Week 10 Conferences and Workshops

This has certainly been a full week. We were given the opportunity to "attend" a conference with numerous presentations done by professionals in our field about integrating technology into the school library. These presentations were helpful in several respects as it gave me numerous ideas of computer applications I had never even heard about. It is also great that these conferences are available online for me to keep to view anytime I might need assistance in the future (as it would be impossible to remember everything).
Also, there were several presentations on professional development at this conference. These were especially helpful this week as I was finishing up my own workshop for a professional development seminar (for this class). I learned many different things about making these workshops useful for those who attend and making teachers (especially the "non-techie" ones) feel welcome and comfortable. Some of these strategies included offering food and beverages as well as time for mingling and networking. This allowed teachers to feel more comfortable instead of simply taking yet another professional development class. Also, I found it to be important to stress the collegial and social aspects to learning technology.
The semester is fast coming to a close and I think we are probably all feeling the pressure of getting projects done before it ends, but even amidst the stress, I can see how far I have come and how much I have learned throughout the course of these classes... It is exciting to look ahead to the future and the opportunies we will have to apply everything we are learning today in a school library.