It’s 9:18 in Denver and I’m BEAT! I may actually be sleep-blogging, so I apologize in advance. It’s been a long, exhausting, and exciting day. ISTE10 is even more than I could have hoped it would be. I’m meeting so many great educators — lots of whom I have been following on twitter and their blogs for a while. I’ll have to post a list of links to my new rock star friends at the end of the conference. For now, I’m just throwing stuff up here to help myself keep track of what I’m doing. The real reflecting won’t happen until I get home. For now, I’m just trying to take it all in.

Today I tried not to overextend myself and learn how to deal with a conference of this size. This morning, I attended Will Richardson’s session on “Changing the Climate: How Teaching Social Networks Might Save the World.” It was awesome and right up my alley. I can’t wait to get home and have a chance to really digest everything he talked about. Here are my tweets from that session:

“We’re not going to solve the environmental problem until we solve the education problem.” @willrich45 #ISTE10

We need to model to our students how we use online social interaction for learning @willrich45 #ISTE10

Next, I visited the exhibitor’s hall and nearly had a panic attack. Talk about sensory overload. I didn’t last for too terribly long, and I’m not sure if I can force myself back in there. My coworker is always a winner, though, so maybe I need to give it a shot.

The other session I attended was a BYOL (bring your own laptop) and it was GREAT! It was called “Learning in the 76542.0: An Abundance of Web 2.0 Apps” by Helen Mowers and Anne Adam. It plowed through a list of uh-mazing free resources. It was very fast paced, so afterwards I gave myself some time to digest and create a Glogster on what I’d learned. Check it out, it’s pretty awesome if I do say so myself —

Afterwards, I hung out at the Blogger’s Cafe for a bit. I tried to hit up the “21 Things about 21 Things” session, but it was full. So I went back to the BC for a bit. This evening, I went to a SIGMS Birds of a Feather, a YEN (Young Educators Network) meet-up, and had dinner with the people from my school & district. See why I’m exhausted?! And I get to wake up and do it again in the morning. I wouldn’t have it any other way! This is truly a life-changing experience, I believe. And I’m not being dramatic because I’m typing with my eyes closed half asleep.

SIGMS Learning Tools Smackdown in the AM. Followed by a whole bunch of other ISTE goodness.

Peace out. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

It’s Monday morning and I’m expecting great and wonderful things today! I’m having such a blast meeting people whose blogs and tweets I follow. I feel like I’m meeting celebrities!

Yesterday’s kickoff with Mario Armstrong was GREAT! He did a great skit-like presentation on the forces that we have to battle when implementing technology in schools: the Locked-Net Monster, the Abominable  No-Man, the Dollar and Cent-ataur, and the Mediogre.

Right now, I’m in the Changing the Climate session by Will Richardson. He’s talking about how far we have to do to have education catch up to where it HAS to be with technology and global/environmental awareness. It’s powerful stuff! We have so far to go, but IMAGINE where we can go!

More later 🙂

I am very excited to be here in Denver for the ISTE 2010 conference! I know I have been a terrible blogger lately, but I’m going to try to make up for it this week. My favorite computer teacher and I flew in to Denver on Thursday and have spent the last few days sightseeing. We went to a Rockies game, toured the US Mint, visited Red Rocks amphitheater, Buffalo Bill’s gravesite & museum on Lookout Mountain, and went on the Denver Microbrew Tour. It’s been such a great trip!

Now it’s time to gear up for the conference. We are in our hotel room preparing ourselves for the overwhelming things we are about to experience. I’m having anxiety about all of this — I know there’s so much to learn and I want to do it all but know I can’t.

Here are a few photos to enjoy from our trip so far:

I know I’ve been MIA for a while. I’ve been recovering from packing up and moving out of the library. Last week, I took the GRE and got the score I needed (YAY!). This week, I started my Masters program at NSU. I’m feeling a little overwhelmed with getting started in my program — I’m taking two classes this summer.

That’s all I’ve got for now…my brain is pretty much mush. Hopefully I’ll have a thoughtful blog post soon 🙂