online conference

I viewed an online conference called "Unlikely coordinates? Geocaching Across the Curriculum" It was created by Beth Ritter-Guth on Dec. 15. It is 30 minutes long. Below is a link to the conference.

http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=489
I've always thought Geocaching would be something fun to do. She started off by giving a little history, as well as telling you how to get started. There is a free website to use (www.geocaching.com) that looks to be user friendly. She is an Algebra teacher, and talked about how they took a field trip to a local cementary (creepy!). They had the students create three Geocaches using the names on the headstones. Back at school, they had students create algebraic equations for their three geocaches, which would later act as directions for other students on another trip back to the cementary. Whoever thought of that one is quite creative!
She gives suggestions on things to do and bring when going geocaching. She provides links to other lesson plans involving geocaching. There are obvious links to Geography and History, but also Science, Literature (letter boxing), environmentalism, and fitness.
At the very end, she showed a YouTube video with experencies of three different people. None of them gave examples as the relate to school education, but one of the people entertainingly said that geocaching "Gets nerds out in the wilderness."

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about online conferencing. An obvious advantage is that you can "attend" a conference on your own schedule. However, that could lead school districts to require that you do these conferences periodically, which would probably be on our own time. This would be very similar to the online courses that we already do. Granted, they don't take too long (15-30 minutes), but our plates are already pretty full.
A great advantage for school districts is that they wouldn't have to pay for registration fees, substitute teachers, hotel expenses, food, etc. A nice advantage for teachers is that we wouldn't have to plan for substitutes. Sometimes that's more time consuming that just being in school!
However, can you really put a price tag on giving teachers the opportunity to get together and share ideas face-to-face? I've been to several conferences, and I always walk away with something positive. I've also developed relationships with educators, which has led to further collaboration. Getting to interact with the presenters, as well as other attendees is invaluable. No matter how fancy the technology is, there is no substitute for in person human interaction.