Reflections on the DEN LC Symposium
Filed Under (Work) by Laura Pilker on 28-06-2009
Well, last week I attended the LC Symposium at Discovery HQ in Silver Spring, MD. And I wish I was still there! I had such a great time, meeting new people, making new friends, enjoying great workshops and delicious food. I think it was the whole experience that made it so great for me. I could have watched the livestream, but being there was so much fun. I’ll give you a quick run-through of the events of those 2 days:Thursday, June 25:Arrived just in time to meet my roommate and head over to 1 Discovery Place for breakfast. We got to know the DEN Managers, learned about each of the LC roles. I attended the Chair meeting, where there were so many good ideas I couldn’t even keep up! I’m glad Matt was taking notes! Then we enjoyed some lunch and fellowship. After lunch, we rotated through workshops on Wufoo, which is an online form creator, Google Tools (I SWEAR by Google Docs, Reader and Calendar), and MediaShare, where Steve Dembo showed us some of the great resources available and how to upload our own to share. Last, we got a sneak peek at the new DE site, due to roll out this summer. It looks great!Dinner was a Cruise-A-Pa-Luau in DEN Vegas! Wrap your brain around that! We played Bingo, WiiSports, and Poker to win tickets, and used our tickets to try to win prizes. I won, like, 70 tickets playing Bingo (oh, I’m sorry, DEN-go!), but didn’t win any prizes. Oh, well. I was tired, so off to bed for me!Friday, June 26:The next day was even better- we learned about the new application process, and how they were working to make the application easier to fill out for our future STARs. Then we had a session which was, for me, one of the best of the whole event. Jannita Demian gave us some sample schedules for events, and then we got to meet with our LC team to start planning events of our own. So Renee Henderson, MD Events Coordinator, and I got right to work. We have some great events planned for August and September- but more on that later! After a refreshing lunch, we were schooled in the art of Second Life by none other than Riptide Furse and his team of SL’ers. We also got to hear from some of the teachers who have gone on the first round of Discovery Student Adventures to Australia and South Africa. Absolutely amazing! Where do I sign up? I’m ready to go right now after watching their presentation.The drive home was sad, and my transmission somehow busted on the way. I just enjoyed being there so much, and I hope to participate in many more DEN events in the future.
