I meant to blog while in San Antonio but between all the meetings and the wrong combination of Internet access and laptop presence, I never did log in while there. What I mean is, when I was inside the conference center, sometimes I had my laptop and was too busy checking out the exhibit hall to want to go on the web. Other times I had my laptop but I was in my conference hotel where access really poor (why have a meeting room without access in the 21st century?). And other times I was in the conference area where access was great and my laptop was back at the hotel. Sigh. It really made me wish I had an iPhone. But that’s a story for a future post…

San Antonio was really lovely. The Riverwalk area is simply fascinating to me. I love the way it winds around town here and there, lined with shops, restaurants, and other interesting sights to see. One morning we grabbed our Starbucks coffee and scones and sat by the water watching the birds. Then we meandered a few hundred feet over to the riverwalk boat tour area and took in the sites via the river. That was so pleasant. It was early morning and not too hot yet. My dear friend Karen from CT came with us, too. (She’s got the iPhone which I covet.)

My sessions at NECC went well. It was so nice to have help from other NH educators at the poster session on ICT literacy. Thanks Sonja Gonzalez, Karen Switzer, and Gerry Ryder! I couldn’t have done it without you there to help answer questions. We did have a good amount of traffic stopping by. It was nice to tell the NH story of how we are using portfolios in our schools. My other session on tech lit assessment went well, too. We had lots of questions from the audience. Here’s Sylvia’s blog entry (GenYes) about the assessment session. Presentations from both sessions are on NHEON now in the “presentations” section.

Next weekend I’ll be headed to San Antonio for the annual SETDA meeting and ISTE’s annual conference – NECC. I’ll be doing a conference poster session on digital portfolios and a panel discussion called Assessing Student Technology Literacy. If you check the conference website, you’ll see that I’m a bit behind in getting my materials ready for both of these presentations! This weekend is catch-up time to get all of that together, spiff up my websites with all the new material that’s in my “pending” files and links, and post some conference handouts. Here’s where to find me at SETDA and NECC:

SETDA Meeting at the San Antonio Marriott Rivercenter
Saturday, June 28 thru Monday, June 30

Using Digital Portfolios for ICT Literacy Assessment
Monday, 6/30/2008, 1:00pm–3:00pm; HGCC Tower View Lobby, Table: 21

Assessing Student Technology Literacy
Tuesday, 7/1/2008, 3:30pm–4:30pm; Grand Hyatt Lone Star Ballroom F

Today I learned that Barack Obama talked about the use of digital portfolios for student assessment in a speech he gave on November 20, 2007 in New Hampshire. This made me wonder how he might have learned about what we do in New Hampshire with our ICT literacy standards and the digital portfolio requirement. I suppose it could have been (a) some NH educator discussed it with him at one of his informal campaign stops along the way or (b) someone on his campaign staff was responsible for doing a little homework on what’s happening in education in our state. Regardless of how this came about, I think it’s pretty cool that digital portfolios were even thought about on the campaign trail. Here’s what he said:

New Hampshire has been a leader on this. You’ve developed innovative assessments, including digital portfolios, to develop and demonstrate student proficiency in technology, science, and other core content areas, and there’s no reason we can’t start replicating this all across the country.

This is a blog about educational technology. It is not my “work” blog — you can find that one (ETNews) here. ThinkICT is a place where I can record things that I am fascinated about in the world of ed tech. I also started this blog because I really wanted to be able to expand on some of the ideas contained within my dissertation research, which is also on my website.

Don’t know what the acronym “ICT” stands for? Well, many countries now refer to “information and communication technology” as simply ICT. The term can really encompass a whole lot of digital tools and how we use them. So welcome to my online ed tech space….