I thoroughly enjoyed participating in NECC from afar since I could not attend in person.
No doubt, the conference organizers and others question how much to share with the world and how much to keep private. Many recent business and educational book publications (The World is Flat, A Whole New Mind, The Long Tail, Wikinomics, and Disrupting Class) have suggested that the power of business is in sharing and services. I am glad that the NECC conference has become more open because listening from afar only makes me want to attend in person in the future. I know I missed the dinners, the one-to-one networking, the exhibits and re-connecting with colleagues and meeting new people by not attending in person, but listening from afar DID cause me to feel connected to those who did attend face-to-face. I hope other educational and library conferences will do the same! Keep up the great work, NECC!
For those of you who may want to catch up on the happenings from NECC, here are some links that will cause you to listen and read and think…
- NECC Ning
- NECC unplugged
- NECC Live (now recorded and archived)
Blog Posts to read:
Or do a search for NECC 2008 in YouTube or Ustream or Flickr or Google or …
If you like this kind of learning, plan to attend the K-12 Online Conference in October. (It’s free).
California Dreamin' by Rob Darrow 
Well, it only makes sense that there would be a distance learning option for those who couldn’t attend the NECC’s up-in-your-face conferences. Could you have one-on-one time with a couple of exhibitors or presenters through video conferencing? This would be a great option for teachers across the country to use, for a couple of reasons. One: it appears that the conference only admits members of exclusive organizations, eg. the ITSE. Two: many educators don’t have the free time to just uproot themselves for a long weekend and attend this conference and others, unless the conference(s) are all held in the summer. Three: teachers may want to show the material to their co-educators, i.e. paraprofessionals, principals, special educators, counselors, interns, etc.