It’s day 1 of the Georgia Educational Technology Conference (GaETC). I’ve gone every year I’ve been our school’s technology coordinator, which means this is my seventh year in a row. I don’t know if that’s supposed to make me feel experienced, or just old, but I feel a little of both right now.<\/p>\n
I was a little more pessimistic about this year’s conference than I’ve been in previous years. After seven years, haven’t I seen all of this enough? I could name some of the stereotypical and perennial sessions off the top of my head:<\/p>\n
“10 great iPad apps for [blank].”
\n“60 websites in 60 minutes about [blank].”
\n“Ways to integrate [expensive, licensed, niche software] into your classroom TODAY.”
\n“Getting started with Google [Search, Apps, Drive, Chromebooks, Classroom, etc].”
\n“Become a Connected Educator by using [blank].”<\/p>\n
I didn’t want to go this year. I investigated canceling my registration, but it was too late. I believe in being a good steward of our school’s limited funds, so I wasn’t going to let my $200 registration go to waste, so I begrudingly hauled myself out of bed and drove to the other side of Atlanta.<\/p>\n
I’m glad I did.<\/p>\n
I picked up my badge and a copy of the program and sat down to mark up the sessions I am considering going to. This year, they’ve made a special effort to provide sessions to instructional technology coaches, with sessions called out in the program. I really appreciated that and found several sessions specific to coaches that seemed interesting and unique.<\/p>\n
I also saw a thoughtful tweet on the conference hashtag which challenged conference participants to attend a session that has nothing to do with them or makes them feel uncomfortable, because that’s how you grow as a leader. I needed to hear that. So I might be redoing my conference here in a bit.<\/p>\n
Free coffee or not, though, 5AM is still early!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s day 1 of the Georgia Educational Technology Conference (GaETC). I’ve gone every year I’ve been our school’s technology coordinator, which means this is my seventh year in a row. I don’t know if that’s supposed to make me feel experienced, or just old, but I feel a little of both right now. I was […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16,7],"tags":[18,17,10],"class_list":["post-146","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-educational-technology","category-professional-learning","tag-conferences","tag-gaetc","tag-professionallearning"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikevigilant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikevigilant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikevigilant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikevigilant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikevigilant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikevigilant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikevigilant.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mikevigilant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikevigilant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mikevigilant.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}