The Best Intentions

I attended two conferences this month. Since that time, I've been ignoring the folder on my desktop labeled "things to blog." If I learned one thing this year, it is that taking a small laptop to conferences encourages me to take a lot of notes in every session I attend. I'm not one who can blog live, nor do I want to devote valuable conference time on my laptop constructing readable blog posts. So the folder lingers on my desktop--day after day I think I'll look through the notes and start putting together some posts.

I've finally reached the point that I know it's not going to happen. So let me just say that both the KLA/KSMA/SELA/ARL NDLC Conference and the Internet2 Fall Member Meeting were excellent. I took notes on a number of sessions and had planned to blog several of them, but I've finally accepted that I really don't have time to blog any of them. Here are two I had to at least say something about:

Gaming and Learning: While Screen Time Can Be Well Spent with Eli Neiburger, Ann Arbor Library District. Outstanding session, would love to see him back in Kentucky for another. Even though I'm not blogging this, here are a few notes I just had to share anyway:

• Average age of gamers is 34
• 25% of gamers are over 50
• Games outsold DVDs and music in 2007 media sales. Interesting note: books 27%, games 26% of media sales.
  
• Learning to read with Pokemon is not a bad idea: game contains 20,000 lines of text which is a huge motivator for learning to read!
• Study of surgeons at Beth Israel hospital: surgeons who are gamers had 37% fewer mistakes and performed procedures 27% faster than non-gaming surgeons

An Uncommon Learning Space with Rae Helton, University of Louisville.

This was of course a must-attend for me. While Kentucky is a small state and I knew a little about their commons project already, I enjoyed learning about U of L's planning process. I was particularly interested in their Digital Media Suite, the latest addition to the U of L Learning Commons (literally--it had just opened that Tuesday). The Digital Media Suite is a collaborative effort by multiple campus partners which offers support and equipment to create and edit audio and video files. In the presentation, she even showed us a promotional video created by students who work in the Digital Media Suite. Very cool!