Truger’s TechTalk

This is a story about my personal adventures at ICE 2009. There are no exciting links to new information, just some wisdom to share and story to tell that has a happy ending.

This years ICE conference was very different for me. I felt a whole new layer of responsibility, it could have something to do with the fact that I will be the Co-Chair next year. I was looking at ICE from a different angle not just as a committee member which was new for me but from an administrative kind of place too.

I did several things at this years ICE that I have never done before:

1) Pitched in every time I could

2) Presented as a spotlight

3) Had my first ever panic attack and break down

4) Taught Steve Dembo something new

5) Ended the conference on such a high note despite a rocky start

I always have a fabulous time at ICE. I have many friends that are vendors who I only see once a year that I get to spend time with. I also have been going to ICE a very long time and know quite a few people. ICE is always a very social occasion for me as well as a “learning odyssey”. (Coincidentally the theme for ICE 2010)

This year my learning odyssey was more of a personal journey than most. I was a little nervous about my spotlight presentation on UDL and technology as I have never done it before. I also had some very quick tech and equipment changes that had to take place in between sessions. As I was readying myself for my session, my anxiety kind of started to kick in but I assured myself everything would be fine. I was wrong.

The quick tech and equipment change was a disaster. The people who were supposed to be there to help me, through a series of mis-communications, never showed up. I was there by myself trying to set up an interactive whiteboard and moving cords and tables around! I had less than 15 min. I did ok, although I was sweating by this time and noticing how the room was so narrow and confining…the projector settings were all messed up and no one could figure it out. I had to start, time was up for fussing with things. I figured I would just go with it. Things started out ok, there were only about 10 people in the room, which for some reason made me more nervous than when there was a packed room. My heart was racing, my palms were sweaty, this is totally not like me at all. I have been presenting for years and have never felt this out of control.

My session started out a little rough but was seeming to get better. Things weren’t smooth, but it was almost over, the easy part was last, the sharing of the tech tools. My heart was beating so hard I could feel it in my dry throat (no water of course). I clicked on the link for the internet and NOTHING! I had no connection whatsoever. The entire last 15 min of my session counted on these tools and there was nothing there. I tried about 12 things to try and fix it…I yelled “Red Shirt”(our tech support people) but no one came. I could feel myself losing it. My eyes were watering, I felt like I was going to puke, I couldn’t breathe…I turned to the group and said, “I am going to let you go now, I am sorry I wasted your time”…I then turned my back on my audience and stood in the corner and burst into uncontrollable tears and sobbing. I could not stop for the life of me. One of the worst parts was that my Mom was watching the whole thing. I couldn’t stop thinking about how upset she must be. I reached into my bag and called one of my best friends and asked her to come right away, she did. She cleaned up my session while I hightailed it to my hotel room for long hard cry.

After about an hour, that same friend came to my room. I was ready to go home. I was not going to present ever again, I certainly couldn’t be the co-chair for conference next year. I was never going to leave my hotel room! She basically hugged me for a few minutes and then told me to snap out of it! She said “You are a professional and you are going to get yourself together and walk out of this room into that conference with your head held high!” “You are good and you are going to use this experience to be even better”….Then she left.

I was left with my own thoughts, finally I started to get angry. Angry with myself, angry with people who weren’t there when I needed them, angry with the guy I overheard talking about that crazy chick who broke down during her presentation….anger was much easier to handle.

I had another presentation in 2 hours. It was another I had never given before. I went to speak with my support team. They promised they would be there for me and they were.

My second presentation went wonderfully. It was on Google. The entire room was filled,right on the side was my own tech support team and in the front row were many friendly faces all there to show their support. I was so scared that I would not be able to present again, not with confidence and zeal I always had, but with everyone’s support I not only did presented but according to a few friends, “I rocked it”.One of my highlights of the conference was when Steve Dembo said to me…you taught me a couple of new things! : )

Throughout the conference as people heard what had happened to me, they came up to me to share their own stories and show their support. It was amazing. It became easier to share and I wasn’t embarrassed anymore. I learned that this was just something I had to go through.

The second time I did this preso, I was hoping for smooth sailing but this was not the case. I was working in the bar area before my session and somebody trying to get the better of me and psyche me out before the session starting talking very loudly about “going to that UDL session and hoping that they might learn something before the presenter broke down”. I simply gathered up my computer and moved to a different location, I was not going to let them get to me.

In preparation for my session, the interactive whiteboard was supposed to be move into the ballroom from another location, unfortunately the tool to disassemble the board for it to be moved disappeared. My session was starting in 5 min and there was no way to move the board. I made an executive decision, I walked into the ballroom and invited everyone to follow me to the preso as we were changing location. I held the preso right there on Bourbon Street (kind of strip mall area with cobblestones)! I wasn’t wired for internet and nothing went smoothly in the transition but eventually we made it through and the best part was that I never felt that crushing panic. I knew that I could handle whatever came my way and I did.

I am sharing my story so that others who may have had this happen to them and are ashamed can stop being embarassed. We are all human, some of us more than others. If I learned nothing else, I learned that I can handle whatever life throws at me. This was the most embarassing moment in my professional career, but it also turned out to be one that I am most proud of.

Thanks for reading my story. Feel free to share it with anyone you think it could benefit.

~Anne

Things have gone from 0 to 60 in my life lately. All of a sudden I find myself very overwhelmed. There are so many things to talk about. I have been on a fast track personal and professional learning journey.

Professionally, I know more about the Universal Design for Learning than I ever thought I would. My PLN has been growing exponentially on Twitter, but not so much on Plurk. I created my very own wiki and I am quite proud of it. I am presenting at ICE and MACUL in the next month. I have been asked to Co-Chair the 2010 ICE Conference which puts a whole new slant on things for me this year. I am going to be on a CyberDay Committee for my county. I am still an active member of the DEN in SL Leadership Council. I have been asked to be part of a Digital Arts Playground at NECC.…there is just so much going on that my head is spinning.

Personally, things are also a bit crazy. My kids are getting more and more involved in things that require a Mom’s touch. We are hosting our the Annual Family Reunion this year which translates to “the house must be redecorated and painted” (didn’t know that was part of the bargain) and money is tight, just as it is everywhere else.

This year ICE is about “balance” for me. I need to learn to balance all of my interests which seem to keep intersecting and taking me in new directions. I also need to practice saying the word “No”. ICE is notorious for getting me into trouble with new committments, presentations and or pilots. I want to balance what I want to learn with what I should learn. There are always sessions that I think, I really should go to that one, but it really doesn’t interest me. I need to not be selfish and think about others and the information that they need me to share when choosing my direction.

I also want to think about my “toolbelt”. My toolbelt is getting a little heavy these days, do I really need to keep all of these tools and keep adding more to my arsenal. I feel like I should be starting to be more selective and choosing my own path not just following others….hmm that may be another blog post another day….don’t have the energy to analze that right now.

I am very excited to be heading to ICE next week. We put on a fabulous conference. I always come away renewed with energy and excitement and a “brand new” idea to run by people. Some stick, some flounder, some fail and some succeed but there is ALWAYS something new to think about.

My learning journey continues

~Anne

This Saturday, Jan 31st if you are in the Chicago area and want to attend a GREAT professional development activity…come to the NICE Mini-Conference. The NICE Mini-Conference is being held at Adlai Stevenson High School in Lincolnshire from 8:30 - 1. There is no pre-registration and the cost is $5 at the door. We have many DEN members presenting including Steve Dembo! Really for only $5 you can learn and grow as an educator! Plus there is an awesome raffle at the end of the day (I am in charge so I know just how awesome!)

I hope to see many DEN STARS out to shine!

~Anne

JessieMarie Flanagan - DEN SL LC

I’ve been tagged by Mark Dunk (AKA Unklar) to contribute to this meme. The idea is that you share 7 things about yourself that would be unknown to your readers. Here are the rules:

• Link your original tagger(s), and list these rules on your blog.
• Share seven facts about yourself in the post - some random, some weird.
• Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
• Let them know they’ve been tagged by leaving a comment on their blogs and/or Twitter and/or Plurk.

I was shocked to be tagged. After all the last time I wrote here was almost a year ago. Mark told me that this is the reason he tagged me, so I could start writing again with a purpose.

*Sigh* It took awhile but here I am. Trying to decide what kind of things I can reveal about myself and just how much I want to open up to other people. The upside is that not many people will read my blog since I have not written in such a long time : )

1) Who am I? I am the mother of two amazing boys. Ages 7 and 10. The 10 year old is on the Aspergers spectrum. I am wife to the most wonderful man who adores me. I have wanted to be a teacher from the time I was 5. I am an Instructional Tech Specialist for a special education district. I am a person who is never really sure of themself and looks to others for validation. I was teased mercilessly growing up and have never really developed the skill of letting comments just roll off of me. I take things to heart, the positive and the negative.

2) Where do I want to be in 5 years? I have absolutely no idea. Everything up to this point in my life was planned on a timeline project I did in 5th grade. We created a timeline of what we wanted out of life and I have come to the end of the line and now do not have a clue where I want to go. I got my Masters before I got married, got married by 25, had 2 kids by 30, have a steady job….but now I approach 40 (yes I revealed my age!) and I am lost. Do I want a doctorate? Do I want a Type 75? Do I want to go back into the classroom? Do I want to …..?

3) I am a follower and have no desire to be a leader. Leading scares me. I don’t want to make a mistake and screw things up. I prefer to follow and learn as I go. Although there are people that think I am a leader, I do not consider myself one.

4) Ok so now for some fun facts: I am a soap opera junkie! I watch all the ABC soaps, my DVR is my lifeline. My Soap Opera Digest AND Soap Opera Weekly are my sources of info. I use the soaps to “escape reality” and see that my life even on it’s worst days, isn’t as bad as Erica Kane! LOL

5) I watch waaaay too much TV! Not only do I love my soaps but I am also a teen angst fan. That’s right I love Gossip Girl, One Tree Hill, Greek, Lincoln Heights…etc.

6) I hate reading philosophical and deep books! I know…I know, I should read the Earth is Flat, Wikinomics, Brain Rules…etc. but I just don’t enjoy thinking that hard when I am reading. I prefer my contemporary romances and criminal stories: Allison Brennan, Sandra Brown, Nora Roberts….the list goes on.

7) I was in the Miss Teen Illinois pageant my junior year of high school. An ex-boyfriend submitted my picture and never told me. When the pageant called to tell me, I hung up on them twice telling them to leave me alone because I thought it was a gag! (Remember I had ZILCH confidence growing up)

Ok, so now anyone who has read this far knows way too much about me. I can’t believe how hard this was to write. It made me face some tough truths but also allowed me to laugh at myself.

The next part of this post is supposed to be tagging people to go next. This is very tricky because this meme has been around so long that most of the people I know have been tagged before, but I will try, please let me know if you have already been tagged and I will try to fill your spot.

The first person just started blogging about a week ago, so I KNOW she was not tagged yet.

Val Donnan (A bright new Illinois STAR)

Beth Lepper ( AT Coordinator who hasn’t blogged since 2007!)

Dave Hohulin (Infinitec) He may have been tagged before but time will tell.

Yasmin Eisenhauer (DEN STAR)

Patricia Shaw (DEN STAR)

Lynda Baker (DEN STAR)

Marie Coleman (DEN STAR)

Well that’s 7! Wow that was tough! I don’t know how many responses I will get but I did my duty! LOL

Special thanks to Unklar for giving me the kick in the butt I needed to try blogging again. You have not heard the last of my ramblings….. : )

~Anne

JessieMarie Flanagan - DEN in SL LC

Now that I have had some time to decompress and get caught up on work I can now share more of what I learned at Il-TCE. Aside from the having most amazing workshop, I was able to meet the most amazing people. Many of them were fellow DEN members that I only knew virtually.

First on the list was Scott Meech. Scott did a great preso on Comic Life. Comic Life is something that my district is looking at adding to the standard load. I loved Scott’s presentation style! He used humor and strategically placed laptops to show just how easy Comic Life is. He handed out laptops and just told people to create! No tutorials…no hand holding just do it! And you know what? They did! It was just that simple. Ironically the two who had the laptops were PC users so they were also using Macs! It was so clever…SCORE for Scott! Of course Comic Life is now PC and Mac.

The second, OMG moment came while standing in the Discovery booth chatting. I looked up and saw this pretty blonde, she looked so familiar…hmmmm uh oh! She is looking at me….look down…..where do I know her from? ACK! I am so bad at this! Ok I give up….looking back up with a smile on my face to be friendly…she just looks at me and then all of a sudden…Anne?!?!?

OMG! Do you remember me? Tracy??? No Way!!!! It hits me! This is Tracy Kirchner(now Selock) from college! Tracy and I were little sisters in the same fraternity back at ISU in the early 90’s! We hugged and couldn’t get past how much of a parallel our lives had run. When I knew Tracy she was a small town girl who just wanted to get out and now she is a mom of two boys (me too) living in her same small town, but the irony is that we both ended up working in the field of Instructional Technology. We both have Masters in the field and we both are STAR educators! Talk about an unexpected connection! The DEN brought us back together and I couldn’t be happier! I am hoping that we will be able to renew the friendship that we had in college and get to know each other as professionals at the same time. If you read this Tracy….EMAIL ME!!!

My final unexpected event took place on the very last day of the conference during closing ceremonies. I actually won the grand prize drawing (Thanks to Lori who encouraged me to throw my name in at the last minute!) I am the proud owner of a new 77inch SMARTBoard….the utter craziness of this all is that I work part time as a trainer for the Promethean ActivBoard!!!

Like I said it’s been a wild and crazy ride!

~Anne

I have just arrived home from another amazingly successful IL-TCE (Illinois Tech Conference for Educators). It was a wild week of learning, presenting, networking and trial and error.

The week started off with my presentation of a 2 day workshop on “Clay in the Curriculum”. Everything went fabulous. I had 8 people and the groups just melded together so well. They were awesome…took 20 min for lunch and then they were back working before I did! Their independence allowed me to meet a good SL/Twitter friend and help her with her workshop.

I am referring to the wonderful and quick on her feet, Meg Ormiston. Meg was tasked with the first workshop experience in SL to ever be attempted at Il-TCE. I stopped in to see her and introduce myself to find that SL was being blocked by Linden Labs. After several phone calls and an entire tech crew (the red shirts) sitting outside the lab, we came to some conclusions. One, you can’t create SL avatars all from one outgoing IP addy and two, we needed help! After much discussion the workshop was moved to a different location and they were able to continue. They even got a bonus when Kathy Schrock showed up in world to give them a personal tour! Kathy agreed to help us out with the future presos as well. It seems that when you “own” an island you can get service.

I made my way back to my own workshop and the groups were moving along at a quick pace. They made great clay animation videos. Here is one of them:

There is so much more to share but I think I need to process it a little more before sharing. Watch for WOW!2~Anne

This past Wed we had our 3rd snow day of the year. This is in a district that just not have have snow days. I was actually kind of bummed out, yet another day of being locked up in the house trying to entertain my kids. Just then the phone rang, it was a parent in Corey’s class wanting a playdate, I happily agreed and hung up, then another call, another playdate for my son Nathan. Both parents want the kids at their house…Woo Hoo! This day is looking up : ) I dropped off both kids in near whiteout driving conditions, took 45 min to go 4 blocks and back, but now the house was quiet.

I opened up my laptop to check my email and I found out 2 exciting things. One, ActivStudio 3.6 (software for my activboard which can finally work with Leopard) was released just that morning and two, Kidspiration 3 was just released as well!!

First, I had to get ActivStudio 3.6 going. It took awhile but after several calls to tech support I got the correct download and installed it. I held my breath while I launched, since this is where ever since Leopard was put on machine the entire thing crashes, and low and behold everything worked great! Finally I can work on my upcoming IL-TCE workshop presentation! Woot! I played with AS 3.6 for awhile, but then I just couldn’t resist downloading Kidspiration 3 a minute longer so off to the Inspiration website I went.

The download was painless and the wait was soooo worth it. I am sooo excited about the new Math View tools, and I am not even a math teacher. If you are a math teacher you MUST check this out. I am super energized about using these tools with the district’s ActivBoard as soon as possible. I want to give a quick shout out to Jennifer Wagner (Technospud) who rushed home from work to skype with me and show me around the product that she knows so well.

Check out Kidspiration 3, you will be glad you did.

FETC was a great experience! So many amazing people all in one location. My adventure began on Monday night while trying to travel to Orlando. I was due in at 4pm and didn’t arrive until almost 8pm. (Very typical of airline travel lately) I was picked up at the airport and enjoyed a fun dinner with friends at Bahama Breeze. The next day my learning journey began. I was in a 3 hour workshop on GarageBand. The presenter was Rick Reece. He had great handouts and I learned a great deal. I can’t wait to get moving on some GarageBand projects with my HS Ed/BD classes. The second half of my day was spent at Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure…not a bad way to spend a day.

This brings me to Wed and the DEN precon event. We had a great time and learned so much from Hall presenting on the “Hidden Meaning behind Codes” and the DEN STARS who shared their knowledge with the group. We had so much fun! We even had virtual attendance from a few STARS who could not make it to Florida. Lunch was a nice trip to Downtown Disney for sandwiches at the Rainforest Cafe and then we all caught the bus back to prepare for the Jeff Corwin, keynote presentation.

We had reserved seats for the keynote (does Discovery know how to treat us or what?!) and by the time it was over we were all revved up and ready to start the conference

I spent half of my time in Orlando attending presentations and events hosted by Discovery and the other half attending sessions. The one thing that I did notice is that there seemed to be many of the same topics just being presented in different ways. However I was very happy to see a “Special Education” strand being highlighted at the conference. I usually have to read between the lines to figure that out. Thurs and Friday were spent attending sessions and visiting the large vendor area. Friday night I flew home after a 3 hour delay. The following morning I was the co-chair for the NICE (Northern Illinois Computing for Educators) Mini-conference, so I can honestly say that by Sunday I was in a learning coma and it has taken me until today to be able to process my experiences and start to write about them.

I learned so much and I can’t wait to start sharing with you.

~Anne

I am sitting in a session at CTG which is an Assistive Technology conference. I went to a great session of free resources for the students with special needs and the most exciting thing was that I learned about some new tools!!! Usually I have at least heard of the site but there were some that I never heard of and even better, ones that I will be using. I have my laptop with me at the conference and paid for wireless for my entire time here, so that I can communicate different things that I learn as I go. I am notorious for not posting in a timely fashion, so hopefully this will solve some of these issues.

I am adding the exciting sites to my del.ici.ous account and tagging them with CTG. Feel free to check out the sites there may be something that you can learn from as well. The most useful site I received was the one created by the presenters Paul Hamilton and Jane Rondow. http://paulhami.edublogs.org/

I look forward to sharing more as I learn more!

~Anne

I am down to the wire and need to get my proposals submitted for NECC today or tomorrow. I find that I keep going back to my old stand bys for presenting…Clay Animation. Don’t get me wrong I LOVE doing it! I get a great sense of accomplishment and no one seems to mind me doing the same old routine with new samples and formats. I just feel like I need a new challenge. Something new to present on. I was thinking about SL, but with the huge push of SL at last years NECC I have a feeling that they will be inundated with props about that. I am trying to come up with something original, but I am also submitting my clay stuff as that as gotten me in the door the last 7 years. When I present my district pays half, the problem will come in if I am not accepted, then how do I justify it to my hubby. *sigh* In preparation I have reserved rooms at 5 hotels, so I can choose where I want to stay. I am planning on going, now I just need to get accepted.

I also got the go ahead and actually ATTEND a conference I am not presenting at which is very exciting for me. I am going to FETC this year for the first time. Anyone else?

~Anne