If It's January, I must be in St. Louis!

Well, it's conference time again and January-February shapes up as a busy stretch for me. This week, I'm in St. Louis for METC. Actually, it's in St. Charles, Missouri, but since the end of February will find me in St. Charles, Illinois for ICE 2009, I didn't want to cause any needless confusion. Next week, it's east to Columbus, Ohio for eTech Ohio.

Today, Monday, I presented my 1/2 day workshop, Keep It Clean!, which presents techniques and tips designed to help keep a Windows PC running more efficiently. One comment I hear repeatedly after these workshops and sessions is that too many administrators, tech support and IT people in schools assume that the average teacher has these skills already. What they seem to forget is that courses offered in Ed-Tech, generally deal more with the direct classroom and instructional applications of the technology. Of course, that's where the focus should be, but we shouldn't lose sight of the fact, that if we want to be able to use the technology effectively and seamlessly in our lessons, then the technology should be working properly. That's what this session offers teachers, the skills to maintain the PCs in their classes, to keep them running well, and cutting down on those frustrating calls to district tech support when their classroom computers "just aren't running right."

Oh, and I've had district tech support people tell me, they like the session because it enables teachers to take a more hands-on role in dealing with computer problems in their own classroom, without having to call tech support for routine maintenance tasks.

As long as the interest is there, I guess I'll keep offering this session.