This Friday, I headed to the FOSS VT conference, to do two jobs. One job was to present, the other to podcast. So, I headed down with Ms. deLaBruere, and another person. We all presented together, but that comes later.
We brought about 5 laptops, and the XO Laptop (For the OLPC mesh-up, I was told they broke a record, there was 4 XOs in the same place!) to podcast. We arrived a bit late, but hurried to get set up in the rooms that had the conference, there was three conferences going on at the same time, so I didn't get to see them all. Fortunately enough, there is a podcast of each one, I will end up at least hearing them all. There were 12 in all, with out presentation being one in the second session. I had a great experience presenting, but again, that comes later. Podcasting was pretty good, still have to check if we got anything good, so that will probably be set up on the internet if there is anything good, like to put it on a personal web server, but probably within school, my personal ISP doesn't allow it. So, hopefully I can negotiate that, we will see, give it time.
So, back to our presentation, It went great, probably mostly because of the audience, they asked great questions, and pushed along the presentation. My presentation went great, I asked questions, they answered, and sometimes they even asked back, pretty cool, I'd say, even without the laptop prepared with recent Flash installed, and the horrid wireless at the resort, it went alright, our first concern was if we couldn't even get to the presentation, everything was online, I will embed the slides at the bottom of this post so you can see. I watched two of the Setting Up a Linux Server sessions, both were great, and were somewhat funny, in a geeky kind of way. I also got an introduction to things like MythTV, the owner said it works great, but is a pain to set up. OK, so thats that, if we ever get those podcasts up, I will link the blog to them, we will see as time passes.
Slides-
Speaking as the organizer of the conference, I couldn't have been more impressed with this presentation. While I had to spend much of my time running around like a crazy man with real-time logistics, the small amounts of free time I had, I spent in the Student Ambassadors' presentation. The content was terrific but I was even more impressed to have these students presenting to an adult professional development conference (and doing a great job of engaging the audience). It was this session, of all of them at the conference, that made really think the some of the hype we have been hearing about 'digital natives' might have some truth in it.
ReplyDeleteInviting students to present at FOSSVT was a big experiment and one that I would now say was an unqualified success. It has got me thinking of how we can expand student involvement next year. Perhaps I can find some way to temp Lucie and the Ambassadors to participate in the planning committee for next year! :-)
Bryant Patten
National Center for Open Source and Education
www.ncose.org
@ Mr. Patten
ReplyDeleteThank you, I had a great time myself. Love to go again next year! :)