Last week the TIGed team descended on Atlanta, Georgia – along with 13,000 educators – for the National Educational Computing Conference, a huge conference of teachers and school leaders who are integrating technology into the classroom. This was TIG’s 5th year at NECC and our biggest presence yet – several sessions, a booth in the exhibit hall that enabled us to connect with thousands of teachers, and lots of opportunities for networking, catching up with friends in the ed-tech world, and even some viral outreach. We have already had a few new schools sign up since last week and we're looking forward to welcoming many more educators and their students to the TIG community as a result of meeting them at NECC.

The most exciting event was launching our first ever TIGed publication: Making the Connection Best Practices in Global Education and Collaborative Technologies. Amita spent several months researching and writing the report, which includes the winning projects from the TIGed contest, and it was great to have it hot off the press. Highlights of the conference:

Sunday:
Stephanie, Luke, Amita, and Emily met at the airport after flying in from Toronto, Philadelphia, and New York, respectively; while Mike and Todd were brave enough to drive from Toronto with all the supplies for our exhibit (their adventures probably warrant a separate report). We registered and dropped off a few things at the booth, then had time to wander around downtown before the International Attendees’ Reception. From there we headed to the general reception at the Georgia Aquarium (read: thousands of people waiting in the summer heat to get inside!).


As we were standing in line, Mike and Todd arrived, so Luke and Emily went back to the Georgia World Congress Center to help unload the car while Amita and Steph braved the line for the reception (which was well worth the wait to get inside the world’s largest aquarium).


Monday:
We got to the Exhibit Hall bright and early to put the finishing touches on our booth before the conference officially opened. We welcomed the rush of visitors to the TIG booth, both teachers who are eager to engage their students in global collaborative action projects and those still new to the idea.

Other highlights of the day included
-A short presentation about TIG at the booth of our partner, Elluminate
-TIGed’s Spotlight Session, “The Power of Global Education in Your Classroom” – we had an eager audience in a room with a few too many chairs! – where we announced the winners of the Take Your Classroom Global! Contest
-Deneen Frazier Bowen’s session featured the winning videos from TIG’s Net Generation contest, giving voice to members of our community in a creative presentation about student engagement

Tuesday:
-Another full day of booth duty, speaking with educators, hearing their ideas for global project-based learning, and giving out information about TIGed
-What is a Global Citizen? panel facilitated by Jennifer Groff from MIT – TIG was represented on the panel along with iEARN, Global Kids, EF Tours, and MLC School in Australia

-Amita gave a poster session about how TIGed is being used by schools with 1:1 laptop programs


-Stephanie presented a poster session about innovative student projects on TIG


-We presented three TIGed contest winners with their prizes in person – Julie Lindsay and Vicki Davis of the Flat Classroom Project, and Carol Anne McGuire of Rock Our World. We also got to meet Cecilia Estoque, one of TIGed’s most active teachers, who came from the Philippines and is also featured in the best practices report. It was wonderful to meet these inspiring educators and honor their work.
-Attended the kickoff meeting for the new ISTE 1:1 Computing Special Interest Group
-Rounded out the day with a "fun" walk through downtown Atlanta and an Italian dinner

Wednesday:

-The last day in the booth – meeting even more teachers, including many current TIG members, and attending a few final sessions.

-Unfortunately we missed Will Richardson's session, but through the edublogger grapevine learned that he mentioned TIG
-We picked our booth space for next year, packed up the booth, and those of us who missed the aquarium on Sunday went over to check it out before we all headed our separate ways.


Overall everyone worked really hard, had fun, some of us potentially ate too many cookies, and we're already looking forward to next year in San Antonio!