During my morning coffee
School’s out for the year and it’s that first Saturday when all the stress of the year starts to fade away and you look forward to the summer. I should be packing now for our flight out of here today but who needs clothes anyway. 😉
I’m getting excited for my first NECC conference, especially now that I know it’s wireless and I can blog from the sessions. As David Warlick and I’m sure others start to talk about the conference I find myself looking more forward to that than diving with the Great Whites in Cape Town or following the Sardine Run for 7 days. I don’t get a lot of opportunities to interact with like minded folks face to face, and although blogs, wikis and podcasts are great ways to stay in the conversation, there is something different in a face to face conversation. It’s that special something that will be the reason why, I believe, teachers will never be replaced by the Internet, robots, or artificial intelligence programs. Human to human contact is a basic need in all of us.
David Warlick also talks about the whole Gas Lamp District being wireless.
The NECC folks are also working with the San Diego Gas Lamp District to make the entire restaurant and shopping district wireless through the NECC portal. This part appears not to be a done deal, but the potential is here. We can have a different kind of conference, one that exists on new levels of information, sharing, accessing, and growing knowledge about making our schools the experience that our children deserve.
Talk about extending the conference. If this happens the conference will be extended to conversations through out
Hey Jeff,
I promise to buy you a beer if you don’t bring your laptop to the Gas Lamp area… It’s not like folks are waiting up to see if Warlick ordered the Sea Bass… 🙂
Tim
Tim says::
“It’s not like folks are waiting to see if Warlick ordered Sea Bass…”
…And yet, the most viewed photo from my recent set of reports from the eLive conference (e.g. Alan November’s keynote) is a picture of my smoked salmon from the Scotedublog meetup at the end of the conference.
Go figure!
Ok, so I got it. Leave the laptop and take the camera! :0
I’d love to have a beer with you Tim and David and I can take pictures of our food together.
I have had some interesting conversations as of late about the applicability of conferences for actual “buy-back” in changes/improvements in our schools. I can see that an important part of conferences is the social networking that take place. Everyone who knows me also would agree that I would be buying you all refreshments if it meant that we could laugh AND get some work done!
Nonetheless, I think that the vast majority of conference experiences result in “awareness level” results. A little of this and a little of that often equal a lot of nothing! I think that you idea of blogging from conference sessions will aid to us back here in China (or in my case, enjoying my summer in Oregon). The Prof. Development committee had some long discussions this year about how to get people share their “awareness” effectively. Perhaps this would be a good way to have the text out there for all to enjoy.
Have fun Jeff…. have a few for me and invite all your colleagues to Shanghai for an “awareness” visit!