Hit the ground running…

ASTE was a long fast weekend. John, Randy, and I flew down to Anchorage last Thursday. We stayed at the Captain Cook Hotel which is very nice. Since we were there for the ASTE conference the hotel waved the health club fee which came in handy a couple days into my stay. Friday night I had a board meeting/dinner to attend. We had steak and halibut. It was very nice. The meeting however went awfully late though. I was pretty tired when I finally made it back to my room around midnight.

Erin had just driven in from the Holts. She really enjoyed spending time with such great friends. I wish I could have gotten a chance to get over there for a visit too. We’ll have to find another time to catch up. So it was nice to have her there to spend some time with before she headed south to visit family.

The next day (Saturday) the ASTE pre-conference started. This is two days consisting of half and full day sessions that people can take before the conference starts. I was teaching a half day class that morning on event broadcasting. Teaching people how to help students broadcast school events live. We basically went over how to use Wirecast and incorporate multiple cameras into the mix. I had about 10 or so people in the 3 hour session. It went really really quickly. At noon when our time was up I was thinking I should have set it as a full day session. I think we could have really had people feeling a little more comfortable with starting up their own program in their own school.

With that all finished up I began to start feeling a little under the weather. I spent the afternoon helping get things ready for the conference and installing a live steerable web-cam on the ceiling of the main conference hall. That evening Apple computer took the BSSD EdTech staff and significant others out to dinner. We ate up in the Crows Nest which is a restaurant at the top of tower one in the hotel. It over looks the semi frozen ocean. With the sun setting it was very picturesque. Dinner was very nice.

The night however was not so nice. After dinner I went to bed with a high fever. I was freezing cold and radiating heat. At one point I was curled up in the fetal position trying to stay warm, but was so warm that Erin couldn’t be near me. Along with the fever I had a bad cough, and a headache. Needless to say I didn’t sleep well. The next day more of the same. Really high fever and just generally not feeling well. I didn’t have to present which was really nice. I was in no condition to be in front of a group of people.

Sunday night brought the official start of the conference with a keynote by Marco Tores a teacher from California. A very good speaker if you ever get that chance to hear him I recommend it. He teaches in a rough area, but sounds like the school is a bright spot amid all the bad. The school is open 24-7 and doesn’t have any problems with theft. Marco uses technology to entice students into school that wouldn’t normally fit the mold. They are doing amazing things with apple computers and making their own music. I am musically challenged, so it truly amazes me what they produce.

I presented a few more times on Monday and Tuesday. Again on student broadcasting followed up by podcasting, then helped out randy with small technologies, and finished up with Mac OS X Q and A. Through all this I continued to fight my cold.

I am back in Unalakleet now still fighting my cold wondering if it will ever subside. We have the IditaProject starting up on Monday. There are over 100 schools and up to 5000 students across the country signed up to participate this year. We are really excited hoping that everything goes smoothly.

So with the Iditarod holding its ceremonial start this Saturday and the official start taking place on Sunday I will be working the weekend.  Next weekend I will be traveling to Elim to help students broadcast the regional basketball tournament.  I am supposed to get home late Saturday night.  Scott Slone from IditarodPodcast.com will be up working with the SBT on podcasting, and Vin Capone from Apple will be arriving on Sunday.  The Iditarod mushers should be coming through Unalakleet around then, so it should be getting exciting about then.  We head to Nome that Tuesday to catch the mushers final run to the finish.  That weekend we prep and fly to Anchorage to broadcast the small schools state basketball tournament.  That will be a week long event bringing this crazy crazy March to a close.

More on all this to come…

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