#digital directions

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See Yesterday's Live Chat on Personalized Learning

Watch yesterday’s “Putting Personalized Learning to Work” live chat with Education Week Digital Directions’s Michelle Davis and Horry County officials.

They explored promising strategies for implementing personalized learning initiatives in the classroom.

View the live chat now! 

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Building Better Ed-Tech Strategies for the Pre-K5 Crowd

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Event: Digital Directions Conference, 2014

The Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) hosted its annual conference, Digital Directions, from July 21st to July 23rd in Portland, Oregon. This conference is a little different than your standard professional conference – it’s billed more as an educational opportunity. From their website: “Guided by a faculty of national experts and experienced digital collection curators, join colleagues from institutions large and small for 2 ½ days of instruction on basics and best practices for creating good digital objects, collections, and initiatives.” Little did you know I’m an expert! That’s right, once again I would be presenting, this time all by myself. If you read my last conference blog post, you’d know I’m not too keen on public speaking. However, this is something I’m looking to remedy.

I committed to covering the hour slot called “Digitizing Audio” back in April. This gave me approximately three months to lose my mind, er, I mean prepare. How on earth do you cram the entirety of the audio universe into 45 minutes with 15 minutes of questions? The answer is – you can’t. Knowing the conference would be full of digital beginners, I felt confident that 99% of them would not be digitizing their audio holdings themselves or building their own digitization labs. Therefore, I decided to approach the presentation with the goal of teaching them the audio basics they would need to know in order to fill out a successful Statement of Work (SOW) with a vendor. I wanted attendees to be able to understand the consequences of decisions made in an SOW, as well as what they could ask for from a vendor.

With the help and support of my colleagues at AVPreserve who provided me with valuable feedback, I finally felt I was ready about a week and a half before the conference. Then I got a call from NEDCC asking me to cover the “Digitizing Video” talk as well, since the original presenter was ill and could not travel.

Ummmm....okay? I can’t believe I said yes. I had a week to put together a 45 minute presentation on video. I was in full on panic mode. I mean, I was nervous enough to cover audio and audio is my jam! I know video, of course, but I’ve spent much less time with it. I definitely was losing my mind.

Luckily, with the help of my wonderful coworkers (shout outs to Chris Lacinak, Josh Ranger, and Kathryn Gronsbell!) I pulled it off. I decided to combine my presentations since there are a lot of overlaps in SOWs for audio and video materials. So I was going to talk for about 75 minutes on audio and video and then take questions. NO BIGS. After coming to, I headed off to the airport.

As I mentioned, Digital Directions is not your typical conference. Instead of speakers, there are faculty members; presentations are focused more on teaching basics than innovations. The conference website states that its content is geared towards people possessing a beginner’s level of digital knowledge, so this is a known fact going in. I found it refreshing to be among so many people eager to learn. It is a small-ish conference with just under 200 participants which made it feel more intimate than a lot of conferences I’ve attended. Once I talked to someone, I would see them again and again throughout the conference – novel!

Day One seemed to be focused on “Ideas” and “Concepts.” As faculty members, we were encouraged to attend all sessions and mingle with participants during the breaks to chat and answer questions. I enjoyed the presentations and talking with attendees about their collections and concerns. The faculty also committed to a box lunch session, where participants could sign up to eat with us to discuss our separate specialties. This was almost more nerve wracking than the presentation! Since I was covering both the audio and video presentations, I had about eight people sign up to have lunch with me. It was actually pretty great! I found my group to be very engaging and to have interesting questions. They came from all over the country (with one from the Caribbean!) and worked in very different environments. I really enjoyed hearing about their issues with and thoughts on their collections and I hope I was able to help them in some small way on their journeys.

Day Two seemed to delve deeper into more technical details. I was slated to present on Day Two after lunch. Why do I always have to present after lunch? Well folks, I think I did pretty well. I started off kind of stiff and uncomfortable, but I could feel myself relaxing the farther I got into my presentation. I also had a lot of audiovisual examples to play, which always helps! Attendees had some very intelligent questions at the end and I think I was able to answer them well. Win!

Overall, I found Digital Directions to be a great conference for those looking to acquire some basic digital knowledge. The faculty members gave smart, well thought out presentations and the participants were engaged. It was a wonderful experience full of interesting people. I must tip my hat to the folks at NEDCC; they put on a great conference!