My friend was visiting the conference for just one day. She left this morning and we spoke on the phone and she said - I was here only one day and it feels like a week, can't imagine how you would feel after the whole conference' which is certainly very true! It is so incredibly intense and very interesting and informative that your day seems to so long.

So it already feels like long ago but I wanted to sare with you other highlights of the first day.

I went to two more excellent presentations about technology.

First one by Gavin Dudeney talking about attitudes to technology and myths and criticism that surrounds it. It brilliantly summed up all complains and excuses people make not to use technology in the classroom but the truth is that kids are using it anyway, a lot of their learning happens via technology. And that was brilliantly demonstrated by the opening picture in Gavin's presentation which was actually taken in a restaurant in Moscow where 6 kids were sitting on a sofa all looking at a computer monitor and obviously all being interested and busy. The other thing I really liked were the 'quotes' that showed how almost anything seems strange and dangerous when it is completely new - like when a ballpoint pen replaced ink pen some people probably were also panicking and refusing to use it. 

There's also a brilliant video and many other interesting quotes and ideas in the presentation. The main conclusion I think was that we should start doing and stop talking about how it cannot be done for various reasons. And this is so very true. Gavin actually made and audio of his talk and if you put it on together with the slides, you can follow it all almost like you were there :-) Here is a link to it: http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/sessions/2010-04-08/they-just-cant... Right below the materials, you can see a forum, so if you have any questions, you can ask those directly to Gavin.

Another talk I went to was by Graham Stanley 'Before and after Twitter' where he talked about personal learning networks and personal environment built via tools like twitter and other. This was the session to which I arrived 10 minutes before the start and the only place available was floor, but I did get the front row on the floor :-) I attach the picture for you to get the idea. I promise to learn how to put pictures inside the posts as well later so that you do not have to open attachments :-) And here is a link to the page with Graham's session: http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/sessions/2010-04-08/and-after-twit...

There were two more technology talks that I could not go to but everything I heard about those was great and those were about teachers actually using things like Twitter with their learners. So I also highly recommend to have a look at those:

Petra Pointner - What students can get out of Twitter http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/sessions/2010-04-08/what-students-...

Ozge Karaoglu and Shelly Terrell on Engaging lower primary students through Web 2.0 tools http://iatefl.britishcouncil.org/2010/sessions/2010-04-09/engaging-lower...

Both presentations were highly praised by the delegates and I think the beauty of those is that those are real teachers showing how it actually works!

That happened to be quite a technology day for me :-)