Interestingly enough, although we were all at one dinner table, my iPhone GPS had my location as across the street, so I could not even check-in at the restaurant. Obviously the waitress got a big kick out of us learning and working while waiting for our food...we are so nerdy.
The sessions at the conference I attended were full of great information from the presenters, with excitement and good questions from the participants. I was able to meet some tech people I virtually knew, like Kevin Honeycutt and see many of the other very tech-savvy crew!
My session dealt with Twitter and was well-attended. Since the theme of the conference was safari and discovery, of course I dressed the part! The audience was primarily made up of those who could not figure out why they would ever want to use Twitter and those who were already heavy-duty tweeters. I tried not to overwhelm the "newbies" and I did get a bunch of new follower on Twitter the next day, so perhaps I did convince some of them!
It was a safari-themed wildlife adventure bulletin board made from their Cutout Maker, and the teacher who was able to bring it home was ecstatic! (Our middle school just got the DesignCenter and the Cutout Maker and I am doing workshops on it for the next couple of weeks.)
I chose to attend some sessions containing tips, tricks and successful practices about the items we already use in the district-- Google Apps for Education, Google Wave, and Discovery Education Streaming (given by Hall Davidson). I learned tons of new stuff that I can use the next time I am doing professional development in the district. In addition, the very vibrant Ron Clark was the luncheon keynote and he absolutely got everyone jazzed!
The NCTIES conference wiki is filled with all types of links and information, so I suggest you check it out! In addition, all the links that were tweeted with the #ncties hashtag are linked from that wiki and are in delicious, all 569 of them!