Information Overload :)

After spending the last few days at the 2010 NCTIES (North Carolina Technology in Education Society) Conference, I am both tired from and excited about all the resources I discovered, people I met, and connections I made. I did attend this conference last year, and even though I went to every session, thoroughly explored the exhibit area, and met some people from my area, I feel like I was able to get sooooo much more from the conference this year based on the connections I have made as a result of the conference last year.
I did get a lot from the various sessions I attended this year (here are my rough notes that will probably result in several blog posts over the next few weeks). I feel like I was also able to get a lot from the sessions I was unable to attend. My "twitter and skype friends" did an excellent job of passing along the information they discovered. I am/was even able to get NCTIES information from the people I am not "friends" with on twitter due to the wide use of the #ncties hashtag on twitter. So many resources and great ideas were lined to tweets tagged with the NCTIES hashtag. There were also many ncties related #followfriday tweets.
I have recently become a member of the NC Ed Tech Skype Group that connects people with similar interests from all across the state of NC. Being able to actually meet the people I have been communicating with was a neat experience itself, but the resources and links shared in this skype group made it even better. We did have fun realizing that some of us were unknowingly in the same room!
Another group that I hope to contribute to and benefit from this coming year is NCSIGS (North Carolina Special Interest Groups). Within that Ning, there are at least 17 groups for people with similar interests to come together to share resources, collaborate, and learn.
So even though I think I may be suffering from some symptoms of Information Overload, my plan is to work my way through the twitter #ncties hashtags and the skype group to find resources and links to share. You can be assured that lots of blog posts will result from this search!
I am so thankful for the connections that I have made since they not only benefit knowledge for me (and others) but also benefit the education of students (that is the teacher in me coming out). :)