PRESENTING.
Last Wednesday I had to opportunity to present at a half day session at the Illinois Computing Educators Conference (#ICE14) in St. Charles, Illinois. Myself and two of my talented and amazing educator Jen Smith and Jenna Hacker presented a session on How to Speak the Twitter.
It was a session we had presented before. The difference this time…we were at ICE and it was a two and a half hour session. Presenting with them at this session was so much more then I had expected it to be. I knew this year I wanted to hone my voice and style as a presenter. Little did I know that this session would help me redefine and strengthen the voice I share with others, help me discover a new passion I have for being a teacher and teach me what I want to bring and give people who come to my sessions.
CONNECTING.
I have been to blogging conferences before. I have been to Edcamps. I do my fair share of tweeting and have even gone from knowing people on social media to becoming friends in real life. BUT….being at ICE this year was like nothing I had experienced before.
LIVE on Edreach at the ICE 2014 Conferenc
Most of all it was great to have time to learn and share, connect and talk with others that will not just be there with me at other conferences but that I am excited to share this journey with, get to know even better and continue to learn with for years to come.
LEARNING.
By the time Friday of the ICE conference came I was spent!! Three days of all this awesome is a lot!!! I was ready to sleep in on Friday, skip the keynote and hit the sessions fresh.
“No! You have to go! It’s George Couros! He’s (how did she put it…) he’s amazeballs,” my friend convincingly convinced me.
So with coffee in hand we found our seat in the the second row with and I prepared myself for the Friday opening keynote.
…and boy was I happy I didn’t sleep in!
You know how when you go to a conference you wait and wait and when their good (which ICE always is and this year’s was incredible) you get that ah ha, oh my gosh, I can’t wait to do that moment….he was it! That keynote was it! It was in that moment I knew what was next for me….what was next for my students. It was the moment I learned that what was next for me in this journey wasn’t where I was going to take myself but where I was going to take my students. So this Monday (I’m not one to waste any time) I shared with my students a new option for sharing their about my weekend post on Edmodo (usually they write a paragraph). Now they had more choices and could share by writing, with a picture or a video post. This Monday I took my classroom blog that currently acts as a landing page of resources for my students and decided it would now be a place for each of my students to share their ideas, their stories, their passions….their awesome. This Monday I proudly showed all my students my personal blog, this blog, the stories I have shared that include them and the inspiration they give me each day… and this Monday TOTALLY and completely ROCKED!!!
I can’t wait to share with all of you what the next part of this journey and what we all have in store!
