MACUL Conference

I had a great time at this conference in Detroit last week. It always feels like going home when I go to Detroit. It is a city with an edge. Detroit is hard and tough, but beautiful in a rugged way at the same time. I looked out from the big picture windows in Cobo Hall at the river with ice floating down it and the skyline of Windsor full of casinos now. It brought back a lot of memories.

The conference was so outstanding. Thursday featured a number of sessions with the Blogmeister, also known as David Warlick. He gave a great primer about blogging, RSS, wikis, and news aggregators. The website that he sponsors, the Landmark Project, is an outstanding resource that I have been using for a couple of years.

On Friday, another major proponent of using blogs in education, Will Richardson gave three talks that continued on the themes of communication, collaboration, and connection using blogs, aggregators, wikis, and so on. He also did an outstanding job. I watched David Warlick blog stuff from his talk while sitting in the audience with his laptop.

This was a powerful experience, because I began to understand the potential of blogging while listening and observing all of this. The possibilities at our web-challenged school are quite significant. It's easy to see our school newspaper rising from the ashes as a student-led blog. I was bubbling with ideas and excitement while I sat there, and I'm actually looking forward to getting back to school on Monday!