I have signed up for the FETC conference that runs from today for the next four days. This conference when face to face was always our favorite. ISTE was too large and too expensive. It was large, but there had become practical challenges just getting into the sessions you wanted to attend. We had to kind of skip every other sessions if we were interested in back to back sessions because room attendance limits made it impossible to walk from room to room and get in.
FETC is free and online. This means there are no longer challenges watching the sessions that interest you. The downside is that the money to run the conference comes from corporate sponsors and the great majority of the sessions are essentially corporate run. The cost/usefulness tradeoff will likely be a personal issue. I encourage you to quickly join and make your own decision here. I need to do the same. I would rather pay say $25 a day and allow the conference the resources to offer a greater variety of content. However, for the cost I can watch a session or two even if I don’t find the approach to be what I would prefer.
I think our present online necessity offers the opportunity rethink many things. I believe online will become more popular perhaps as a way for K12 schools to share access to a few classes that are not practical for individual districts. Learning online is different and it is likely an acquired skill everyone should experience.
Do give FETC a try and for those working during the live sessions take a look at the archived content.
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