GAFE Summit Wellington [EdTechTeam event]

Sometimes you just never know what you are going to be doing the next day. Yesterday I turned on Facebook to notice something that looked suspiciously like a GAFESummit in a nearby school. Needless to say I was shocked. How could I, @staffdevjnkie have missed this?! It could be that I am on information overload--Maybe I once knew and forgot!

I checked the bus schedule and realized that the first bus of the morning 7:03 am would get me there on time and drop me off practically across from the beautiful host school,  Ambesbury. This school was built in 2012 is a Modern Learning Environment (MLE) school which boasts flexible, collaborative spaces. This is a bright, purpose built school that clearly has students in mind. Everything from the variety, size, shape, and color of the furniture, to the cute, kid height sinks in the open spaces outside the classrooms shout "This place is good for kids" and "We love kids and they love us."

It was amazing to be able to hug one of the top ten sweetest guys on the plant, Ken Shelton, who is here on tour with EdTechTeam, the group that delivers high quality, relevant professional development every time! I was so happy that Ken welcomed me to DAY 2 of the Summit. He did a remarkable job in the opening keynote --After going through some digital nightmares that people have created for themselves, he said "There are no digital footprints, there are digital tattoos." We all gasped as we realized how true this is as he reminded us how many people take screen shots of deleted content. Tattoos..they are there forever and will take severe scrubbing and even then will not be completely gone. This is such a great point, I am kind of sorry I never thought of this before.

It was a great all around day! Everyone was super friendly, the food was plentiful and delicious, and the presenters were amazing! I had a blast in the session by Kimberly Hall @kehall16 -It was like she was reading my mind. She gave all of these situations and I was like "that's me, that's me"- She is very cute and hilarious to watch and listen to. She has just enough humor to keep you laughing but has no trouble sticking to what it is she plans on talking about. 

I spent a good deal of time with Greg O'Connor and Barbara Landsberg  from TextHelp--Long story short, if you have struggling readers, the stuff he can show you does much more than read the screen so give him a shoutout @texthelp if you want some help finding a way to create some sane solutions!

I met many new people and saw some people I met in other classes or conferences. There is a significant group of "conference goers" just like in the US so it is not uncommon for me to see people I know at different events! It's really a lot of fun when that happens! Another great professional learning day in the books. Thanks for an awesome day #EdTechTeam!