MACUL 2006, Come see the Tech Savvy Educators

For those living in Michigan, MACUL is our annual “must go, have to be there, ISTE-affiliated, can’t believe how many wonderful nationally known speakers will be there, hands-on, techno-savvy, educator and student empowering” educational technology conference and professional development organization (phew, what a mouth full). Of course, The Michigan Association for Computer Users in Learning does a lot more than just its annual conference, including sponsoring free subscriptions to online resources for its members and providing an annual showcase for students’ technological achievements. I’m sure many of you have your own equally exciting technology conference, whether it is ICE or NECC, so you can understand my excitement when I received an e-mail this week that informed me I will be presenting a session at MACUL this coming March. The topic; us! The work we’ve achieved so far on the site has earned us a short session during the conference.

What does that mean? If you’re an educator in Michigan and you want to chat in person with members of the site, learn how to set up your own network of educators and resources, or want to see some of the site’s ideas in action you can join us in Grand Rapids this March 8th, 9th, and 10th. I’m starting to brainstorm about what shape the presentation should take, but I’m already thinking that having a teleconference with some of you West and East Coasters might be fun for those in attendance. I’d also like to show off how to use the features of the web site, especially the fresh links and social book marking. Any thoughts on what might make an engaging presentation of our community are greatly appreciated.

While the schedule hasn’t yet been released, early registration is up and running. If you’re skeptical about traveling all the way to Grand Rapids just to see some of the site members, consider that you could also speak face to face with the big whigs of online learning like David Warlick, Alan November, and Will Richardson during one of their sessions (bound to be much more packed than ours). I hope to see many of you there, and a great big THANK YOU to those that have participated in the forum, left comments, subscribed to the site, or have just passed on some of these resources to other educators. You’ve helped this site become a useful and practical site for sharing educational technology. The credit goes to you.