Are you an ASSET to your school?

As I sit here next to our school's Technology Integration Facilitator and Library Media Specialist, we are at the Huntington Hilton at the 2008 ASSET conference. ASSET is the Association of Suffolk county Suppervisors for Education Technologies, and it represents a passionate group of education professionals looking to use technology as a resource to best suit the needs of their student population.

To be honest, this conference is not my scene. It pains me to be away from my classroom, but I am grateful to be exposed to such software, hardware and most importantly, progressive thinking.

Karen Kliegman and I will be presenting today. We will be discussing Web 2.0 tools, and she has named it "More than Just Razzle Dazzle." I love that, because once the novelty wears off and the shine dulls a bit, it is important to know that we have something of real value.

The Keynote speech is being given by Rushton Hurley, the Director of Next Vista For Learning. He is very interesting, using humor to engage us all. He is also using interactive clickers (similar to SMART Senteos) to gauge audience tech familiarity and pedagogical points of view. He is excellent, and his words are very thought provoking. Mr. Hurley said "Getting kids actively involved in learning – get them to stop and think 'why?'" We need to use new tools to accomplish that.

Fast forward q few hours, and I am sitting in the lobby reflecting about the first workshop that I attended. It was all about the SMART Technologies Senteo system, and it was excellent. I left there very excited to try them out, as our school has just received them. Now I have more work to do!

The presentation I did with Karen went very well, and I enjoyed being there. She did most of the work to be honest. I just provided some practical classroom experience reflections along with my own ramblings. My thanks go out to Karen for asking me to work with her, and to ASSET itself for putting it all together.

I hope that everyone left as optimistic and as intrigued as I am! Now the hard work comes; the age old question that has plagued me all year: How the heck does this stuff fit into my curriculum?!?!?!?!