The Blog of Ms. Mercer

Classroom 2.0 Conference I was so glad I took the time and went to the conference. It was great meeting people in person that I had already gotten to know online (like Steve Hargadon and Andy Card). I even met some new folks that were fantastic. Everyone was friendly and very helpful. We saw some great tools, and I learned new things about tools I already familiar with. I learned more about Wikispaces and heard some great background stuff from del.icio.us on social bookmarking. It was not a huge conference (seemed like somewhere in the 50-65 range), but it had enough people to make it interesting, but still few enough to make it personal. I would say that folks were mesmerized by the Vyew and Diigo presentation, but this brings up the one wrinkle that will probably need to be ironed out in the next conference. The presos were done by vendors and showed some great products, and in reflecting on it, there may have been more of what Wes Fryer refers to as “enthrallment” vs. “engagement”. I brought up a concern that the presos should be short, and more like commercials highlighting features (not hitting every one) lasting 5-10 minutes with 30-40 minutes spent doing hands on work with the applications. Steve heard that concern, and acknowledged it, so I think it will be addressed in the next conference. I feel for these folks in the sense that they may not be sure which feature will attract users (so they hit them all), and they want to make the case for the pedagogy of their product, but if they are as good as I know many of them are, it’s pretty obvious what the strengths are, you just need a few choice examples to show how fantastic they are.