Michigan Conference: License Plates, Geeks, & Handouts

I had a great time at the 5th Annual Handheld Computers in Education Conference in Holland Michigan last week. You'll hear more about this conference in the next edition of Soft Reset.

I found it ironic because I snapped the photo you see at the right on the way to the Omaha airport bound for Michigan. I took the photo because I knew that at least a couple of the handheld users at the conference would have the same thought as me when seeing a license plate that contains PDB. Not many of the 150 listeners to my presentation laughed when my freshly taken digital photo appeared on the screen. However, Palm users should be familiar with files that end with the extension .pdb, which stands for Palm DataBase. The extension associates these files with Palm Desktop, much like .doc associates files with Microsoft Word and .ppt associated files with PowerPoint. Quizzler quizzes, eBooks, and Dropairs Pair Boards are files that use the .pdb extension. Anyhow, my excitement of seeing this license plate made me realize that I am a geek. Going the extra step and taking a photo of that plate only confirmed my suspicions of geekiness. I'm pretty sure all 150 participants laughed at my realization (but I think they knew my level of geekiness the second they met me).

The conference featured 32 breakout sessions. Whether you attended the conference or not, I encourage you to check out the online handouts, many of them are PDF files. There handouts page includes links to great information like Making Your Own eBooks for palmOne Handhelds and Surfing the Web on a Handheld from Mike Curtis, Using a Handheld as Part of Your Assistive Technology Toolkit from Gayle Minnick-Underwood, Free Must-Have Palm OS Handheld Applications for the Classroom by Christine Tomasino, and much more!