March 6, 2014
Business, Marketing, and Info Technology Ed Conference
ACBMITE Conference theme logo
The 31st Annual Atlantic Coast Business, Marketing, and Information Technology Education Conference was held at the North Raleigh Hilton on February 27 and 28. This annual event was sponsored by the Department of Information and Library Science at ECU and was huge success.
The conference theme was Digital Literacy for Developing 21st Century Skills. Approximately 150 business and marketing education teachers and librarians attended the conference. The conference consisted of over 40 concurrent sessions addressing topics ranging from technology, financial literacy, teaching strategies, and trends and issues in the 21st century classrooms. More than 12 hands-on lab sessions provided participants with experience using Windows 8.1, MS Word, MS Excel, MS PowerPoint, MS Access, HTML, iAuthoring, as well as programming and other applications. NCDPI Consultants Deborah Seehorn and Kim MacDonald provided update sessions on the business, finance, and information technology (BFIT) curriculum, and many practicing BFIT classroom teachers provided presentation sessions on “Flipping your Classroom”, STEM initiatives, Financial Literacy, and “ Aligning Content with Common Core Standards”– just to name a few.
Dr. Crisianee Berry, Dr. Kaye Dotson, Dr. Maureen Ellis, Dr. Todd Finley, Dr. Timm Hackett, Dr. Elizabeth Hodge, Mr. Stephen Kirk, Dr. Eric Kisling. Ms. Ruth Lupton, Dr. Barbara Marson, Ms. Patricia Stallings, Dr. John Swope, Dr. Scott Williams, Ms. Tomegia Winston, and Dr. Elaine Yontz served as speakers along with twenty BFIT classroom teachers from across the state.
Twelve ECU students served as presiders for the sessions and one former ECU student, James Miller, was the luncheon keynote speaker challenging the audience with “Educate NOW!” Dr. Ivan Wallace served as the conference director with the support of Mr. Luke Simonds, an ILS graduate assistant, and Mr. Desmond Brown, a department intern. Dr. Vivian Mott, Interim Chair of the Department of Information and Library Science, brought greetings on behalf of ECU at the luncheon session and provided support for the conference throughout its development during the year.
The department received many positive comments from the teachers that benefited from attending this conference and were excited to return to their schools and incorporate their new ideas, strategies, knowledge, and skills into their classrooms.