10 Things I Love About Podstock

Well the time is fast approaching for us to put on our saddle shoes, poodle skirts and bebop on down to the diner for the Podstock conference, or un-conference. As we've talked about in the past our theme this year is the Fabulous 50's! So we're going to turn the Hotel at Old Town into the Podstock Diner. I've been busy putting the finishing touches on some items to make the whole thing just a hoot and half. So I thought I'd give you a sneak peek.

First we have our conference session guide, designed to look like an old fashioned diner menu.....makes sense, right, ordering up what is just right for you from a selection of scrumptious choices. Yummy....It's all good. Inside there is some pull-away sheets with complete descriptions of each day's "specials". Next we have the name tags, what could be better than an order of .......YOU! so it's written on a guest check, crazy, huh? One of Podstock's goals is to share info about companies real educators are using in their real classrooms (and beyond) so we've decorated up our placemat to give notice to those products we in which we see real, usable technology. Now, we couldn't have a placemat without a plate, right? so what is more appropriate then a plate of bacon and eggs - makes me wanna scream, "Order Up!" Moving along, the fake napkin and silverware (some of our people- not naming names, cough, cough, wyckoff- have that nasty injunction thing about possessing sharp objects, so paper is good), anyway, on the back we pay respect and thanks to our wonderful sponsors which make it all possible. Each participant also gets their own diner cook hat (or soda jerk hat, if you must) so everyone is cooking up ways to use technology in the classroom. We are planning on having baskets of 50's brand candy on the tables but in my pic the basket is filled with foam french fries. Our conference bag to cart home all your freebies (of which we have some great surprises!) is naturally a .........wait for it.................carry out bag! And of course everyone will be trying to score this year's guitar pick.

This is the time of year I love, we've been thinking and planning and now the boxes are coming in and after some more proofing and some final touches, we can start cutting, laminating and assembling. YAYYYYYY! So ready for it to get here, are YOU?

And in case you are counting, because I know even though most of you ooze creativity, some are that pesky type A, yes, there are only 9 things listed but the 10th is the super secret item we're working on so stay tuned, maybe I'll spill the beans closer to time...

And a few of my favorite pics from this year