Dautlon, Kenny, Ron and Zach walked around the conference and asked the attendees about their digital footprint.  Was it positive? How did they know?  Here's what they had to say.

A documentary team of middle and high school youth using mostly camcorders, iPods, iPads, and smart phones to blog their view of the conference was an experiment. None of the kids had experience with using social media professionally. 

I can say with no hesitation the experiment was a success. As intended:

• The conference attendees and folks not able to attend the conference found value in the blog posts. Evidence of such can be found in tweets and the comments of the blog posts.
• The students gained invaluable experience blogging with video, photo and text. The students also learned how to work in a team with deadlines. Evidence of such can be found in the blogs.

As Gen explained in her post, the teachers working with the ShinyYouth were amazing. I must say the ShinyDoor staff were also amazing. Dan led the ShinyYouth project. Bart led one of the teams and helped plan the ShinyYouth project. Gen edited blog posts for grammar and helped out as needed. Darien, the ShinyDoor Intern, did anything and everything. All did a fabulous job with the kids and keeping the project organized. 

No doubt in my mind we would like to conduct this experiment again. We'll certainly change it up and make some improvements. But I suppose that is what one calls an experiment.

Dear eTech,

I have had a lot of fun learning about all the technologies that were at this convention. The amount of knowledge that was walking through these halls was through the roof.

Thank you for inviting us to this conference.

If you enjoyed my blogs then follow me at @ ZachSullivan1

The ShinyYouth's involvement at the Ohio Educational Technology Conference 2012 was a success! Everyone was highly impressed with the interviews the kids put on, their posts about their perspective of the conference and the use of technology in the classroom, and their overall young excitement about life and their future. 

The ShinyYouth would never be here if it weren't for teachers who believe in them and in the possibilities for their future. Those teachers were fantastic additions to our team this year and we never would have made it without them.  

Three Ohio school districts were represented in the ShinyYouth Studio this week. Four teachers from two different districts participated. Cheryl Webber and Rebecca Prusak came with four students from Spectrum Occupational Center, a school for austistic kids. Scott Burke and Chad Sinnott came with nine students from Lancaster High School. 

We were also blessed with the volunteer efforts of Dan Vasi and Nelson Juarez from Lorain County Community College's Early College High School Program. 

Jeremy Brueck, Director of DigiTXT of University of Akron Center of Literacy was a tremendous help in lending his aid to the students as they posted their material on the blog. We were not only encouraged by his presence and enthusiasm, but his support spurred us on with momentum. 

Everyone worked hard and stayed focused until the job was complete. They had a very busy schedule and they met the challenge with courage, enthusiasm and focus.

Every school should be blessed with such as these. Thank you a hundred times for your time and hard work. It has not gone unnoticed. 

I have to thank all of ShinyYouth for letting us cover this event! It was a great experience and I got to see what it's like to be a real journalist.

I pushed my writing to new limits and discovered I could do anything if I put my mind to it. Who knows, maybe one day this could be my career!

Hopefully, next year we can comeback and cover this event again.

Once again, thanks guys!!!

Day three was a blast it was filled with great times and I'm very sad I will be leaving.

But I am not leaving with nothing. I have gained so much from being here and had fun at the same time. I got to meet many new people and develop friendships with them.

This is an experience I will never forget. If I had the chance I would do it all over again.

Along with saying goodbye to the people I met, is letting this experience come to an end as well. I really appreciate being offered to experience this conference. As I said before this has helped me improve my writing greatly and has given me a voice.

I knew before coming to this conference I would have a good time but I didn't anticipate that i would have this much fun. Thank you to everyone who helped get us here. We won't forget it.

I would like to thank everybody that was involved with Shiny Youth during my 3 days. It was a great experience learning about all the new technology at the conference. This was a big time convention with many opportunities to learn.

Monday morning, Kenny and I set out to ask Ohio eTech attendees the question, "If you could be any technology, what would you be?" We got a lot of responses, but the most popular technology is the iPad. I would be an iPod touch. I like all of the games, especially Angry Birds.