I was down in Columbus, Ohio this week to attend eTech Ohio‘s annual educational technology conference, OETC13. I was involved in a number of interesting sessions, but my one “official” conference presentation was a BYOT titled “Student-Created Multimedia eBooks on the iPad in Grades K-3.”

The Google Site I created as a resource can be found here. I included quite a bit of background information that covers the current research on ebooks for young children, types of ebooks, selecting ebooks and also evaluating ebooks. This content is Flash-based, so if you’re trying to review it on an iPad, you’re out of luck. Sorry! But trust me, it is good stuff, so find a desktop or laptop and go through it!

The BYOD activity for the session is here. Please feel free to borrow, steal, use or remix with your students or teachers. If you’re just looking for my app recommendations from the session, here are the FREE ones and the PAY ones. If you want to learn more about how the session went, read on…

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I’ve spent the past few days getting everything in order for my trip to the Ohio Educational Technology Conference in Columbus. The conference runs from February 11-13, 2013. This year, I have a pretty full schedule. Part of that is due to the fact that I’ve been heavily involved in the planning for a new aspect of OETC. For the 2013 conference, a small team of edtech professionals from around the state have been working in conjunction with eTech Ohio to put together OECTx, the “official UNconference of OETC.”

OETCx is an event that’s happening in conjunction with the eTech Ohio Educational Technology Conference on Tuesday, February 12, 2013. This event will take place on the second floor of C-Pod (rooms C-224 through C-226) all day.

The idea is to combine social network tools and a participant-driven schedule to make the eTech conference more interactive and engaging.

In 224 and 225, we’ll have a number of areas set up for “unconference” style sessions. We’ll use a format similar to the popular EdCamps, where topics are decided on the fly and participants engage in conversations about those topics. This format allows anyone with an idea to collaborate with others around that shared interest. It also gives regular session presenters the opportunity to have followup sessions to continue the conversation and get feedback from attendees on their sessions.

Meanwhile, in 226, we have a number of sessions scheduled. These will include a simulcast and real-time discussion of the keynote, roundtable discussion of BYOD and 1:1, an Ignite-style session where teachers will share ideas in 5-minute presentations with 20 auto-advancing slides, an App Smack Down, and several scheduled sessions that will be in the conference planner. Read the rest of this entry…