One of the things that will ring in my ears, for as long as I live, is David Jakes taking just about everyone to task for hanging out in the library of the Science Leadership Academy while teaching, learning, and interacting with students was going on in the classrooms around the corner during EduCon 2.0.

Yes that’s me, behind the Mac in gray shirt and tie, in the infamous library bantering about twitter.

Although I feel lucky that I got out of the library for a bit to see advisory in action at SLA, Jakes words are not something that I’ll ever forget and it’s something that’s changed what I do at conferences.

I’ll never pass-up the opportunity to chat up a kid at a conference.

If you’re wondering what that looks like:

It looks like working alongside students in the OpenSource Pavilion at NECC.

It looks like talking to this group of kids in Seattle about how they’re using technology, inviting them to my conference session, and then later being interviewed by them for their school project.

It looks like ditching a conference to see Ben Wilkoff’s classroom because you’re within a $40 cab ride each way (and your per-diem will just about cover that) so you can see teaching and learning in action instead of a bunch of people talking over PowerPoint about why they’re so great.

When I walked in to present at this local conference for school level technology coordinators and saw these signs everywhere:

I knew I needed to talk to some kids:

As usual the kids know the score. In case that’s not good enough for you and you want to hear the same message from someone who wears a tie to work you can get that here:

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Technorati Tags: David Jakes, EduCon 2.0, Embrace MySpace, presentations, The Kids are Alright