This being my first time at a large, education and technology conference, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Honestly, I expected a lot of superfluous crap on the vendor floor, and I got that. It was disheartening to see scores of people milling around presentations for little clicker devices, rigid software, and tablet PCs (sorry I just don’t see it). I think those things may have a place, but they are certainly not the end-all, be-all fixes for all that ills.<\/p>\n
My hopes, however, were also confirmed and enhanced. I believe the best technology is the technology that allows infinite possibilites, and endless options. Too often, I think, technology is viewed as a way to enforce that everyone do everything the same way. The best sessions and presentations I saw were the polar opposite. The future, I believe, will be in unlocking the individual’s creativity and voice. Allowing for interpretation in a way that suits each person.<\/p>\n
So, from the sessions on podcasting, blogs, wikis, and storytelling, I felt that excitement. Tools that allow the individual’s voice to shine. I did see one new commercial product I was very enamoured with: InspireData<\/a>. It looks to be a great data collection and analysis tool, and it seems to be crafted in a way that allows great flexibility in the interpretation and presentation of data.<\/p>\n The other wonderful thing about the past few days has been the turbo-overdrive web browsing I’ve been doing. I’ve come across a bunch of new websites, tools, and ideas. (This post is being written and posted with Qumana<\/a>, a free, open-source, and cross-platform blog editing tool.(which needs a Window menu, I just noticed))<\/p>\n So now, a couple days off, I’m going to watch some soccer, visit some family, and gear up for iSummit 2006<\/a>.<\/p>\n Tags: necc<\/a>, necc2006<\/a>, necc06<\/a>, qumana<\/a>, inspiredata<\/a>, iSummit2006<\/a><\/small><\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" This being my first time at a large, education and technology conference, I wasn’t quite sure what to expect. Honestly, I expected a lot of superfluous crap on the vendor floor, and I got that. It was disheartening to see scores of people milling around presentations for little clicker devices, rigid software, and tablet PCs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[24],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-edtech"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pf4VN-dr","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.colianni.net\/aj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}