I am really glad I made the trip to Dallas. I got a lot out of the experience. However, it was not necessarily the same kind of experience that I thought it would be when I was planning my trip to Dallas. I was prepared to gather and share resources and new ideas. In reality, that didn't really happen. What I found is that my blog roll provides a far better way for me to get up to speed and stay current on the latest and greatest in the world of education and technology.
Instead, I got to speak with some really inspiring people, validate several of my preconceptions and challenge what I thought I knew about the field. I leave feeling neither let down nor invigorated by the experience, but rather something in the middle. I am definitely inspired to further explore some of the ideas I heard about (mainly in side bar conversations) and I'm ready to jump back into it. For what it is worth, here are some of my take aways:
Biggest Surprise: Apparently, very few Masters students attend AECT and being a distance Masters student put me in the freak show category (see prior post). I could pay for my plane ticket home if I had a dollar for every, “Really? I’ve never seen a distance Masters student at AECT!” Quite frankly, I think I was the first online distance Masters student many had ever met! Without jumping back on that train of thought, it still strikes me odd that so many studies and presentations at AECT were devoted to online learning, but when faced with a real live “subject”, most elicited an immediate “for real?” response.
Best Aspect: I entered the conference knowing just the names of a few people who would be there, but I hadn’t actually met (f2f) anyone beforehand. So, I was pleasantly surprised at the number of people I had great interactions with during the conference. Across the board, people were incredibly warm and went out their way to reach out to the “new girl”. Maybe because I was such a novelty? I have now met several professors in my program, a handful of students in the resident portion of the program, a student from my distance program (yes, there were at least three of us odd balls there), and many professors / graduate students (PhD candidates primarily) from other schools.
Best Advice: I received a lot of tips and words of wisdom during the week. However, the advice that hit home for me is to seek out mentors. I think that is a missing link for me right now. I have made some great relationships (virtual and otherwise), but I don’t have a deep, rich mentor relationship. This was a golden nugget realization that made it worthwhile to come all this way to the conference.
Biggest Let Down:
- Too Few New Blogs: I have only a small list of new blogs to follow. I heard several times that blogs are too time consuming to regularly read and maintain. That made me a bit sad coming from a group of educators at a “communications and technology” conference. However, as usual, I found some great links to links by following the blogs of those participating in the AECT blog track. I look forward to exploring those paths in the future!
- Too Few New Resources (Tools and Links): I had hoped to report back with new resources (tools and links), but not so much . . .
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