Well, ISTE 2010 has almost come to a close and how I wish I could have gone. Various and sundry reasons had prevented me from going this year, but all in all, it has been a treat enjoying conversations from afar.
AAAHHH...who am I kidding...Twitter is NO replacement for being there. Some of the best conversations I've had about education have happened in many of the meet-ups (or now Tweet-ups), and vendor parties at past conferences (especially chats with @mkratzer over a cold beverage). You can't really do that online!
For the sake of not being too melancholy and whiny, I am very appreciative though of posts like this one from @henrythiele. Henry gives a quick overview of what he saw as the emerging themes of the conference (as a side note, thanks to @kevcreutz for retweeting Henry, which is how I found his post. That's what you have to love about a PLN).
But reading exciting posts, doesn't replace talking face to face with folks you have known for years, but are just "meeting" for the first time! Because that is what ISTE Conference is all about: meeting face to face and sharing.
But alas...
It is awesome to read posts like "It's Not About the Tools" from Jason Schmidt. ISTE 2010 gave Jason time to think and write about his teaching. It's posts like this that echo so many ISTE conversations from this year's conference and NECC conferences of the past. It can also be summed up in tweets like this:
I have a sneaking suspicion that it's the change in teaching that terrifies many of our colleagues and not the technology! We'll leave that for another post on another day.
So yeah, I am a bit bitter about not being able to go, but I can't deny it has been awesome to see the true power of my learning network in action. Even though I wasn't there, I got pretty darn close.
Thank you so much for those of you who took time to post, tweet, bookmark, and note-take for the rest of us! Your sharing is so important and doesn't go unappreciated!
Image above: IMG_0200 by Flickr user: ctkmcmillan
