Wow! What a day! First, it was great to meet everyone! Thanks to ALan November for the space, we had a nice big room with a Promethian Board. We were also joined by Ustreamers from around the country.
Our agenda (all notes and the Ustream chat is here) called for a 3-2-1 protocol and we met in small groups of 3 to get to know one another and generate some essential questions. We then participated in a large group share where we discussed some of those questions. By then the morning was almost gone! We broke for lunch and then chose to have all the sessions that presenters wanted to do. I very much enjoyed Richard’s session on “Pedagogy Matters“, something I have struggled with when connecting staff development and technology. I think this will help me frame some of the projects teachers want to do in their classrooms. We talked about this more on the way home and as always, we need to be clear with the question “What’s the purpose?” The next session was on Professional development with Jim Walker and so for me there was a connection from Richard’s session to Jims. Next we heard from Karen and Cheryl. The question in this session was “How do we help teachers introduce tolls and strategies for struggling learners?” I love the idea of the toolbelt and that not all toolbelts are the same. Unfortunately. we started running out of time so we had to skip Mike’s session on social bookmarking, we then moved on to the Web 2.0 Smackdown.
We had a long discussion on the way home and much of our reflection is there (link later). This was such a great day. It was f2f with what we wanted to learn. I can’t help but think this is the way all conferences should be….
The View From My Window 
I took away a lot from Pedagogy Matters as well. I tend to use the same teaching approach all the time (guided constructivism) but realize now that I need to consider other pedagogies. I’ve been thinking about how that might work in my classes. I’m also thinking of ways to use some of the ideas that came up in Cheryl’s and Karen’s session.
Can’t wait to get back to BLC tomorrow.
Great conversation – thanks for letting those of us not there be part of it!
~Kern