Day 1 — NCAECT

Yesterday enjoyed a goodly number of preconference workshops led by Tammy Worcester, Kevin Honeycutt, Leslie Fisher, David Hostetler, Jodie Smith, Melissa Thibault, Dr. Bobby Hobgood, David Walbert, Deborah Goodman, and Gail Holmes. I’ll report a bit about my workshop on personal learning networks and the collaborative web later. To top things off, Deneen Frazier wondered around in character (other characters), playing the workshops, presenters, and attendees. She told me this morning that her 12th grade character was offered a job. Would be nice to get you back in North Carolina, D.

I did my customary count of emerging tech terms and salient issues in the program and found the following occurrances of:

That last two seem interesting to me. I could be wrong, but referring to THEM as learners, as opposed to students, seems to imply a more active process of building knowledge — of being more responsible for the learning, while student implies a position of passivity, sitting in their desks and being vessels to be filled. I don’t know. What do you think?

Of course, there is nothing scientific in this search, and it isn’t meant to suggest any judgement on this or other conferences. I do seem more and more focus on “web 2.0” technologies. Since I am only presenting three times at the general conference, I’ll have much more time to attend and listen. So I’m sure there will be further reflections on the conference.

Here is an issuu of the conference program.