Reflection from the TXDLA Conference - My Presentation/Review of Centra/Review of the Conference

Readers,

*I wrote this entry a few weeks ago after the TXDLA Conference and I never posted it to the blog. I always like to write a reflective blog entry after every conference (usually this occurs on the airplane on the way home).

Currently, I am en route to the DFW airport after attending the Texas Distance Learning Association Conference in San Antonio, TX. This was my first time attending this particular conference and I had a wealth of negative perceptions about the attendees. For example, I thought that this conference was just for techies, but after attending the conference I realized that I was a techie as well. I teach online and hybrid courses, but I am a complete techno junkie and I understood all of the jargon utilized at the conference. 

I attended and tweeted during each of the sessions. The first session I attended was presented by administrators from Texas A&M University. This particular session was simply amazing because it focused on Centra, which is a web conferencing software utilized by the Texas A&M System and my university has FREE usage of the software! Wonderful! This three hour session was very interactive and every participant had access to a laptop computer. We watched videos, completed polls, and maintained a great discussion about the features of the software.

After this hour long session, I was ready for lunch (which was provided for all conference attendees). Slightly before the conference session ended, I received a text message from a colleague at my university and she heard that I was attending the conference. I was so excited to hear from her because I thought that I was the only conference attendee from my university. So we met by the ballroom doors to enter the lunch/vendor room.

I wish that I took a picture of the set up for lunch, because it was very organized and the participants had a chance to interact with each of the vendors during lunch (because the lunch tables and the buffet lines were located in the middle of the ballroom). This provided the conference attendees and vendors with a great "bang for their conference dollar". I always interact with conference vendors because I realize how conference need to maintain positive relationships with each of their vendors to keep the vendors interesting in purchasing a booth space for next year's conference. 

During lunch, I had a great conversation with my colleague and we had time to plan an amazing project for next year. Yes, readers...this project will make a BIG impact on the state of Texas and perhaps the rest of the  nation! :) I am too excited about this project and both of us are extremely goal oriented! I will post more information soon!

After lunch, I had time to look over my presentation one additional time before delivering the content at 3 pm. My presentation was focused on one of my passions, Google Applications (Google Documents/Google Docs). I was so excited to see 20-25 session attendees at a later session because more sessions only had two to three attendees. Everyone seemed excited about the content and they really liked the Google Voice program. Several tweets from this session were:

@agozuna: Attending the google docs in online courses session. #txdla-339 #txdla2011”

@agozuna: Jennifer Edwards uses google docs for all course-related materials, including the syllabus. #txdla-339 #txdla2011

I distributed several business cards and I hope to have a few workshop opportunities in the next few months. :) After attending this year's TXDLA conference, I will DEFINITELY attend the conference in Dallas! :)

Sincerely,

J. Edwards

Millennial Professor - Jennifer T. Edwards, Ed.D.

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