Final Post on NECC

Well, this will be my final post on my NECC 2009. I'm not going to cover content from the conference, although there was other great sessions out there and interesting news from vendors and ideas from poster sessions. Instead, I'm just going to share a quick reflection.

I thought this was a great way to share information from a conference. Too often, teachers in the last two districts I have worked at have gone to a conference, come back, and had no impact on any professional outside of their classroom. I think this is a shame. There is a lot of money spent on teachers attending these professional conferences. My trips always impact the professional development that I offer teachers as well as the equipment that I purchase for my primary building. But there should be a standard of sharing information and this seems like a reasonable way to do that. Most teachers take notes at conferences anyway. If this is the case, what is the difficulty of taking an extra 10-15 minute per post and adding links, commentary, and polishing up the writing? It actually seems like a great way for the teacher to revisit their notes anyway.

Also, there were a lot of other blogs out there, much better than my first attempt, that gave great resources from the conference and interesting perspectives from these individuals. While this was a technology based conference where blogging might be more prevalent, I would wager that all major conferences today have someone blogging about their experiences and perspectives.

I'll be sharing this blog with teachers at my district, suggesting it as a great way to share with others, and providing support, if requested, to set up a blog for their own sharing.