NJAET 2009 Conference - Wealth of information

At the NJAET 2009 "In Tune with Technology" Conference in Lakewood, NJ, I had the great time learning. It was a mecca of information. I registered the very last minute ( the night before) because I wasn't sure if I could come due to some scheduling issues.

Looking at the list of activities for the day was overwhelming. I wish I could clone myself so that I could be at every single workshop - hands on or not. So here is how my day went at the NJAET 2009 Conference:

• 8:00am Still driving on Route 9 South
• 8:30am Arrived and registered at the desk
• 8:40am Figuring out which workshop to attend while eating bagel with cream cheese and drinking coffee
• 8:50am Visiting booths and getting freebies
• 9:00am Listening to B. McLaughin talk about "Blogs, Wikis & Podcasts: What are They and How Do They Fit in my classroom"
• 9:25am Still cannot connect my laptop to the wireless network in the university; been troubleshooting for the nth times; wasn't the only one alone with same issues
  
• 10:20am Met Lisa Thumann for Session#2 "In Tune" With the 21st Century Student
• 10:25am University's tech people came to the rescue and provided laptop users with some sort of a wireless connection - yippee!
• 10:26am Tweeted that I was listening to Lisa Thumann
• 10:35am "Do not teach me with the tools from your past" - powerful presentation
• 11:35am Meet with my co-attendee at lunch
• 12:45am My co-attendee won a raffle - another yippee!
  
• 1:00pm Listening to Zumu's owner, Liz Niederberger's presentation on "Making Your Website Work for your school, teachers, students and parents"
• 1:30pm Liz' laptop lost internet wireless connections and borrowed my laptop
  
• 2:20pm Hands-On workshop for "SmartBoards and Digital Learning" presented by Lany Burnett of Tequipment.com.

Posters, pens and bookmarks and a tote-bag -- these are just a few of the freebies that I got. But what counts the most is the experience and the learning I gained from this conference.