When you meet the faces behind the blogs: GAETC

Today I taught a great workshop with many amazing teachers. They were so impressive and did an incredible job in a relatively short amount of time. I think I had the cream of the crop in my class! They were great!

Meeting the faces behind the inspiration!

I am so excited, I’ve gotten to meet the people behind several of my favorite blogs.

I met Anne Davis who is an amazing professor at Georgia State who also does work in elementary classes each week. She is so grounded in the reality of teaching and also has a great grasp on research. She is a borne encourager and I see why she is such a great teacher!

I met Sharon Peters from Canada a WOW2 friend who also took the class. She and I got very good and lost on the back roads around the airport tonight.

Jennifer Wagner saved the day and even helped me as we explored web 2.0 as part of our team collaborative projects. (And she taught this morning and tonight until 9 pm. What a woman! She is so knowledgeable!)

I met Stephen Rahn from Stephen’s Untold Stories — he digs out the most random bits from the Internet and I always find them useful. (Ah, I see on his blog that he ate dinner with Patrick Crispen, so that is where he disappeared to. He really helped me get my room set up! Thank you Stephen!)

Now, for tomorrow through Friday — guess who I get to hear!

Will Richardson, Andy Carvin, Brent Williams, Patrick Crispen, Leslie Fisher, and Tonya Witherspoon. I’ve heard great things about each of them.

Find the great teachers

My strategy for these conferences is to meet certain objectives, however, I am one of those people that can learn software from a book. I go for the inspiration. The people! I don’t even care what they are talking about. If you find a person who is inspirational, they can talk about dirt and you’ll come away being inspired.

In fact, Thomas Friedman’s book makes that very point: find a great teacher and take their class, no matter what they are teaching. Because inspirational teachers make one excited, curious, and inspired to learn. That spills over into life!

Last year, GAETC changed my life. I wonder what will happen this year? I’ll keep you posted. I’ll be roaming with my laptop and digital recorder and will be blogging about the inspiration that I want to share with you.

Why Should Teachers Blog

Meanwhile, I’m getting ready for our weekly EdTechTalk with Sharon, Cheryl, and Jen. I hope to see you there — We’ll be at worldbridges and on skype at
https://skypecasts.skype.com/skypecasts/skypecast/detailed.html?id_talk=61156

We’re planning on discussing why teachers should blog.