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Welcome to beautiful Ontario (Did I just say that?). Well, I suppose Tech Ed 2009 has gotten off to a good start. The first day was full of breakout sessions, an interesting keynote speaker, and a little Inland Empire smog!

There were a few interesting morning and afternoon breakout sessions. It seemed the general theme was authoring tools for teachers. Most of the sessions provided a basic overview of these tools (e.g., Camtasia Relay, podcasting, etc.). A few of the interesting sessions included:

1. Youtube, Itunes, and Google Docs. Save Time and Stimulate– David Sconduto had some good stuff on free Internet resources, including Google Docs., Youtube, and iTunes.
2. Certifying Online Instructors with @One– Patricia James provided an interesting presentation on the @ONE project, which provides courses that prepare faculty to teach effectively using online technology (i.e., LMS technology, etc.).
3. Introducing Teachers-Young and Less Young- to Technology– Rushton Hurley did a good job of discussing how digital tools create wonderful opportunities for powerful learning and professional growth. His focus was on the techniques administrators can use to promote the use of Web 2.0 technology at the primary and secondary levels.

The keynote speaker, Luis von Ahn, delivered a fascinating presentation on his research related to Captcha. The thrust of his academic research is concerned with finding ways to use Captcha technology to do positive things for the world community, such as digitizing books, identifying Internet images, etc.

Although von Ahn didn’t really discuss how this sort of technology or the thinking behind it might affect K-12 education, the presentation really challenged how we as educators think about “down time” or “wasted time.”