Well, I shouldn’t just gripe about presenter rudity without turning the spotlight on my own presentations in Austin. I had two. First up was an introduction to QuestGarden
which seemed particularly appropriate since QuestGarden debuted in very early beta form in a workshop at TCEA a year ago.
I got off to a rough start since the data projector didn’t arrive until three minutes before the presentation was to begin. I usually reboot my computer once the projector is attached to clear out any cruft that had accumulated in RAM over the previous few days. But I didn’t do that and so midway through the talk the dreaded spinning beachball on screen let me know that Firefox had stopped responding to my wishes. Had to restart and tap dance through the long process of getting back to where I was. Since the demonstration of QuestGarden, the heart of the session, was cut short, it was not a completely satisfying experience for me or the audience. I’d give myself a C+.
The second presentation was called GeoTeleWikiPodBlogCasting for Understanding and this is the first time I’ve given it. I began with a quick review of some of the coolest applications of geotools, wikis, blogs and podcasting, then cautioned against doing things just because they’re cool, and then went on to speak more generally about how these tools and sites can be applied well to teaching and learning. Unfortunately I didn’t pace it right and spent too long on the examples. That cut short the time I had to cover designs and strategies for teaching which was really the most important part. No technical problems, though, so I’d give it a B.
I’ve got a list of things to do to bring both presentations to an A grade next time so it wasn’t a total loss.
