1. Sitting in the front row of presentations...and your life...allows you to fully engage with the best presenters and some of the most engaged participants. You also get to make sure you can take pictures of important ideas, like this in Marco Torres' Keynote:
2. Put yourself out and learn something new - you're in Palm Springs, after all! Think of your time at CUE, or any conference, as a chance to embrace your inner-geek and try attending a session that you might not attend otherwise. If you're an Art teacher, go to session about using Math; if you're a High School Administrator, attend a session about the cool project an Elementary Teacher is using in his or her class (like Robert Pronovost or Lisa Highfill).
3. Last, and most importantly, collaborate. I think people used to call this networking, but I never felt very able at "networking" - it seemed fake, political and forced. But collaboration? I can do that. Mostly because I'm nosey and I want to know the cool things other people are doing. Fearlessly join in on activities, like PhotoWalks and PhotoSafaris.
So collaborate. Learn. Lead. And when you come back from CUE and you're missing the 80-something-degree weather, share share share. Share on your newly-created blog, share links to your notes and talk about how your experience just may change how you impact students' lives for the better.
Here's a link to the shared Google Doc that we crowdsourced to add session notes from all across the Conference. The doc also has a link to the LiveBinder and Diigo lists. One-stop-shopping! Yay!
As always, thanks for reading!
