Four Cities in Nine Days

Well, nine days ago I left Athens to drive the eight hours to attend the Association for Educational Communications and Technology conference down in Orlando (see my posts at Breaking into the Academy and The Overlay for more details on that one. This conference was the annual meeting of the main professional association for people in instructional technology. I returned home (Athens - number two) from Orlando on Saturday evening.

I woke up at 3:00am on Monday to fly out to Denver for the Virtual School Symposium (see Virtual High School Meanderings for more details). After the two and a half hour flight, and $50 cab ride from the airport to the downtown, I arrived at the conference and began my whirlwind tour of Denver. I say whirlwind tour because I was only actually in Denver for a total of 37 hours. Tuesday at 7:00pm I left Denver and arrived back in Athens at 1:30am Wednesday morning.

I woke up later that morning and got ready to depart for location number four. Around 1:00pm we left to drive up to the north Georgia mountains, destination Amicalola Falls, where I'm in a lodge without Internet access for the next two days. I wonder the wisdom of bringing a bunch of graduate students, identified as leaders in their areas (i.e., busy people), to a place where there is no Internet access so that these busy people can fall further behind. I don't know, maybe I'm the oddball in this group, but being away (even if it is during a recognied break at the university) takes time. It takes time before you leave and it takes time when you return. Having Internet access while you are away does decrease the amount of time that you will need on the other end.

Anyway, off to begin my day...