Things learned from the NCCE 2012 conference

Our regional technology conference is called NCCE and it was held in Seattle last week. Here are some things that I learned from it.

1. A new poet to follow: Taylor Mali gave the keynote address, which embarrassingly brought me to tears at points. "Let me teach... Like I'm on the edge of losing everything."
2. Going beyond digital curation: über librarian Christopher Harris challenged us with many ideas, some that I did not want to hear. One was the idea of producing more quality information along with others. The other was to hold off on attempting to get into ebooks as a school librarian. The large publishing house ebook market hasn't created great structure for us yet. Although smaller publishers like Rosen are doing amazing things as well as Mackinaw VIA. Rosen has a CyberSmart ebook series that is worth taking a greater look at. The idea of creating and sharing information and curriculum was something that I can appreciate. I enjoyed spending some time on curriki.org and may go back again soon.
3. A few new Apps to look at: I was thrilled to see others at the conference using Evernote to take notes on the iPad. I was starting to think that I was the only one using that robust and creative tool.
Also downloaded iBook Creator. I am pretty disappointed in it after todays session. As far as I can tell you can't make the pages text wrap. I think that the best use of iBook Creator is for photo stories. I can see using it with a class where they have to take pictures with an iPad and then provide a narrative. After downloading iBook Creator and being disappointed, I went ahead and downloaded the open source ebook creation tool called Sigil. More on that after I finish my project on it.
4. Twitter. Not wanting to feel behind the times at a Tech conference (fate worse than death) I finally signed up for a Twitter account. Really enjoyed using the conference hash tag to see what people were thinking about. Have plans to continue Tweeting and reading especially with hash tag #tlchat and #edchat. So much to read and learn.