25th Anniversary of the ICE Conference - Save the date

Last year, I made my first foray into the presentation circuit by delivering a poster session on Google Apps at the Illinois Computing Educators conference in February. Over the course of the two day conference plus a pre-conference workshop on Garageband, I enjoyed picking up new ideas to integrate technology in the classroom as well as having the opportunity to network with others in the field. This year, the conference is celebrating its 25th anniversary, and I'm sure the lineup of presenters will be outstanding. However, after seeing this year's schedule and speakers, I'm particularly excited for the event. Find out more after the jump.

With the title “Celebrating 25 years of Transforming Education,” this year's ICE conference (Feburary 22-25, 2011) brings a change to the schedule and two top notch keynote speakers.

Conference Schedule
Instead of having pre-conference workshops followed by two days of general conference sessions, ICE has decided to shake up the format by having one pre-conference workshop day, followed by two days of general conference, and ending with another series of featured presentations and breakout workshops. I like the change of having the general conference days in the middle of the week, as Friday afternoon might be a hard time for presenters to get the best attendance. That's not to shortchange this year's Friday featured speakers at ICE. In particular, I am happy to see Bret Ginsburg as a speaker; he gave one of the most engaging and entertaining sessions last year. I seem to recall massive overflow of attendees stemming from his room, so I hope they'll be offering him ample room this year.

Keynote Speakers
These can be hit or miss at conferences in general, but this year's keynotes at ICE might be "sure hits and can't misses." On Wednesday, Rushton Hurley will open up the general conference days. I had the pleasure of meeting Mr. Hurley at the Google Teacher Academy in 2009. He was a lead learner, and he offered such an engaging, enthusiastic, and energetic vibe to the room. He is a pioneer with video in education, and I'm sure he'll be "bringing it" to ICE this year. Rushton's organization, which has tons of valuable resources can be found at http://www.nextvista.org/

On Thursday, the keynote speaker will be an immediately recognizable name for both technology teachers and gadget aficionados (the other half of this blog's audience). David Pogue is the personal technology columnist for the New York Times, an author or co-author on several "for Dummies" books and "Missing Manuals" and a frequent guest on CNBC. I've enjoyed reading Mr. Pogue for many years, and appreciate his sense of humor and good nature when discussing everyday tech for the common reader. He is a great addition to the ICE conference this year, and he blogs regularly at http://pogue.blogs.nytimes.com/.

I look forward to seeing or meeting some of you at ICE next year. For more information on the conference, visit http://iceberg.org/

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