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Missed Utah

I sure regret not having time to make the Instructional Technology Institute at Utah State University apparently well orchestrated by David Wiley and nicely blogged by others.

The blog buzz is good from folks I know and trust. I've got some blog scraping to catch up on.

Some wishes:

• Earlier Notice. It was announced like in the early summer-- I already had plans for the time period, but for educators in general, we need some long lead time line up travel $, begging and scraping the desk draws for loose change.


• More Stuff Online. Just a schedule as PDF? Thanks to the ever vigilent Stephen Downes, there was almost word for word coverage [1], [2], [3] but conferences (IMHO) out to leave some sort of electronic footprint for prosperity.


• Something Different. This is my own conference peeve, but I am sure in search of some other format for our professional gatherings than the conference presentations/keynote scenario- this is the 50 minute lecture paradigm delivered over and over. Even online conferences tend to mimic this format. Isn't there any other mode to engage constructive gatherings? Most conference attendees attest that the most productive things happen in the hallway conversations or the beer soaked post mortems. How do make these the primary activity?
  

I cannot say I have the answer to the Something Different wish nor am I suggesting this conference was the same as all others (especially since I was playing at the beach while this one took place.)

But surely, surely, surely ("Stop calling me 'Shirley'"), there is some other way to have a professional gathering to discuss the exciting work we are doing that is NOT a series of lectures to passive audiences.