I’m waiting for the opening keynote, this will be the first time I’ve seen Alan November. I had a chance to see him a number of years but I didn’t take it. At the time I had no idea who he was, so I went to some other session (that wasn’t really any good). It wasn’t until later that I learned that I missed a great opportunity.

While sitting here I’ve gotten to do the one thing I come to these conferences for. Networking with other like minded educators. I’m sitting chatting with Andrea Zellner, who I met at the Google Teacher Academy in the fall. While sitting here and blogging and chatting Steve Dembo walked up to see what was happening with Guerrilla sessions.

If you haven’t had a chance you should definitely check out Steve’s presentation (which is right after the keynote). He’ll show you how to make it to all (or most of) the sessions of the conference.

Whew!  What a day and what a conference.  The last session is about to begin… Hall Davidson is presenting on Thinking Big as the World Gets Small.  As i’m sitting here everyone is looking around for the boxes…you know, the ones you put your nametag in to win fun and fabulous prizes.  I’m pretty sure I’m going to win something good this time…

Hooray for Berrien Springs Middle School teachers (and the RBS) being mentioned by Hall in his words of thanks…

There is geographic shrinking…the world is closer than it once was.  There is also a temporal shrinking…

Hall has had the pleasure of connecting with lots of educators…sharing connections and experiences.

We have all these tools…but as educators we are unstoppable and we find a way.

Kids are already in virtual communities…Club Penguin, for example.  The distance between imagination and reality is shrinking.

How do we teach innovation?  Start with what they have in their pockets…iPods and cell phones.  iPods are being used to assist bilingual students learn English…there are a lot of other examples as well. Harvard, Stanford, and MIT all have course curriculum downloadable from iTunes.

(I only have 20 minutes of battery left…oh boy…)

What if Anne Frank had had a blog?  Students have stories to tell!..and you can empower your kids to do it!

That’s all the juice I have…too bad I couldn’t say more, but I suspect there will be other posts on this session.  I had a great time here in Grand Rapids and am looking forward to actually reading some of the posts here!