#bit15

I don't even know how many years I've been attending the fall conference hosted by ECOO - the Education Computing Organization of Ontario. I've been an attendee, a presenter and for a couple of years, I even worked on the conference committee. It's been a good run.
This annual conference happened this past week in Niagara Falls, called Bring IT Together, or #bit15. It seemed like a good idea last spring to submit a proposal to do a workshop with Trish. My thinking then was that Retired Susan would be excited to attend and reconnect with friends and get a little technology boost to spur on my new projects. Well, that was then and this is now. I'm feeling a little differently now that I'm actually living in this place. I confess I'm feeling a significant lack of interest in some of the things that were my professional passion last spring. Usually I'm really excited in the days leading up to the conference, this year, I felt hesitant. I could easily have stayed home.
So how did it go? We were only there for one day, but it was a good day. A very thought-provoking day. Our workshop went well and we had a pretty good crowd. It was one that we've done before so we were quite relaxed presenting. Through the day, I reconnected with lots of friends and colleagues and that was really nice. The keynote was given by Sylvia Martinez, on the topic of the Maker Movement in education. Normally I would have been tweeting like mad and taking copious notes. This year, I chose to sit and listen. She was amazing. Such a refreshing way to think about classrooms and learning. My personal quandary with Sylvia's presentation, as well as with a couple of other good presentations later in the day, was 'now what?'. I wasn't sure what to do with my enthusiasm for the new ideas. No classroom in which to implement new ideas. No teacher PD to plan and incorporate new strategies. No presentations and pep talks to teachers. It felt odd. I shared some of this in a couple of brief conversations with 2 retired friends, Doug Peterson and Peter Skillen - they have more retirement experience than me and had some wisdoms to share. They talked about life long learning and the importance of taking my time to find new applications for new ideas. I respect them both and appreciated their comments and encouragement.
I will continue to ponder. Retirement frames everything differently and part of this journey will be to figure all this out.