ISTE 2011 Goals

This year’s ISTE conference will mark a significant event for me in terms of making connections with people I have met “online”. I have been active on Twitter and Blogging for less than 1 year. During that time I have connected and collaborated with numerous educators from all over the world. However, I have had little actual face to face connections with members of my PLN. I was able to connect with a handful of these people at edcampchicago, but ISTE will be a much bigger deal due to the sheer number of people attending that I have connected with through social media in the past year. With that in mind I have a few goals for my time at ISTE this year.

I want to physically meet as many of the great people that I know will be at ISTE as possible. If nothing else, just putting a name with a profile pic/name will be helpful in taking online connections to the “next level” of collaboration.

I am not naïve and understand that I will not agree with everything I see/hear, nor will every session be my cup of tea. In addition, I am not going to hit it off with every person I meet initially. However, I want to remain open to new ideas and invite new perspectives into my own thinking. While I have a great group of people in my PLN, I want to be open to learning from others that are not currently on my PLN radar.

As with most conferences I go to, I want to be a sponge and learn as much as possible. This will be different at ISTE this year because I suspect I will learn more from the various social gatherings and impromptu conversations with my PLN than actual sessions themselves. I have a certain obligation to bring ideas and “new stuff” back to my school and district and I highly doubt that will be a problem. I am specifically looking forward to participating in edubloggercon as well as presenting at ISTE Unplugged.

This may seem like an odd goal to have on the list. If you have seen Hangover 2 and you are like me, you were probably let down a bit. The original was so good and the expectations were very high for the second. In most viewers and critics opinions, it underwhelmed most audience members. I am hoping to not be a Hangover 2 myself. I will be meeting many people for the first time and I hope to at least meet their mediocre expectations of me as an educator and as a person.

As with just about anything I do, I like to have fun doing it. If my interactions with other attendees prior to the actual conference are any indication, I doubt this will be difficult to accomplish.

If you are a reader or a follower and are planning on attending ISTE, please track me down and at least say hello. You might walk right past me and I would be none the wiser so please don’t hesitate to stop me! More than likely I will be wearing a Superman T-shirt or other graphic T that I find humorous…