President's Message
CETPA Annual Conference in San Diego for 2009
This November CETPA will hold its forty-ninth annual conference, returning to San Diego for the first time in seventeen years. Once again, K-12 educational technology professionals from all across and beyond California will contribute their knowledge, expertise and energies; sharing success and failures as few if any other professional community would. It is this collaborative spirit that has established the CETPA Conference as the most focused, most concentrated and comprehensive resource supporting K-12 technologists, enabling them to more fully serve their constituencies. These contributions are harnessed in a proven multi-day format offering content within the four pillars of Secure, Reliable Infrastructure; Technology Tools for Education; Policy and Programs that Impact Education and Technology; and New Learning Environments.
New for 2009 is Tuesday’s opening day structured as the second event in CETPA’s continuing work to support our Governor and his Secretary for Education in work that will eventually establish a Digital Learning Imperative. Earlier this year CETPA hosted the Digital Textbook Symposium at which Secretary Glen Thomas shared his vision of ‘Any Time Learning’ and panels delved into the practice, promise and potential barriers in use of free digital textbooks and other digital assets. The conference provides opportunity to build upon that success with more in-depth presentations and discussion in the form of a Digital Learning Symposium, including the opportunity to experience digitally enabled teaching and learning in the Technology Pavilion.
The annual conference is your best opportunity to acquire knowledge of lessons learned, gain information regarding current practice, promising opportunities, impending influences, and insights into developments that become expectations of our organizations. Presenters include K-12 colleagues, postsecondary practitioners and representatives from the incredibly supportive vendor community that has served California’s public education in such exemplary fashion. Both Tuesday and Wednesday offer Key-note addresses and an intensive array of breakouts and hands-on learning. The proven one-day Vendor Exposition will take place on Thursday. On Friday, the Conference concludes with more breakout sessions, the CETPA ‘Business Meeting’ and CETPA’s ‘Best Ever Golf Tournament’. One day registrations at a reduced rate are available for any of Tuesday through Friday, and of course all days are included in the full conference registration.
For whatever time you may devote to participation with us, the CETPA Board is determined to provide a great conference at a time when it is greatly needed. Your conference experience will be one of knowledge acquisition, staff development, marketplace awareness and exposure to those trends and issues most relevant to educational technologies and services. The core of what we are about is support of the institutions we represent, in particular teaching and learning. Your Board and I look forward to effectively serving you, helping you to address and resolve barriers encountered in achieving excellence in local educational technology practice as we work toward future means of bringing the educational, professional and vendor communities together to create solutions that will improve educational delivery systems.
