The IT4Educators instructors joined more than 2,400 educators, administrators and technology specialists and over 100 vendors at the TIES 2010 Education Technology Conference in early December at the Hyatt Regency in Minneapolis, Minnesota.  We attended the conference as both participants and contributors.

Andi Bodeau presented Using Moodle as an Assessment Tool. During the session, she modeled and showed examples of the various Moodle activities that can be used to assess student learning. Participants also learned how mobile devices can be used as assessment tools in Moodle. Rojanne Brown presented a session called Google Search Discovered. Participants gained ideas on how to integrate Google tools such as Google Custom Search and Google Search Story into teaching and learning.

Amy Kretsch demonstrated BrightLink, Epson’s new interactive whiteboard solution – a short throw projector with interactive capabilities that does not require an interactive whiteboard.  Ryan Semans, presented a session on using SMART Response Systems to promote higher-order thinking skills, investigating how student response systems can support teacher and student learning with respect to assessment strategies, lesson intentionality, vision for extension activities and higher-order thinking skills integration.