Starting at 7:45 am, educators from all over Eastern, PA trudged through the cold, rainy morning embarking upon Lancaster-Lebanon Intermediate Unit 13 looking forward to a great time of learning and collaborating at the Elementary Technology Conference. After everyone enjoyed a hot breakfast of eggs and bacon (everyone loves bacon!), I had the great opportunity to open the day encouraging educators to use the "gift of time" to their advantage challenging them to learn, explore, collaborate, and investigate new tools and skill sets throughout the day which they could implement right away in the classroom to maximize student learning.
After some brief introductions, Richard Byrne opened the conference with a Keynote encouraging us to DISCOVER throughout the day! Educators had 32 different sessions to chose from throughout the day from iPad implementations, formative assessment tools, to digital story-telling tools, etc. outlining instructional technology best practices in the classroom. You could just feel the energy, excitement, and passion in the room as over 260 Elementary Educators shared, explored, and collaborated with one another. It was exciting to see the twitter feed #iu13etc14 light up throughout the day as people shared important quotes and resources with their PLCs.
My biggest take away from the day was a session I attended on coding! The resources shared in this session were perfect to help celebrate the Hour of Code week last week or even ongoing in the upcoming weeks/months. What was your best take-away? Either post in the comments section below or feel free to tweet them to @IU13IMS using #iu13etc14.
![RByrne_HS_BW[1]](http://cdn2.hubspot.net/hub/248103/file-635795636-jpg/IMS/RByrne_HS_BW[1].jpg?width=196&name=RByrne_HS_BW[1].jpg "RByrne_HS_BW[1]")