Ed Tech Day

EDTECHDAY 08

Educational Technology Day - Thursday, March 27 9-4pm
Campus Center, Ithaca College

Blog

It’s Showtime!

Posted on March 23, 2008
Filed Under The Inside Scoop

The months of preparation are done. We’re finishing up a few of the last minute details. Vendor booth shipments are starting to arrive, and we’re all looking forward to another great show!

We have another great variety of vendors - from national companies such as Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Adobe, and the like, to smaller vendors specializing in things like eclassroom design, storage systems, and security.

This year’s lineup of seminars looks to be very interesting as well. As to be expected, “green computing” has emerged has a theme, with a number of vendors talking about steps people can take to reduce the impact on the environment by running “green” datacenters and services. Storage, security, and the next generation of operating systems from Microsoft and Apple, among other themes will be covered from various perspectives as well.

The College Showcase is always an exciting place to see what’s going on in and out of the classroom, and this year is no exception. There will be demonstrations of accessible computing, sustainable building, classroom technology, and a preview of Ithaca College’s brand-new Web portal environment for our campus community, and a whole lot more.

We have an incredible line-up of giveaways. Our grand prize, courtesy of Dell, is a brand new Dell Inspiron 1525 laptop computer, that is valued at over $1,000 and anyone attending Ed Tech Day can stop by the drawing booth and enter for free. The Computing Center, another long term Ed Tech Day supporter, has donated an HP Digital Camera that our campus radio station WICB will be giving away during the day. There will be other great giveaways happening throughout the event. Note that some restrictions apply to each giveaway, so you’ll need to see the entry forms for complete details and contest rules.

Preregistration ends at 5pm on Monday, March 24th. But don’t worry if you missed it - you can simply register on-site (and it’s still free!). And if you did pre-register, make sure you stop by the registration table and pick up your pre-printed nametag and entry coupon for our pre-registration drawing of an iPOD shuffle.

Don’t forget parking is across the street at the South Hill Business Park - just following the parking signs on RT 96B. There will be shuttle buses running continuously throughout the day.

Vendors, seminars, tours, college showcase, great giveaways, and colleagues, faculty, staff and students from over 120 different schools, businesses and organizations. Looks like another great event. And, the weather forecast even looks good - with a forecast of mostly sunny and around 40 degrees.

Time to rest up, and finish our preparations. We hope to see you at Ed Tech Day 2008 at Ithaca College.

-The Ed Tech Day Blogger

Great giveaways, seminars and more!

Posted on March 5, 2008
Filed Under The Inside Scoop

Each year Ed Tech Day offers the chance to win an array of great prizes and this year is no exception. Once again Dell has generously provided the grand prize, a Dell Inspiron 1525 Laptop (a over $1,000 value)! Just stop by the give-away booth at Ed Tech Day to register (some restrictions apply, see the entry form for details).

In addition, participants who pre-register for Ed Tech Day and collect their name tags at the door are automatically entered into a separate drawing for an iPod shuffle.

And there will be other great giveaways as well!

The seminar program is coming together nicely. One of the themes that has emerged is the concept of “Greening Up” the data center as well as other sustainable initiatives.  Check out the seminar page for a preview of the topics and descriptions. The final schedule with times and locations will be posted the week of March 10th.

It’s official – we’ve sold out of vendor space again! As always, Ed Tech Day provides a great mix of vendors and new technologies – see who will be there on our vendor page to learn more.

That’s all for now!

-The Ed Tech Day Blogger

View from Ed Tech Day Veterans

Posted on February 21, 2008
Filed Under The Inside Scoop

The event looks promising as vendors and participants continue to register.

We thought it might be useful to share past experiences of some of our employees and participants to provide you with an inside look at the day’s proceedings. Here is what some of the Ithaca College Community had to say about their experiences last year:

Melanie Darocha is a student office assistant for ITS. This will be her fourth consecutive year helping at Ed Tech Day. She has worked closely with vendors in the registration and setup processes. Melanie enjoyed the interaction with different areas and companies in the “positive and relaxed educational environment.” She described Ed Tech Day as the “perfect opportunity to mingle and network with vendors who are willing to share their knowledge of emerging technology.”

Jane Kaplan is a professor who has integrated emerging technologies into her teaching methods and curriculum. Last year at Ed Tech Day she presented the different educational tools she has used in her French classes and how web technology has enhanced her students learning experience. Jane believes Ed Tech Day is a valuable time to present your own projects as well as learn how others have used technology to promote active learning. Jane explained, “the atmosphere is open and casual, I was not afraid to ask questions.”

The ITS staff continues to work hard to ensure a very promising day of up-and-coming technology, education, fun and free stuff! Can’t wait to see you there!

- The Ed Tech Day Blogger!

Seminars and more!

Posted on February 8, 2008
Filed Under The Inside Scoop

Hello there! It’s been an exciting few weeks here at Ithaca College ITS, and each one that passes brings us another week closer to Ed Tech Day on Thursday, March 27.

Vendor and participant registration continue to run smoothly, so we thought we’d use this time to look at some of the seminars we have on tap for this year.

Expect a range of presentations that should appeal to both technical and general audiences. Some of the topics include: a discussion of the One-Laptop-Per-Child program; VMware; providing 24×7 tech support for faculty and staff; document management; electronic music tools; infrastructure development and much more. We should have a preview list of many of the seminars up on our seminar page within the next week or so.

We are also planning the return of the “Discuss…IT” sessions, giving attendees who are interested in the same topic an opportunity discuss the issue. Some of the topics that we’re considering for this year include: campus emergency notification systems, mobile computing, sustainability, and security. But, we haven’t yet finalized the topics yet, so if you have any ideas, we’d love to hear your suggestions (send an email to edtechday@ithaca.edu)!

The list of vendors for this year has been updated, and more are still arriving.

And, as always, if you haven’t yet already, don’t forget to register! We have more people signing up every day, and we would love to see you there.

-The Ed Tech Day Blogger!

The College Showcase

Posted on January 21, 2008
Filed Under The Inside Scoop

The spring semester starts up this week (if you can call 5 degrees outside “spring”). We’ve all been enjoying the quiet of the empty campus in January, but now that it’s getting busy again it is time to announce registration for this year’s college showcase!

Every year at Ed Tech Day we invite members of the Ithaca College community to participate in the fair by demonstrating the myriad of new and innovative ways that they’ve integrated technology into classroom and campus life. Last year featured information on the new (and now completed) LEED-certified School of Business, and the Roy H. Park School of Communications presented a fabulous display on the incorporation of the virtual world SecondLife into the school-wide curriculum. This year, we’re really looking forward to showing off even more of the amazing new ways that Ithaca College uses technology to make the college experience more rewarding than ever before!

Meanwhile, vendor registration continues: Adobe, Apple, Microsoft and Dell have all indicated they’ll be back again along with over two-dozen (and counting) others (the deadline is February 18th – but at this rate we will probably sell out of space before then). Participant pre-registration is also rolling along, and so far we’re on track to meet or beat last year’s attendance. Overall, we’re looking forward to another great event.

As always, keep checking back for weekly updates. We can’t wait to see you in March!

- The Ed Tech Day Blogger

Participant registration is now open!

Posted on January 7, 2008
Filed Under The Inside Scoop

Spring’s here - at least it feels that way at the moment with our unusual January warm spell (it is 55 degrees outside!). When not talking about the wacky weather, everyone is buzzing about Ed Tech Day ’08.

Here’s the latest update:

Preparations are in full swing, with a great initial response for vendor participation. A dozen or so vendors have already confirmed for the event, including our familiar friends Dell, HP, Blackboard, Finger Lakes Technology Group, and some new ones as well, with more coming in every day.

And so, with vendor registration off to a good head start, I’d like to announce that participant registration has officially opened! As in past years, we urge you to register as soon as you can. Not only does this help us accurately gauge and prepare for our volume of visitors, but registering in advance (and, of course, picking up your badge on the day of the event) automatically registers you for a chance to win one of our fabulous door prizes. Details on this year’s pre-registration prize will follow soon.

So there you have it — Ed Tech Day preparations are underway, and everyone here is counting down the days. We’re expecting a floor full of vendors, great giveaways, and more. The question remains: are we expecting you? Hope so! Visit our registration page and register today!

- The Ed Tech Day Blogger

2008 Vendor Registration

Posted on December 18, 2007
Filed Under The Inside Scoop

The 2008 Vendor Registration is now open. We’ve sent out an announcement via email to all of the vendors who have participated in past years and are spreading the word to others as well.

If you are a vendor (or know of one) who is interested in participating in this year’s show please download the vendor registration packet for complete details.

The show is getting more popular each year, and for the past 5 or 6 years we’ve had to turn vendors away. Always tough to do. So, if you’re interested in a spot in our vendor showcase we encourage you to get your vendor registration in as soon as possible!

The registration deadline is February 18th (or until we run out of space), and if you register and pay by January 21st you can take 10% off the cost of your booth.

Please drop us a note if you have any questions!
-Dave

Gearing up for 2008

Posted on December 13, 2007
Filed Under The Inside Scoop

Hard to believe, but we’re starting to get ready for our 18th Ed Tech Day on March 27th, 2008! Seems like it was just the other day that we were welcoming all of the vendors and visitors to our 2007 show.

Once again we’ll update this site and BLOG over the course of our preparations to give you some additional “behind the scenes” information about this year’s show.

The vendor registration packet will be available in late December, and participant registration will open in early January.

We’re looking forward to another great event - hope to see you there!

-Dave

Show Time!

Posted on March 19, 2007
Filed Under Ed Tech Day 2007

It’s ShowTime!

The planning is done, the shipments are arriving, and the checklist of finishing touches is being completed. Ed Tech Day 2007 is on!

We’re thrilled with the response to this year’s show. We have a fantastic mix of vendors (another sellout year), great seminars (more than ever), and participants registered from all over up state NY. It should be a great day, with a lot of very interesting technology on display.

I’m also particularly excited about our new “Discuss…IT” series of sessions where people with a common interest will have the opportunity to share ideas, talk about concerns and “tips and tricks”, and in general, just have a chance to, well, discuss I.T.

It has been a lot of work, but worth it. We are all looking forward to the event, and hope to see you at the show!

-Dave on behalf of the entire Ed Tech Day 2007 crew

Things are starting to take shape

Posted on February 5, 2007
Filed Under Ed Tech Day 2007

We’re now over two months into our preparations for this year’s event and things are really starting to take shape. The vendor registrations for this year have been coming in steadily for the past month. As usual, we’ll have plenty of returning vendors along with a number of new ones to round out the pack. I think that we’ll have a little of everything at the show this year. Check out our Vendor Page for the latest list of who will be here.

The seminars are also shaping up quite nicely, and in fact, I think that we have too many people interested in giving seminars this year. Not a bad problem to have, really. We expect to have a preliminary seminar schedule posted by the middle of this month. But here’s a sneak peak at some topics: Microsoft Vista and Office 2007, Adobe Acrobat, Connect Professional and Captivate, Free Software Solutions for Education, VMWare for Business Continuity, Security Solutions for Education, IP-SAN, Visual Networks in Education, Defending the Network with Security Information Management, and over 25 other topics and sessions!

New for this year we plan hosting various informal discussion sessions, tentatively titled “Discuss IT” with each session focused on a particular topic area, such as Deploying Vista, Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity Planning, Spam/Email, Security, New Technologies for Instruction, and the like. These sessions will be an opportunity for participants to talk with others who are interested in the same topic to share ideas, frustrations, and solutions. The sessions will be facilitated, but the content will come from you. We hope people find these sessions of interest and helpful. The specific topics are still being developed, so if you have a suggestion, please drop us a quick note (edtechday@ithaca.edu).

Along with lining up vendors and seminars, we’ve been busy spreading the word about the event. And to-date over 300 people have signed up to attend, which is ahead of where we were at this point last year. In a future posting I’ll give you a bit of insight into the demographics of our participants, but needless to say, they’re from all over upstate NY, representing most of the HE and K-12 organizations within probably 150 miles of Ithaca. Not bad.

Now, off to recruit some more vendors….

-Dave