This is a much smaller affair in terms of turnout than previous Ed Tech Conferences, but it’s let me see more. See more people, see more things, and that’s good.

First, I got to see Collette Cassinelli, Dan Meyer, and I must confirm, the boy was not lying about his height, he is a tall ‘un. I was not able to meet up with some folks I was looking forward to seeing (like Ken Shelton and Derrall Garrison, who were unable to attend).

I feel like I’m getting to the point when not only do I know what is being shared in many of the sessions I attend, but I could probably do the presentation myself. They are often good presentations, so I’m not complaining about the presentations or the presenters. I feel like I need to change some of my strategies for which sessions to attend. Complicating factors include that I’m the eyes and ears for my site here, and I need to “bring ideas back to them”, so I do need to make sure I’m up on the latest versions of stuff I already know about.

My big takeaway from today? Bridging the gap – between the scaffolding, building background structured and standards based ELD practices that I presented on, and the higher level project-based critical thinking that Cheryl Lemke talked about. Maybe she’s right, and it’s not just the kids that need scaffolding to this type of instruction, but educators too.

I’ll do another post about the individual sessions soon.