I can not remember a MACUL conference flying by so quickly. It probably had a lot to do with the fact that I was so busy. I was busy live blogging, bumping into old friends, trying out products in the exhibit hall, getting ready for my presentation and then all of the social functions.

It sure was different from my first conference in 2003. That year I had a great time and learned a lot but it was a lot quieter. I went to all of the sessions, sat toward the back, and didn’t talk to anybody. I didn’t ask any questions. I think I even had dinner by myself down in Greektown. The only person I really interacted with much was the cabbie who was trying to job me with the “busted meter” routine.

I still came away with a great experience, but far different than the ones I come away with now.

Have I made a huge conversion in my life from an introvert to Mr. Social? No, not at all. Over the last six years, I have begin to understand that MACUL is not just the annual state edtech conference. MACUL is the association and all of the people that are involved in it the other 50 weeks of the year. There were 3300 others of us in Detroit this year. The amount of brain power that convened at Cobo this year is immeasurable…and that power is not hard to harness or tap.

I have gotten to know many of these people over years in my grad program at Western Michigan University. We have attended and presented at other conferences together. Macul Space has made a huge difference in my career, as have other web 2.0 tools like Facebook and Twitter. We share ideas, successes, and a laughs…mostly we share ideas.

People rave about what a great conference it is…and without a doubt it is. I have just come to learn over the years that the people that make up the organization offer even more than what we can get out of each annual gathering in March.

If this was your first conference, or if you have been going for years, get to know your fellow MACUL members. Technology is making it easier and easier for us to all connect. Your MACUL experience won’t be just a couple of days out of the building, it will be a year-round part of your career.

I was very disappointed when I learned earlier this week that I have pneumonia.  I was bummed because I feel bad, but even more bummed because my physician told me I could not attend the MACUL Conference!  I look forward to the conference every year.  This year, I had more responsibilites than ever before… facilitating sessions, writing/posting to the MACUL blog, helping run the SIG-EE annual meeting, manning the MACUL booth, and supporting all the presenters from my district.

So I decided to do what I can virtually. I started with Twitter.  The conference has Twitter buzzing for sure!  I started following everyone who was following MACUL.  People at the conference share tips, links, and ideas.  As people share links, I tag them in my delicious account as macul09.  If you would like to see all the links I tagged, you can see them here.

I attended Thursday’s Alan November keynote through the eyes of Ben Rimes and Kevin Clark as they used Cover it Live.  It was almost as if I was there.  When they wrote about students being creators of content, with Audacity being one of the tools mentioned, I shared some Audacity video tutorials.  Shortly afterwords, I received a nice note by email from Kent Manning, a technology coordinator from Belleville, Ontatio, Canada.  He also was not able to be at the conference and was “attending” the keynote virtually.  We have similar jobs.  He wondered if my tutorials were on iTunes (they weren’t) and told me an easy way to get them there.  We are now Twitter friends and I’ve invited him to try out Plurk.  Plurk is a Twitter-like network that allows more conversations.  Try it out if you have not yet. Steve Dembo likes it; if Steve likes it, you probably will, too.  Anyhow, this is an example of how a PLN can help you learn and grow professionally.

Later, a friend (Krista Hanna), saw that I was online and had Skype open.  She called me and I was able to listen in on two of the sessions she attended.  Awesome.  Krista and I were to co-present this morning.  Since Skype worked so well, we planned that if I was feeling up to it, that she would Skype me in for the presentation.  I don’t look too great, so I did not turn on my webcam; I didn’t want to horrify the participants and have them run out of the room!  However, I was able to pipe in with comments during the presentation. VERY COOL.

I’m also taking the opportunity to reflect on the conference, something that is difficult to do when you are rushing from place to place and networking with others.  I have some ideas for the conference planners on ways to make MACUL 2010 even better!

As mentioned in Kevin’s earlier post today, the Conference Program Book is hot off the digital presses! Which means it’s time to start planning. And if you don’t have your cigar ready to go (you really should read Kevin’s earlier post), there are plenty of options for you to plan ahead online:

Start Your Own Conference Wiki
Always a popular option by the more tech savvy attendees, you could use Wikispaces, PBWiki, or Wetpaint to start your own conference wiki. Create pages for all of the sessions you’d like to attend, or just organize your thoughts online ahed of time, then come conference you have a nice online notebook ready to fill with notes, discoveries, and more. Bonus points for coordinating and collaborating with other members in your school district.

Do Your Homework
Many, if not all, of the featured speakers at the conference have their own blogs. They probably have Twitter accounts, wikis of their own, and social bookmarks that they’ve shared online. Pop the featured speakers names into Google and see what comes up. Pick out the good stuff, and subscribe to it, or bookmark it for future reference. Gold stars for people who use an RSS Reader to automatically pull in content from multiple sources about MACUL 09.

Start/Join a Discussion on the MACUL Space Forum
Alright, so I’m a little biased to this one, but there are already a few posts in the dedicated 2009 Conference discussions on the MACUL Space forum. You can use any of the three discussions to create or join a conversation about the Conference Sessions, Workshops, or Guerrilla Sessions. Might help to get an idea of where other people in the state that have simliar interests are planning on spending a lot of their time at the conference. Extra credit for starting a new topic about a presentation you’ll be giving.

Of course, there are plenty of others ways to plan and coordinate online for the upcoming conference, but downloading a PDF of the Conference Program Book is a good way to start.

I am sure you have heard the old adage, “Time flies when you’re having fun”. Although time has flown since I first became entranced at a MACUL conference, it seems as though it was just yesterday. Enter the time machine and take a trip back several years ago. I was skimming through the conference catalog and deciding which sessions to attend. I had begun to take an interest in podcasting in my classroom but knew nothing about the process of creating one. I wandered into a session being presented by Will Richardson and just like that; I was hooked! I actually attended 3 of his sessions during that conference time. I could not get home fast enough and order his book, Blogs, Wikis, and Podcasts. Nor could I set up my blog quick enough. I quickly devoured the book upon its arrival. I began to seek out more information on these topics and was soon podcasting with my students.

When I first began to create podcasts in my classroom, no one in my district had a clue on how to create them let alone make them available in iTunes. Enter my network. My network consists of people I have never met face to face. People I can only recognize by their avatar. People I may only recognize by their online name or by their blog name. Since the beginning of my technology journey my network and tech know-how has grown by leaps and bounds. My network still consists of people I have never met face to face but I can now add to the list, those I have met at conferences, spoken to via Skype, collaborated with via wikis and Google Docs, Twittered with and had coffee and great discussions in Second Life.

So take the plunge! Jump in with both feet and keep your eyes wide open! You never know where your MACUL journey will take you!

Had a chance to digest Andy’s excellent overview of his Personal Learning Network? If not, it makes for great reading on how one educator’s experience with MACUL, and other organizations, led him from being a follower to a creative leader of educational technology in our state. While many of us may not be up to the challenge of creating our own PLNs from scratch, there’s a great place to join an active site full of resources, connections, people, and discussions that will help you push your own boundaries as an educator.

MACUL Space is the Michigan Association of Computer Users in Learning’s social networking site for past, present, and future MACUL members to connect with one another outside of the conference, share and discover resources, and either begin to build, or extend, your own personal learning network. This year, there’s something extra special on MACUL Space! In addition to being able to share videos, pictures, blog, and chat about the conference, the MACUL Space discussion forum has three new topics:

2009 Conference Sessions – A place to talk about sessions you’re excited for, or discuss resources discovered during the conference’s 60 minutes sessions.

2009 Conference Workshops – A place to talk about either pre-conference workshops or hands-on session during the conference. Useful for sharing what you may have done with the knowledge you gained from a hands-on session.

2009 Guerrilla Sessions – More will be said on the Guerrilla sessions later, but this is a great place to plan, organize, and talk about the MACUL Conference’s “unconference sessions” that we like to call Guerrilla Sessions.

If you find the idea of building your own network of learners and educators a bit too daunting, you’re welcome to come join MACUL Space! The network is already in place, filled with resources, lesson ideas, problem solvers, and over 1,100 like-minded educators when it comes to using technology. Give your PLN a “kick-start” before the conference.

Image: ‘Une représentation de mon réseau social dans+Facebook‘
www.flickr.com/photos/49503019876@N01/1659321885

PLN or personal learning networks are definitely a hot topic these days…and rightfully so. My own development of a bustling PLN has had a profound effect on my teaching career…and life. Let me try and put into words the exciting and dynamic effects my PLN has on my career every day.

Through interacting with blogs, podcasts, Twitter, Plurk, and RSS feeds I have opened up a constant stream of ideas both tried and new. New websites await my exploration everyday as provided by my Diigo and Ning groups and there are always a bundle of great minds standing by for my queries.

It is essential to have supportive colleagues in our school buildings and I do have some great ones here in Hamilton. You can’t live without those people and there are some solutions that need close crafting. However, even the best colleagues can still leave you feeling a bit out on an island–especially when you are a so-called specialist. I am the guy in my school responsible for leading the tech integration, working in a specialized niche and speaking a language a lot of other teachers don’t yet speak.  Luckily through a PLN I am intertwined with a bunch of others in my same shoes, people out on their own islands. By staying connected we share lesson ideas as well as ways to deal with issues only someone working in a similar situation can understand.

I recently found out that I have been named Macul’s 2009 Technology-Using Educator of the Year. It is truly a huge honor, but one I could have never attained without my PLN. Seriously, this award is a network award. Almost everything I have ever come up with has been based on an idea or a tool someone in my PLN taught me about first. After the news sunk in, I really started looking back at how my personal learning network has evolved and experiences at the MACUL conference are its backbone.

2004: I guess you could pinpoint the beginning of my online PLN to my masters program at Western Michigan Univiersity. Professors like Tracy DuBay, Brian Horwitz, and Bob Leneway not only were excellent instructors but have remained tremendous resources. It was also in this program that I learned about the MACUL Conference

2005: I began building what at the time I referred to as my Ed Tech All-Stars during my first conference. I spent the majority of my time at Tony Vincent’s sessions on Palms and other handheld devices. When I wasn’t at one of Tony’s sessions, I could be found listening to Meg Ormiston. Both offered immense information and I began following my first set of bloggers and edtech professionals. However, technology hadn’t fully evolved into the 2-way street we enjoy today.

2006: New York Times Technology columnist David Pogue and super blogger Will Richardson joined the All-Stars as did this amazing ball of energy named Steve Dembo. Blogging and podcasting were big topics that year and I started to understand better how commenting and blogging myself could begin open up actual conversations. That year at MACUL the WMU faculty organized a face-to-face meetup of online masters program students. James Stewart and I had been collaborating online for a couple of years, but had never met. We’re still sharing ideas today.

2007: I have to admit that I didn’t make it to Detroit for the conference. My PLN was growing all of the time and I was reading blog after blog. Will Richardson even published one of my emails. I was feeling very connected and all of those new ideas I would return from MACUL with seemed to be coming at least monthly from podcasts like Seedlings.

Enter MACUL Space! Another huge jump in my ability to connect to other great educators and thinkers came with the emergence of the social network Macul Space. Ben Rimes‘ visionary development of this site gave all of us MACUL die-hards a place to connect the other 51 weeks of the year besides our annual meet-up. What a great place to share ideas and have your questions answered.

2008: As great as things seemed to be going in 2007, MACUL 2008 and the rest of the year were an absolute explosion PLN-wise. The big blast came when I focused more of my time at the conference on building interpersonal relationships than just finding experts to follow. I had been reading Ben Rimes blog for awhile, but sitting down and talking with Ben and his wife Nicole who also blogs at Techsavvyed.net was just as beneficial as their presentations. I was also very surprised by how many new contacts and relationships I was able to build as a presenter. I focused on elementary tools for teachers and shared my classroom blog. It was great because the room was filled with other people who shared at least a somewhat similar situation. Many attendees introduced themselves afterward but even more began following my blog or emailed questions. During that conference, I expanded my network beyond the experts or the featured speakers and realized people on the front lines like me sometimes have the best ideas and the best advice because they relate best to my specific situations.

Then came Twitter! I didn’t see much use for the 140 character limiting microblogging site until I started following some of those old All Stars and some of my MACUL buddies. It dramatically increased the frequency by which I interacted with my PLN. I then started to look at who my friends were following. Almost instantly my PLN went global. By peering into Steve Dembo’s list of people he follows, I found a whole new world of people to learn from. Kevin Jarrett is from New Jersey. Dean Shareski is from Saskatchewan. Teryl Magee is from Tennessee and Lee Kolbert works in South Florida. This doesn’t include the great information I found coming out of the UK.

Wow! That’s a lot I just threw out there and it just seems to continue accelerating. I always thought “networking” was just something that business people did. I am amazed daily by the impact my networking has had on my teaching career.

So, what has this all gotten me? Well, I would have to say opportunity is the number one thing. This past summer, I had the opportunity to attend Discovery Education’s national institute. It was an amazing week spent with 100 other great educators and intense instruction from Hall Davidson, Dembo, one of this year’s featured speakers Joe Brennan, and the entire DEN team. Guess what that did for the number of new connections. Ditto for September when I was invited to the Google Teacher Academy in Chicago.

All of these experiences and continual stream of new ideas would not have been possible if I hadn’t gotten connected all of those years ago at MACUL. Besides connecting with great minds, I have also made some pretty good friends along the way.