As Lisa and I ventured to Austin, TX for TCEA a few weeks ago, we were on the hunt for Tim Holt. Why, you ask? Well, we heard from the best of the best that Tim knows a lot about EdTech and that he knew his way around TCEA - so we had to find him! From looking on the exhibit hall floor, the mezzanine, the iPlayground...the bunnies looked everywhere. Watch our video below and find out if we found Tim Holt!

I had the pleasure of attending a great session at TCEA – 50 Ways to Anchor Technology in your Classroom Tomorrow. Sounds interesting, right? Well, it was! Jessica Branch & Angelyn Cheatham session was chalk-full of great resources and tips! 50 resources and tips in fact!

I’ve picked my favorite 10 to share with you today.

Staci Perkins and Mark Weems had a great session on how to “Bling Your Blog!” I was intrigued simply by the title, so I knew I had to attend this one. After chatting with a lot of TCEA attendees, this was a hot one but I know everyone couldn’t attend, so I’ve put together a recap of tips and tricks for your blog.

Tip #1: Don’t overdo your text! Remember that sometimes less really IS more and who wants to come to your blog to read a novel? So, add pictures, graphs, charts, videos, etc…

Win a TI-Nspire graphing calculator!

Watch the video below and then answer the question “Why I love math” to win this top-o-the-line calculator (valued at $140) from our friends at Texas Instrument. If you happen to be at TCEA this week, you can catch up with them at booth 2271 and say hello.

I met Catalina and Michelle at our Tweet Up during FETC and had a great conversation about their “Beyond the Classroom Walls” presentation. So much so that I had to attend their session and had to talk with them further about it the next day. Take a quick minute to watch them briefly chat about their presentation.

Ok, if the title of this blog post doesn’t excite you, I’m not sure what will! Steve Dembo had an awesome presentation this year at FETC. His presentation was pretty entertaining, I have to say.

Steve Katz is ALL about teaching with technology, and specifically with video! He explains in his philosophy that “technology is a tool, not a subject and curriculum (& tools) are mastered when work is meaningful and engaging.” Steve also adds that “teachers must be comfortable with the tools before teaching them.” Watch this short interview to see what Steve says about his FETC presentation.

As much as we’ve been chatting out FETC and what a great time we had, I had the chance to experience something really unique. A tweet up. What’s a tweet up? Well, it’s an opportunity to meet up and hang out with our friends from Twitter.

First confession: I’ve been to a tweet up.
Second confession: It wasn’t anything to write home about.

As we all know, going to conferences is as much about learning at sessions as it is about meeting people and making connections.

Before I even stepped foot in the Orlando Convention Center for FETC, I had planned on attending Howie DiBlasi’s (@hdiblasi) spotlight session, “i-Create: Digital Projects for the 21st Century Classroom.”

Cindy Lane and Lee Kolbert held a very informative and fun session at FETC called The Biggest User! In this session, Cindy and Lee took web 2.0 tools that are used in the classroom to explain them further, and to vote on which one will be provided in their “Biggest User” wiki.