I had an interesting thought on the way home that I tweeted about:
Having a session on a "cool tool" is giving them a fish. A session where they build a PLN is teaching them *how to fish*.When I first looked through the program to see which sessions I wanted to attend, I laughed at how it seemed like all I was choosing between were "We'll show you how to use this cool new tool in your classroom" and "We'll show you how to build a PLN."
The more I thought about all the PLN sessions, though, the more OK I was with there being so many of them. Why was I so excited to go to ITEC? To meet all these people from my PLN. Why is it so easy to skip the "cool tool" sessions? Because I've already heard about them through my PLN. As much of a buzzword as it is, having a strong PLN (online and off) is huge. I think it's once people have that PLN established that we can move past the "cool tools" phase and get some real work done.
Consider this a gut-reaction post. This isn't all I'm taking away from today, but I wanted to make sure I put these thoughts down before they left me.
