Conferences rock!

The International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) has their 2014 conference in Atlanta this weekend, and frankly, such a major conference like that is hard to pass up when it's in my neighborhood. I regret that I didn't submit to present at it, because over the past several years, that's become something I enjoy. It's my personal belief that every educator - teacher, support personnel, administrator - should take the opportunity to attend professional conferences. Why?

It lets you see the bigger world. Not everybody does it the way you do it within your school walls - and school-based staff in particular tend to lose sight of that. No, that's not right - they get so involved with the way they do it on a day-to-day basis, they often don't have time to look at it from a different perspective. Collegial conferences are a great way to break out of that - not only can you see how other schools "do it," but you can take the opportunity to show off how you do it. I think my teachers often forget just how much awesome stuff we do in our district, and so I encourage them to share as much as possible. One of my rock star teachers, Ann Kohler, is presenting at ISTE this year, and I couldn't be more excited for her to show off some of the awesome things she's doing with her special education kids!

It broadens your personal learning network. Especially with a conference like ISTE, which expects attendance in the neighborhood of 18,000 from all across the globe, you meet all kinds of people. Some of the best experiences are the one-on-one conversations you have over lunch sharing a table with strangers or trying to figure out which session is the best one to attend next or just camping out on the conference facility floor taking a break. More and more conferences are taking advantage of that informal learning notion, and have things like Lounges and Playgrounds for you to just hang out and meet other people. Connecting on Twitter, Facebook, or even a conference-specific app helps you stay in touch with those folks, to reach out to them when you get home and forget everything you were inundated with at the conference.

It gives you great new ideas. There's so much to choose from when attending a conference - I suggest getting outside your comfort zone and learning about something new. Whether it's a simple new classroom tool, to learning about the latest education trend that you've only just begun to hear about, there's something going on at that conference that you don't know about yet. Getting new ideas - and, more importantly, hearing about them from educators who have tried and tested them - can re-energize anyone.

Get free stuff. Yep. Visit the exhibitor's hall, stock up on extra pens, jump drives, and notepads, and maybe, if you're lucky you can win some significant prizes. As long as you don't mind the occasional marketing email (for which there are tools to help), you might score something a little bigger - software licenses, hardware, and more. Can't hurt to try...

If you're at ISTE 2014 this weekend, give me a shout on Twitter at @techieteacherga. And if you've downloaded the conference app to your iOS, Android, or Windows 8 device, send me a message and we'll trade codes for the networking game!

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