Week 3- Free Choice- Leadership Project

In my searches for clearer direction, I returned to  a familiar tool... Facebook!  As I am a huge fan,  I thought of Schoology since I had attended their free conference in October I began by visiting their FB page. I decided to begin a new search using the FB platform and was both surprised and a bit frustrated.  I found a plethora of information regarding past conferences, but took the information as a springboard, looked at the "likes" of each site and did find a bit of valuable information.

 I am curious to see how successful we as a group are in terms of acceptance to our targeted conferences, and how important it is to find the right fit to match our proposal topic.  I think that we as a group have touched upon a wide range of connected topics.  I suppose I never thought about how the presenters came together into one cohesive experience before. 

It is too bad that we as a University could not put on our own conference.  Full Sail should have a bi-annual or tri-annual presentation to showcase where the teaching minds of the next generation are looking.  

I am sure there is one out there, and as most of these tools have been for me this year, I am sure I will find it as soon as a hand in the assignment, or teach the lesson, or in this case as soon as I apply for the conference.  However, each time this happens my immediate reaction is to stomp my foot or roll my eyes at the irony, but in each case it is a tool that is added to my file or PLE in order to make the next experience that much easier or smoother!

I am sure that the perfect situation will come along or present itself.  I will be applying locally if possible as I would truly like the opportunity to actually present if accepted.  I would rather not just go through the motions for practice or experiential purposes.  I would like to find a conference in the New England area as my family is in the midst of preparing for another addition and this will make traveling difficult on several levels.  Leaving the family for any substantial amount of time is out of the question and the expense of airfare is not really an option either.

I would also like a more educational based conference as opposed to a technological focused conference.  I know this may be a focus on such a minute detail that it may not be a decision to be made, but my thinking here is that my ARP did not have the luxury of utilizing a large amount of technology within the classroom.  I was able to introduce the tools and to some degree practice the use of them, but due to technological limitations we did not get to utilize the number of tools or to the degree that I would have liked.  So I believe I would like to focus more on the depth of the educational experience.