Archive for November 21, 2011

This week the #engchat community took the opportunity to share their experiences from NCTE's 2011 annual convention held this past weekend in Chicago. I was blessed enough to be there with thousands of other English teachers, authors, people who fed my book-acquisition addiction in the exhibition halls. By the time I flew back on Sunday night, I had 50 pounds of books to tote back, thousands of thoughts swirling around in my head from all of the excellent presentations and conversations I was able to participate in, and so many wonderful memories of being able to hang out with so many of my tweeps and EC Ning friends face to face as well as get to see others I know from "real life" and haven't seen in a while. While some have had the good fortune to see students before the holiday break to share stories of our adventures, my students began their break while I was gone. But I had parent-teacher conferences into the late evening on Monday night, so a group of lucky parents got to hear a bit about the trip and I sent some of my new books home to their children to enjoy over break.

But that meant I missed #engchat.

Nuts.

So running this archive really meant a whole lot more to me this week. It was a chance to catch up on what I missed. You can read it here.

As a chance for me to asynchronously add to this discussion, the highlights of NCTE11 were:

* Getting to present at NCTE! The first preso was with @donalynbooks, @thereadingzone, @colbysharp, and @mrami2 about Twitter - the fellow presenters were fantastic and the room was full and the backchannel was as wonderful as I hoped it would be. Besides, I was stopped by more than one dear soul later who told me they had signed up for Twitter as a result of that session. Wicked cool. My second was with my friends from my NWP site (CAWP) - Shanetia Clark (@uvagradu8), Matt Skillen (@mattskillen), and Jason Griffith. People laughed and smiled and nodded their heads in all the right places and I was proud to share some of what I do in the classroom.

* I'm apparently not the only one who geeked out over getting to meet John Green. :)

* I also got the chance to sit and talk to Veronica Roth about writing. I can't wait to share our conversation with my students!

* Watching @mrsalander and @ckervina reading I Want My Hat Back for the first time. :)

* It goes without saying almost that I was so grateful to get to see friends, but I'll list it here. (If I listed all of your names here, this post would be far too long to read what I have to end on...you know who you are!)

BY FAR the most ridiculously awesome moment was actually at the very last session...@budtheteacher, @skajder, and @hickstro were presenting their #reportfromcyberspace and my dad logged in on the chat. Even better than him being able to view the presentation (and comment once or twice) from Pennsylvania was the fact that my son apparently was watching over his shoulder. The world is becoming a much smaller place thanks to the wonders of the internet - a fact that never ceases to amaze and fascinate me in the opportunities that have been created for us and our students, our families and friends.

@cbethm