TIES 13

I was fortunate enough to be asked to attend the TIES conference in Minneapolis this year as part of the group of teachers and administrators our district sends down to the conference every year.

I can't imagine ever NOT going again.

My goal, in fact, is to present a session or two next year.  I'd love to present either a small poster session on my hyper-text book report project.  And I'd love to do a larger session on Culture and Social Media in the classroom.  I might even be able to team up with our principal to present this one.

One of our elementary school teachers (along with our technology coordinator) put on a session this year, and it was packed.

I'll have a detailed review later on.  For now, here are some of the pictures of the highlights of the trip.

We stayed at the Hyatt, and the downtown was absolutely stunning.

The keynote speaker was Marc Prensky, whose article "Engage Me or Enrage Me" is a staple in my College Comp class.  When I saw him prior to his keynote, I couldn't resist asking him for a picture.

But the highlight for me was this afternoon session presented by George Couros, whose blog I've followed for a few years now.

I had some time before the session, so I grabbed a sandwich and ran up to our room.  While I was up there, I thought I'd check youtube to see if there happened to be any videos from Couros' other presentations.  I happened to find this one from a TEDx Talk.

As I was watching this and looking forward to the upcoming presentation, I thought I'd Tweet about it.

So I sent out this -

And before I even knew what was going on - and because the world is such a small place now - I received this message -

So I quickly walked down to the auditorium and saw George sitting there on his computer. I said 'hi' and we had a great 15 minute conversation about technology, teaching, our new 1:1 program, and what it means to connect with and inspire kids.  It was amazing!

We even ended up staying later the next day to catch his final presentation of TIES.  Mr. Vagle snapped this picture with some of his new fans from our school district.

Other highlights -

I had to stop at the Lego Education booth.

Here is the booth for the session on one teacher from Burnsville who used Google's 20% time in her class.  

This was the second poster session I attended.  This one actually had students at it as well as teachers.  Fridley actually hosted their own TEDx event.  I met a young man who loved developing apps on his own.  When his teacher discovered this passion - and thanks to having read Ken Robinson's The Element - she was able to connect his passion for apps with what they were doing in the classroom.  His TEDx Talk was a result of that.

Amazing.

TIES was an unforgettable "light bulb" moment for me.  As I told someone, it felt like I found my tribe, for most of the teachers and presenters there did shit differently than their colleagues and they were brave enough to share it.  I loved it.  I could still be there in fact.

But I can't wait to put into place some of the ideas that were shared.  Best of all, I can't wait to - hopefully - show off what my kids do in my classes next year at TIES '14.