Have you missed me?  I would like to apologize for my absence (I am sure you noticed I was gone) but I just got back from attending a wonderful professional development meeting on Information Technology.  Now, I don’t know about you educators out there, but there have be few occasions that wonderful and professional development can be put together.  This particular meeting was one of those rare instances.  This meeting was designed to ensure that when we left the meeting, that we were provided with many wonderful ideas, information and resources to take back to our classroom and also our students.The meeting began with a panel of professionals within the Information Technology (“IT”) profession from Kentucky that provided information on what employers were looking for in employees.  The main skill that came up over and over, dealt with the ability to effectively communicate.  The second half of the meeting provided us with tools and resources that are currently available for the purpose of enhancing our classrooms and the one that I found particularly interesting dealt with Remote Labs.  This is a concept that I haven’t had much experience with but found it to be an intriguing concept that one could create a computer lab of specific software and have their student access the lab via Internet.  Once in the lab, the students work on a “virtual” machine designed with the software of your choice.  The nicest aspect of this particular concept was that there was very little cost to this type of computer lab and no upgrading of equipment every time it becomes outdated.