Feelin’ the Heat in Houston

Can I just say…it’s stinkin’ HOT! We loaded onto our charter bus at about 12pm on Thursday. The trip started out well, everyone excited about the upcoming conference in Houston. ASCD here we come!

Then the air went out on the bus. UGH! With a heat index of 109 degrees, we were riding on a bus with little to no air. One of my buddies got REALLY sick so she and I climbed into the car with my good buddy, Jana. (She’d met up with us in Waco and was following the bus). It was so hot it melted a bag of gummy worms to mush!

We finally got into our hotel at about 7pm and got to eat dinner at about 9:30pm. Ugh. We just got back to the room and dropped! (What party animals, huh?)

Then we were up at 6:45am and off to learn great things. I waited in line for 35 minutes for a coffee…and hit my first session. I went to The Understanding by Design Technology for Learning session. It was the only session with Technology in the title and it was about using web 2.0 tools. It was cool. Didn’t pick up anything majorly new, but got a really good reminder of how forward thinking our district is as far as technology is concerned. A WHOLE lot of districts didn’t have ANYTHING or know what any of the sites we talked about were.

Then my second session was about Differentiation and Staff Development. The presenter was great – but the topic got confusing…it was about staff development for Differentiated Instruction but it also talked about differentiation in staff development…huh?

The third session was a 3 hour formative assessment session with Robert Marzano. It was GREAT! We learned a lot, got to ask questions about our grading policy pilot (based on his book) and got our pictures taken with him. He signed some of our books and was generally a really cool guy. His presentation was funny…he had jokes! LOL! Here I am being a TOTAL nerd/fan with Marzano.

Then it was a quick run to a food court for dinner….then I got dragged down to the bar to hang out with the gang. I can’t drink after my surgery, but that didn’t stop us from laughing (loudly) and cutting up. Props to Dr. P for the awesome MJ impersonation…and that’s all I have to say about that! ha ha!

I am angry that I had to pay $10 to get on the internet tonight. Totally crappy policy by the Hilton…you get enough of our money…give us something for free…internet – If the Days Inn can do it…you can too. Sheesh.

I was AMAZED at the total lack of twitter traffic about ASCD. I know it’s not a tech conference but come on! If you search #ascdsc you’ll see about 4 pages of tweets…and all but 2 of them are from me. What a sad commentary that I’m sitting in a room full of teachers, principals, superintendents, etc…and none of them is sharing, commenting, heckling…etc. through twitter or anything else. You guys really should be building your digital PLN and modeling this behavior! Why do you not know this already?

Well – I’ve got a full day tomorrow and I’m beat. So I’m going to sleep and lose a few hours of my 24 hours of internet service. (Still bitter). If you’re not having just too much fun at NECC then pop on twitter and check out what I’m doing tomorrow! LOL…at least all of my bosses will have proof that I’m here and attending sessions (as soon as I teach them how to use twitter! LOL). Night all.