hall too!  Could have tweeted and emailed like crazy.  I did not want to use the “email stations”.

I had some time before my One o’clock session and I jumped into an “Advanced Registration” event.  I had tried to register in advance for it, but I guess so many people jumped on the website during the first hour it was “emailed” to me and I was locked out.  I am probably going to get in trouble for this, but no one was guarding the door to the event and I just walked in, took an empty seat and got ready to be amazed at how to “Create free websites with Google Sites.  The presenter  was a “google certified instructor”, but the session was geared for all levels of tech–from newbies to pros, and it moved so slowly.   Anyway, the presentation was more geared for secondary or post-secondary instruction rather than elementary.  Why?  Because Google does not block inappropriate materials and the gadgets are questionable.  I won’t even post a link to the site, but if you want to check it out, go right ahead.

Anyway, I left after spending more than an hour in the room and the presenter said something rude as I walked out.  Something about “Go ahead and leave…”  I didn’t reply.  I just walked out.

I ran over to the next session…Students+WiFi+School Bus=Mobile Learning Success!  How a school district put wifi in 3 school buses and purchased iPods for the students to use.  It was a cool presentation by Catherine Holewinski, Buckeye Valley Local Schools.  The title of their project was called:  Project Boost (Building Outstanding Online Student Technologies) So much better than the boring Google session.

If you are interested in looking at the eTech Ohio 2012 Guidebook (link to the online version for laptop/desktop)

I was unable to attend any more sessions as I was inspired and fascinated by all of the new technology available to schools and teachers in the Exhibit Hall.

Day Two…To be continued