I am officially 4 weeks away from getting on a plane and heading down to Atlanta for ISTE 2014.  Lets just say that I am a little excited.  One, I love to learn and connect with others and conferences allow this to happen so easily.  Two, I have never been to a national conference before since the one time that I was supposed to go, the funding got cut months before.  And three, I love ed tech and the ability that we have to change education by using technology effectively and a large conference with educators from across the country is a perfect place to learn as much as I can.

This reminds me of when I was 15 and I was preparing for my first trip down to Bass Pro Shops in Springfield, MO.  I am an avid fisherman and growing up in Minnesota with a cabin on a large lake meant that I fished a lot as a kid.  I would be up at sunrise out on the water fishing before anyone else even thought about getting up and I could spend all day on the lake.  I saved up all of my money and worked a lot of odd jobs to make sure I would be able to get whatever I wanted when we got there.  I spent over $600 in a few hours, only slowed down by having to have dinner after we got there.  The receipt was over 3 feet long and I was as happy as could be.

I am as excited now as I was back then.  I am looking forward to finally meeting some of the people I have connected with online, mostly through Twitter, and learning from so many others that are as passionate about education as I am.  I am always trying to get better and firmly believe in having a growth mindset and I am hoping this conference will help me stay on that growth path.  I am very curious as to what others are doing and finding out so that we can better be able to make changes at our own school.  I am also hoping to make more connections so I have even more people out there I can ask help from and to learn from.  And if Google is giving away free pairs of Google Glass at the conference, wouldn’t mind one of those either.