CTE Conference Part Duex

Hello all. The General session this morning was informative and I especially liked the ideas he had on the book study. Keeping a focus on a topic throughout the year would be beneficial. After the general session, I went to parlor B,C and listened to Susan(?) on treating our students like customers. She and I think a lot alike! I have said time and again that students are my customers and I am selling the education. If I do not make the sale, the customer will not benefit from our product. We need to learn from our marketing cousins and spend more time promoting our products through FAB (Features, Advantages, Benefits). After that session, Scott Nash helped a lot of people with an overview of some free and open-source programs we could use in the classroom. Just to expound upon his theme, open-source is always free, but free is not always open source. Windows movie maker is a perfect example of a program that is not open-sourced, even if it is free. I encourage everyone to go to http://sourceforge.net and look at their offerings. Mr. Nash only scratched at the surface! Speaking of Windows Movie Maker, Mark Moore did a fantastic job of explaining how WMM can be used as a formative and summative assessment tool. I cannot wait to start writing a rubric for that this year! Finally, Mrs Mace gave us a very nice talk on the future of business Ed, although she left quite a few unanswered questions upon reflection. WVBEA rounded up the section with a frantic plea for members. It made me uneasy about the quality of the organization. I would not dream of asking potential members to sign up for an organization while at the same time telling us they have not had a president for the last two years and by the way, would any of us like to be pres. now?
Till next time

Steve B