Post conference observations .....

Throughout the 3 days of the ASCD conference, there many opportunities to observe the goings on as well as chat to some very interesting people.  Because I don't have too many people here to share my thoughts with, I will take the risk of boring you and share my observations with you.

Firstly, the conference was supposedly a ‘green’ conference.  The string of pre-conference emails stated that ASCD was ‘going green’ and therefore encouraging participants to do likewise and not print the session handouts.  Some of the handouts were nearly 100 pages long.  Most of the participants chose to ignore this and printed out reams of paper.  Different learning styles perhaps or simply no inclination to be environmentally friendly?

Which leads me to my next point.  Technology.  In the 21^st century and with many of the sessions focusing on either 21^st century learning or technology, I was surprised to see so few participants with laptop computers.  Those that did have computers seemed to use them before the session began but shut them once the session began, reaching for their printed handouts or note books. 

Most of the sessions were fairly passive, which I found particularly surprising, given the content that was being presented.  Perhaps this was because of the time constraints.  The most experienced presenters (ie.  the ‘big names') were the most interactive.  I enjoyed these sessions the most beause of the opportunities to have interesting conversations with the various people at my table.  Through these discussions, I learnt a lot about the American education system and also American geography (I had a Google map open all the time so I could work out where everyone was from!)  People were intrigued by my unique teaching situation and the most common questions from others were ‘So, what curriculum do you use?’ or ‘Which standards do you use?’  

A weird observation .... Lots of people seemed to treat the presenters as celebrities.  Over and over, I saw people lining up to take a photo of or with them.  Odd.

Now that the conference is over and I’m feeling inspired, I have my sights set on next year’s Annual Conference which is being held in March in San Francisco, another US city on my travel list.  But in the meantime, my desire for new ideas, collaboration, discussion and group reflection has been satisfied and I’m enjoying implementing some of my new ideas.