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This was my first MERLOT International conference. I had heard it was really good from Susan, so Susan, Kevin, and I proposed a session on blogs and wikis, were accepted, and went to Minneapolis for MERLOT.
As a somewhat techy conference, there were power strips on every table in almost every conference program room. Fabulous touch! There was free wireless in the conference area, and the presentation areas were hard-wired with good technical support. Each session also had a session chair who introduced the speaker, gave time limit warnings, and helped distribute and collect things during presentations. This really made it much smoother for the presenter than most conferences in my experience.
One of the most interesting things to me about this conference is that there is a diversity of presentation lengths. Some are over an hour, some are as short as 15 minutes. I wasn’t sure about the 15 and 30 minute presentations, but I ended up really liking them. If they’re great, they’re chock-full of information; if they’re not great, they’re just 15 minutes, you can go on to something else. It also means you can go to a large diversity of events as you can see here:
- Notes: A Trailblazer’s Perspective on Online Learning, Leadership, and Success (or How an “F” Sees the World)
- Notes: Emerging Technologies for Learning
- Notes: No More Traditional Classes
- Notes: Know What They Know
- Notes: Using Technology for Fast-Track Training
- Notes: Free Software for Learning Object Development
- Notes: Creating a Hybrid Course from Scratch or an Introduction to the Online Course Development Process
- Notes: Research Documentation Made Easy
- Notes: Home Brew Video Studio Equipment
- Notes: What Would Dewey Do?
- Notes: The Design of Reusable Multimedia Resources to Deepen Information Literacy
- Notes: Marketing Branch Libraries to Students Through Web Videos
- Notes: Reclaiming Campus Digital Treasures Using the Digital Information Virtual Archive
- Notes: Pageflakes – Teacher Edition – Teacher Education Classic Award Winner
- Notes: The Constructive Alignment of Educational Technology and Cognitive Neuroscience
- Notes: A Discussion on Disconnects Between Library Culture and Millennial Generation User Values
- Notes: Web2.0, the Social Media, and Academia
Minneapolis was a great place for a conference. It’s much more of a city that I expected, and there are a lot of pretty and interesting places around there–enough to want to take a trip here for fun! It’s walkable, there are nice places, and I ate some great food.
Great conference all the way around!