Mid-March, 2005; a teacher with less than 2 years of teaching experience under his belt sits in a large ballroom, laptop propped up on his knees, feverishly typing, trying to capture every piece of information he can as a presenter quickly flashes through slides. Names of websites, theories of instruction, fantastic resources, and numbers are hastily mashed into the Word document as an idea starts to form…

Traditional forms of “static” electronic communication (e-mail, HTML coding) are quickly being replaced by newer, faster, more connected, and easily customizable “fluid” forms (blogs, wikis). The young teacher recalls all of the “cute” monthly e-mails he’s sent out to the other teachers in his building, telling them about websites they might find useful in class. He imagines how many of them have been deleted, forgotten, tossed into the ethereal trash can of the Internet.

He decides there must be a better way. A way to communicate with just those that want the resources. A way to allow them to collaborate and communicate with not only himself, but each other in a way that messages and resources are shared openly for others to use. He imagines starting his own blog. According to the numbers on the previous slide, the presenter claims a new blog is “born” every 7.4 seconds. With a birthrate like that, he better get moving fast, or be lost in the sea of newborn weblogs.

As soon as he was home, he purchased a domain name, found a reasonable web hosting company, and began to teach himself how to use Wordpress. The old monthly e-mails died off, readership began coming to his blog, and he even managed to garner the attention of a few of his mentors and heroes in the world of ed tech.

Of course, through the cheesy prose and poorly written internal monologue it’s easy to discern that the young, neophyte teacher is me, 4 years ago. And while every educator’s experience at the MACUL conference may not lead them to founding their very own site, many often do have trans-formative experiences that radically alter how they interact with their colleagues and students. I have MACUL to thank for that experience. Without MACUL I might have been like every other new teacher in the field; signing up for professional development as a requirement by the district. With MACUL it was, and still is different. Despite the number and length of PD I receive from my district, I always want to be a part of MACUL.

The readership and conversation on my blog has continued to increase, and the contacts I’ve made throughout the state of Michigan have benefited not only myself, but my students and district as well. MACUL gave me an opportunity to grow in a direction that I wanted to, and gave me the tools I needed to continue that growth.

Sure, you may not come back from the annual conference blogging, twittering, or creating your own website, but I can guarantee that if you go with an open mind, you will take home more than you know what to do with, and may very well find the benefits of being connected to such a resourceful organization that you see beyond the conference.

Congrats to all of my fellow bloggers for doing a great job covering this year’s conference. Special thanks goes to Ben Rimes for his leadership during this project.

It has been really nice to go back and read about sessions I couldn’t attend. I spent a huge chunk of yesterday afternoon using the stuff Hall Davidson presented on Google Earth even though I was presenting at the same time. I went to Ben Rimes’ GE session and took what I learned there and combined it with Hall’s links. Want to catch fish on Hutchins Lake in Fennville? Find the KMZ file here.

A handful of us covered the conference as “official” bloggers but we have 100s of potential bloggers. The beauty of a blog is that it is a two-way street. Now is your chance to share your favorite sessions and cool ideas you took away from the conference.

Whose session we haven’t discussed deserves some recognition? Let your voice be heard.