Sunday, April 10, 2011

Presented Virtually at InnovatED


Thursday evening marked a new milestone for me. I did two presentations via Skype for the InnoveatED conference held in Memphis, Tennessee. InnovatEd was a blended conference with both in person and virtual presenters. I heard about this opportunity from Cindy Brock on Twitter and quickly signed up to present. She accepted both of my proposals and added me to the wiki she and her co-workers put together for the event.

As fate would have it my laptop got a virus Wednesday night and I was scared that I wouldn't have it to do my presentations. I relaxed when I remembered that my presentations were on Google sites, so I could access them from any computer. So I brought my school laptop home with me. I felt so geeky because I had both computers running and was logged onto the uStream channels so I could watch the other presenters.

At actually 5:40 my Skype started ringing (I love that sound) and I went live to a room full of educators in Memphis and to anyone who happened to be on the uStream channel. During my first presentation I used the screen sharing feature on Skype to show my slideshow on lessons I've learned and best practices I've developed while using Web 2.0 tools with my 4th graders. Twenty minutes later I was done with the first one. Wow, that 20 minutes went fast, but I managed to get through the presentation right on time.

I presented again in the same room at 6:00 so I just stayed online. Education with Edmodo was what I presented next. I love using Edmodo with my students and I know I was bubbling over with excitement. I had set up an Edmoodo group for the educators attending InnovatED and invited them to set up a free account and join the group. Seven of them did immediately. I finished just in the nick of time again. Phew, how time flies when you are having fun.


Above is a photo Philip Cummings sent me via Twitter to show me what the room I was presenting to looked liked.

I even got to fill in for a virtual presenter who didn't answer her Skype call. When I saw that they were missing someone, I tweeted and IMed on Skype that I would gladly fill in if they wanted me to. Richard Cumminghan acknowledged my offer and I quickly pulled up Symbaloo and shared how I am using it both personally and with my students. I felt like such a seasoned presenter to be able to do a presentation on the spur on the moment like that.

I was excited to have had a great experience using Skype to present. I really handled the tech part of it with ease. Of course I was following the hashtag on Twitter and got some great feedback. Thanks to everyone who worked on putting this conference together. I appreciate being able to participant both as a presenter and an attendee.