(Not) Being There

PROLOGUE

Time was that to get something out of something one had to be somewhere. No more. A bit vague? Read on.

ISTE

ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) had it’s annual conference in Philadelphia last week.

The conference brought thousands of K-12 educators and others together for several days of professional development and networking opportunities. I wasn’t able to attend. Except that I did. Sort of.

Through the magic of streaming media technology like Periscope and the efforts of caring teachers like Jen Wagner, Cori Coburn-Shiflett, and many others I was able to observe bits and pieces, some large and some small, of keynotes, presentations, and conversations.

BEING THERE

My being able to connect with the ISTE15 experience as much as I did started with the NotAtISTE15 Google+ group created by Wagner. The group brought together lots of people interested in learning as much as possible from ISTE15 participants. The other half of the equation was people like Coburn-Shiflett using Periscope to live-stream keynotes, presentations, and other events. I hadn’t experienced this level of connectivity and collaboration before.

Most of the time when I connect with others attending an event its through Twitter; its 140 character limit constrains the conversation. While tweets are useful as pointers to deeper and richer content or to arouse curiosity it’s a bit harder for deep (content) diving.

That’s about all I have to say about NotAtISTE. For a little more you can check out my PuzzlingMix blog.

NOTAT CHANNELING

Reflecting on my not being there learning experience started me wondering. How might we leverage Google+, Twitter, Periscope, Pinterest and other collaborative social media tools for other events? What might a framework for NOTAT___ look like?

EPILOGUE

And that’s as far as I got. Jen Wagner read my mind (or a tweet/blog) and provided an amazing How To #NotHere step-by-step guide.

I love my PLN. Thank you so much Jen!