Cathy Nelson’s Professional Thoughts

Processing the last 2 weeks of the Upstate Technology Conference and NECC, and I still can’t seem to put to words all that transpired or even how I felt about it all. I feel a sort of elation, though many have expressed disappointment or even more critical feelings about NECC. I’m still satisfied with my conference experience, as I got to meet SO MANY virtual friends f2f. This picture of nodes was shared frequently at NECC, but it really represents well how virtual relationships can expand your learning. My learning in the last 2 years can mostly be attested to virtual relationships I have cultivated in the last 2 years.

In the last 2 weeks, I met up with my friend Chris Craft at UTC, and together we went right in and met up with Ewan McIntosh and David Jakes there in Greenville. I also met for the first time f2f Pat “Loonyhiker” Hensley. I hung out with Heather Loy, Pat Hensley, Maryann Sansonetti, Julia Davis, and Chris Craft, and best, Daid Jakes and Ewan McIntosh came and ate lunch with us the one day I attended UTC.

At NECC, it was nice to meet up again with all the people I hung around with in Philadelphia at Educon 2.0, like Laura Deisley, Will Richardson, David Jakes, Joyce Valenza, Carolyn Foote, Kristin Hokanson, Robin Ellis, Sylvia Martinez, Chris Lehman, Maria Knee, Marcie Hull, and way too many others to mention.

I met f2f for the very first time Diane Cordell, Kitty Forbus, Doug Johnson, Derrall G, Vinnie Vrotney, Lisa Parisi, Stefanie Sanderfer, Darren Draper, Wes Fryer, Mighuel Ghulin, Scott Mcleod, Kevin Honeycutt (actually I did meet and get to know Kevin at EBC/NECC 07), and Dean Shareski, just to name a few.

The trip to San Antonio was worth it alone for just the opportunity to meet and talk shop with all these people. I had a great mixture of sessions and meeting up with my peeps while IN San Antonio. I am defintiely looking forward to NECC2009 in DC already. Can you believe I read where someone had already booked their rooms for next year’s NECC?

Today’s photos are compliments of Crafty184’s photostream, and mine.

Chris Craft, happiest person I know! An SC resident, no less. My mentor and friend.

David Jakes (from the Chicago area) and I–we made a pact to be buddies in real life, even though we are not buds in Twitter. Who needs Twitter when one can have a f2f friendship?

Upon meeting Ewan McIntosh (Edinburg, Scotland), he pulled me close, kissed me lightly on each cheek, and exclaimed, “Cathyjo, you look just like your avatar!” It was the sweetest greeting I think I’ve ever gotten!

Meeting Diane Cordell (upstate New York) was quite possibly icing on the cake! We met through social networking circles and have cultivated quite a friendship in the last year. What spunk!

I finally get to meet Kitty Forbus. Oddly enough I think we virtually met through my blog in its earliest phase, and then cultivated a friendship by playing with the tools (remember our foray into Skype, Kitty?) and most recently mentoring Kitty through some of her National Board Certification Process. Kitty is form Alabama, and recently my school district lured her superintendent away to South Carolina. Talk about a small world!

Lisa Parisi is from Long Island, NY, and we have met before in many social networking circles. She is so genuinely nice and SMART! I want to be like her someday.

Perhaps there will be more post-NECC reflections. But I just had to share about the people I met recently. So who did you enjoy meeting, and better, where are the pictures?

Attribution:

Okay so I’m still reeling from our session at NECC (so titled in the above blog title.) You can visit our wiki handout here. It is very surreal to even now reflect and realize that I have done 2 presentations (both panel style) with Joyce Valenza. My other panelists, Carolyn Foote, Diane Cordell, Judy O’Connell, and Anita Beaman, all could have held down the session alone too. I am astonished at the content I alone learned in our session, and all was pulled together with only a little interaction before hand. We each sort of divvied up the topics, and went our own way with them, not sharing a whole lot until right before the conference. I think this is why I was able to enjoy listening after my contribution.

Time was ticking

Speaking of that, we began with Joyce going first. I was stunned at the number of slides she used, considering we had all decided before hand to just use pictures, and leave the text for our voices. Not a single bullet or visible powerpoint template to be seen, which seemed to go over really well. I had nine slides, Joyce had twenty-seven last time I counted. OUCH. I was following her, and we had decided before beginning that we each had seven minutes to talk. Seven minutes times seven people (Kim Cofino had a part that was pre-taped using Voice Thread) would mean forty-nine minutes, leaving ten minutes for discussion and questions/answers in a perfect world. I worked hard to make sure my part was seven minutes, and so having nine slides should have made that easy. I saw as we all loaded our slides on the wiki in the days leading up to our session that some had a large set of slides. I wasn’t worried though b/c Joyce had said seven minutes, and she had a large number, so I just figured if she could cover hers in seven minutes, we all could create that many and be successful.

Sometimes it’s a perfect world…

Well it wasn’t a perfect world, b/c even with a timer, some of the group went over their allotted seven minutes. I was just after Joyce (what huge shoes to fill) and so felt at ease thinking I would probably be done with mine well before my time was up. Low and behold the timer gave a warning of one minute and I still had 2 slides to go! I wrapped it up in just exactly seven minutes, whew! Our time did not allow though for Kim’s video, but it is available for any who still haven’t seen it. Awesome work too.

I became a sponge

After my part, I just sat back and absorbed like crazy b/c shockingly enough each panelist was FANTASTIC. I am proud to report that I learned so much from the other panelists. It is worth your time and effort to go back and watch/listen to the session, which is on the wiki in an archived u-stream (THANKS Derrall G.)

One of my OMG Moments

One surprise I had in our session was when just after we began I saw David Loertscher–yes, THE David Loertscher–come in the back of room. Since we had a full back channell (from the Ustream chat–53 was the highest number I saw–and then the “cover-it-live” live blog that Carolyne Foote was trying to maintain, I decided to let it be known that he had joined us. I tweeted, added it in the Ustream Chat, and added it in Carolyn’s live blog. Shocking to me, about a third of the room turned around to get a glimpse of David Loertscher. WOW. That is truly a powerful feeling–1) he chose our session (and that he was AT NECC), and 2) other people in our room were apparently live in the various chats and visibly turned to look for him. (He even has a blog–though its not as up to date as I like. Still, I’m impressed.)

Now What?

This has made me realize that we in SC should also do a session like this for SCEdTech, SCASL, SCASA, SC Middle School Conference, and any number of other conferences held around our state. So, I’m looking for recruits. Who’s in? Chris? MaryAnn? Julia? Bob? Fran? Come on!! I also think its time for me (and all the other panelists as well) to step up to the bigger conferences on our own. It’s Independence Day, right?

Want to see some other streamed sessions from NECC? Visit here.

Image Attribution:

Image: ‘David Loertscher‘
http://davidloertscher.wordpress.com/

Image: ‘Flat time‘
www.flickr.com/photos/45451323@N00/108818423

Image: ‘Panel‘
http://necclibrarians08.wikispaces.com/

Image: ‘Sponges‘
www.flickr.com/photos/96878569@N00/826064663

I am working on my slides for the panel discussion. I’m sure i will tweak them again and again before the big day. But here is round one of the editing process. They may take on a whole different look before then, but who knows?

My contribution focuses on professional development–us getting it and giving it–using 2.0 tools. Anyone have any suggestions? I’ll gladly take them!

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Draft 2

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BUMMER! I’m having difficulty with the embed feature, and so while I work t resolve it, you can see my work in progress here. UPDATE: Fixed! thanks to Sue Waters.