NCTIES is my state’s International Society for Technology in Education affiliate (ISTE). It stands for North Carolina Technology In Education Society. They will be holding their annual conference this week at the relatively new Raleigh Convention Center. In the last few years the state capital’s downtown has become a descent place to hold a conference. More restaurants, museums, night life and many more people living downtown, making the streets safer.
I finally went through the conference program yesterday and was struck by several trends that seemed apparent during that scan. So I thought I’d spend a few minutes this morning doing a casual frequency analysis.
| Number of term mentions in the conference program | ||||
| Term | 2012 | 2013 | Trend | SD |
| Game, gamilfy, etc. | 14 | 73 |  |
3.5 |
| iPad or iPads | 34 | 68 | |
2.1 |
| apps | 25 | 49 | |
1.5 |
| Common Core | 15 | 42 | |
1.6 |
| resources | 72 | 42 |  |
-1.8 |
| Web 2 | 67 | 34 | |
-2.0 |
| play | 6 | 34 | |
1.7 |
| Professional Development or PD | 65 | 34 | |
-1.9 |
| free | 37 | 33 | |
-.2 |
| engage | 33 | 33 | |
.0 |
| 61 | 32 | |
-1.8 | |
| 1:1 | 77 | 30 | |
-2.9 |
| Apple | 8 | 22 | |
.9 |
| Collaboration or Collaborate | 24 | 22 | |
-.1 |
| 10 | 15 | |
.3 | |
| iOS | 14 | 14 | |
0 |
| tablet | 5 | 13 | |
.5 |
| blog | 28 | 11 | |
-1.0 |
| Minecrqaft | 0 | 8 | |
.5 |
| Android | 2 | 1 | |
-.1 |
| laptop | 11 | 1 | |
-.6 |
In a casual counting, I found 205 concurrent presentations being made during the conference including the student showcases and not including the two keynotes. Of those 205, 51 of them (24.5%) are being delivered, at least in part, by vendors. 35 are being delivered by presenters representing elementary schools, 20 by presenters from middle or intermediate schools, 15 from high schools and 14 from universities. I am especially happy to see so many presenters from five of our state supported universities, two private universities and one community college.
The happening place in North Carolina seems to be Rowan-Salisbury Schools with 14 sessions being facilitated by 33 district educators. Also notable is Union County Schools with 7 sessions and 18 educators.
I’m doing one session. But hopefully, I’ll be setting a productive tone for the conference.
I’m looking forward to seeing old friends at NCTIES
Added March 5
I finally found a list of last years presentation descriptions, and searched for the frequency of the terms in this table (above and left). I inserted a column for the 2012 conference and then added a column with arrows to indicate the trending up and down. To quantify the change, I added a final column with the number of standard deviations of the total change. This sounds like I know more about statistics than I really do.
Thanks so much for recognizing Union County Public Schools and our efforts to connect, share, and learn. I would like to suggest that NCTIES participants look at the session, Time Saving Tips for Teachers using Google Drive. This session will support teachers in saving time utilizing templates and tricks created by Instructional Technology Facilitators (ITFs) in Union County. The ITFs in Union County are former Master Teachers so this session is definitely one that all educators will enjoy!
Rowan-Salisbury Schools is such a great district that understands the importance of using technology to engage students and give teachers the opportunity to use it to motivate and inspire students! Can’t wait to learn so much more this week at NCTIES!