VT Fest 2016 - Day 2

Another great day of learning with some pretty amazing people! I spent the morning talking about social media and the pros, cons, and challenges associated with it. Coincidentally I met another teacher from the district there and we had great discussions about the differences between how the schools operate and what we could each learn from each other. The long and short of it is that social media is necessary and expected, but so far most schools don't have a comprehensive plan to address it.

Then I headed back to the Innovation Lab to get my hands on some eTextiles! I quickly learned that conductive thread is hard to work with, but there are some really simple projects involving fabrics and electronics. I made a very easy flashlight and saw some examples of other eTextile projects. The woman I was working with kept stressing that when doing eTextiles with kids you spend most of your time teaching kids how to sew, which isn't always what tech people expect to be doing. It's certainly not what I had in mind, but as soon as she mentioned it I saw her point.

The battery and LED inside my flashlight.

Press-button activated.  I showed my daughter this evening in her dark bedroom and we were both amazed at how bright that tiny LED light shines!  It lit up her whole room!

They had a pretty comprehensive 3D printing project going on throughout the conference. I believe they started by printing the components to make a 3D printer. There was a kick-off on the first morning and a wrap-up at the end of the second day, but I didn't make it to either. I'm not quite ready to teach 3D printing yet!

I'm not sure what this is exactly, but I do know it's a functioning machine made entirely of 3D printed pieces.

For the last session of the day I went to a presentation about VoiceThread, an app that has been around for awhile but one that I don't have much experience with. I went with a very specific project in mind and I was pleased to hear one of the other attendees describe how she had done a very similar project using VoiceThread and it worked very well. I'm going to experiment a bit this weekend and hopefully use the app with my enrichment groups this week! I love when you learn something so practical you can implement it in a matter of days!

I didn't mention in yesterday's post that I had to leave the conference right at the end of the sessions and couldn't stick around for the doorprize drawings. I was really bummed because they had some cool products, like robots!, to give away.

Well, this afternoon I was able to stick around for the drawings and a woman ran in to there told me that they had called my name yesterday! Grrr... She didn't remember what the prize was, so I'm going to pretend it was a really boring thing and not the super cool bb8 that I really wanted!

Things turned around today though and right at the end they called my name and gave me a free Chromebook!! Not the robot I was hoping for, but you can't complain about a free computer! :) I'm really happy I got to go this conference, meet with so many cool people, and get my hands on neat new-to-me technologies! I can't wait to bring the knowledge and ideas back to the library and my kiddos at school.