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Our Spring Seminar will be held March 27 and 28, 2012. 

Seminar website:  https://sites.google.com/site/octi2012/

OCTI first began as a Handheld Tech Initiative with select schools in the fall of 2010, when superintendent Paul Upchurch realized that today's digital learners need a different instructional approach. At the end of the 2010-2011 school year, Adam Watson (one of the Handheld Tech participants) proposed a comprehensive and organized way of encouraging and supporting education technology leaders among our librarians, school technology coordinators, and teachers across the district. OCTI was born in the summer of 2011, with Adam Watson and Noel Gnadinger as co-leaders.  Our current OCTI Steering Committee members are Adam, Noel, Cindy Smith, Travis Duvall, and Rick McHargue.

Why is OCTI important?  It's a way for Oldham County educators to share edtech knowledge and successes, work through struggles, and help students become empowered 21st century learners. Although there are other ways that technology can be an integral part of our classes -- to take but one example, using desktops in a computer lab to go on teacher-directed webquests -- the initiative focuses on ways where students are the creators, controllers, and publishers of learning.  OCTI members work, meet and share their journey not only on the local (i.e. school) face-to-face level, but also across the district in an annual seminar, a monthly e-newsletter (Octipoda), and online communities such as a Windows Live Mail group and Twitter.

If you're a teacher interested in joining OCTI, we'd love to have you!  Talk with your school LMS.