The 2009 NICE Mini-Conference was an outstanding success! More than 200 people attended the annual event held at Adlai E. Stevenson High School on Saturday, January 31. Running a conference involves the hard work and collaboration of many people. Thank you to the entire NICE Board and to all of our presenters! Thank you Stevenson High School for hosting our conference at your wonderful facility!
We started the morning in Stevenson’s Forum area where people could view the mini-grant poster sessions, enjoy some refreshments, and spend time networking. Attendees then moved to classrooms where they could choose from among seven concurrent sessions held during each of the three 45-minute time slots.
This year’s sessions included presentations on digital safety, Web 2.0, blogging, Copyright and Fair Use issues, Google education tools, web pages, digital stories, Comic Life, Voice Thread and Apple’s iWork applications. Many presenters were teachers or technology specialists who provided specific classroom examples.
. . . the vast amount of resources I can take with me and share with colleagues.
Evaluations from the attendees, showed high marks for both the conference and presenters. The NICE Board thanks all the presenters for the high quality of their sessions, and for sharing their expertise.
Lots of usable ideas…
In addition to providing opportunities for sharing, learning and networking, the NICE Mini-Conference provided the attendees with a time to unwind during the culminating raffle which included more than 50 gifts, such as digital cameras and printers.
Thank you to all of our sponsors for their donations: Apple Computer, Atomic Learning, Discovery Education, FTC Publishing, ICE, Inspiration, Nettrekker, NICE, Promethean, Tech4Learning, Stevenson High School and Tom Synder/Scholastic.
This was the first mini-conference I've been to in a long time and it was wonderful. Now I'm hoping that the wonderful colleagues who belong to NICE will be willing to give me some help. My district wants all staff to sign an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP), but I see it as a flawed document and would like to know if any of your districts have one that you are not leery to sign. The one our district has chosen is all over the Internet; all you have to do is search the following phase and you'll get plenty of hits: "Unauthorized downloading of software, regardless of whether it is copyrighted or devirused." My first objection is to the word "devirused." I have looked everywhere that I can think of and this word just doesn't exist. I'm beginning to think it is like "irregardless." I cannot locate the original author of this document and don't know if it has been used with permission or if it's one of those "free for educational use" documents. I also have concerns about Intellectual Property issues.
I would really appreciate your input, as no one knows the ins and outs of technology like this group.
Thanks so much for your help,
Denise Reeder
LRC Director
Lincoln Middle School
Park Ridge, IL
Posted by: Denise Reeder | April 07, 2009 at 10:17 AM