It was the final day, but after a night on the town, I was wiped out, and only took in two sessions. The first worked out beautifully, the second was not such a great fit.
Session 10: Using Emerging Technologies to Create Collaborative Learning Environments
This was the session where it all came together. This session took a WHOLE bunch of cool tools, and then gave us some short assignments to complete on them. I’m guessing that many of us already had experience using these tools ourselves, but how often do you get to see what happens when 75-100 people use them at once (sorta like a version of my computer lab). The dynamics really change, and this session caught that. We had remote participation (someone was Skyped in), and there was a Yugma session where the desktop was shared.
By giving us a task (sharing what we know, and have done) it was more than just a cool tools session. It also showed how the creative chaos of such an endeavor could look like. It was kinetic, and crazy, but it was good. Most people had used these tools already, I guess the question is how did this help to learn how to use them collectively and collaboratively? For me it was helpful seeing it in action with a large group.
Session 12: The Man Behind the Curtain: Really Simple HTML for Non-Wizards
This session I did not get much out of because I was literally about to fall asleep in the middle of it. No, Hall Davidson was not that boring (here is a man willing to spray himself with a soda to get a laugh from the audience), but the lack of sleep, and early start to make the session on collaborative learning (oh, staying up until 2:30 the night before didn’t help). It had to catch up with me sooner or later. I think I attended this session because Hall was doing it, and I had missed him do his cell phone presentation. Since I started doing Web pages on the Internet by coding in actual HTML (this was before Front Page), I have no issues with facing the code. This was not a session I got a lot from, but it was a poor session choice, on my part. Still, it was fun seeing Hall spray himself with Dr. Pepper.
