This week, I will be at TCEA in Austin with my fabulous colleague, Angelique Lackey. We will be presenting together on Tuesday. Our session is called, “10 Sure-Fire Ways to Light Up Your Curriculum.” The hour-long session starts at 1:15 in Room 19B. It is about using the Project Ignite website to introduce your students to 3d modeling with Tinkercad.
On Wednesday, I’ll be solo. I’ll be presenting, “Code Dread” at 2:30 in Room 13AB. This session is for anyone who has been intrigued by the thought of using coding in the classroom, but has little experience with programming.
FYI – despite having done numerous presentations I always sound nervous. Weirdly, the only thing that makes me nervous is knowing that I will sound nervous which, as you can imagine, develops into a nice little self-fulfilling prophecy. Fortunately, the size of the audience doesn’t seem to impact this, as I am equally as nervous with 2 people or 50. Unfortunately, medication either makes it worse or makes me slur my words so I’ve learned to just tune out my own voice and never listen to recordings. Of course, if you attend either session you won’t have those choices – but I promise not to be offended if you walk out 😉
You may not want to walk out, though, because we just found out that we get to use the Qball (wireless, throwable microphone) during our sessions. So, walking out would mean you not only lose the opportunity of listening to my unique voice, but you would also lose the opportunity to see how horrible I am at throwing microphone balls – a feat I have never attempted, but I am quite certain will bring back flashbacks of the one time I tried to play softball when I was in 5th grade and managed to bonk myself in the forehead. I will try not to bonk you in the forehead, but there is no guarantee.
In conclusion, you may or may not want to attend my two sessions at TCEA and you may or may not want to take out extra insurance before volunteering to be in the audience. If you do decide to brave all of these potential hazards I have mentioned, then please come up and say, “Hi! I am one of the courageous people who read your TCEA post and still decided to come to your session.” That way I will know not to aim for you when I throw the Qball 😉
I soooo wish I could be there!!! Good luck (although I know you don’t need it). 🙂