Resource Roundup! Key Takeaways from Collaborating and Connecting at Conferences!

October was Connected Educator Month (#CE15) and wow, did we get connected! We started the month with a #TOSAChat all about the importance of connecting with other educators and came away with lots of tips on how to get and stay connected. You can read all about that chat here. We ended October with a bang and chatted about the power of building your professional learning network through presenting at and attending conferences! As we attended Edcamps, GAFE Summits, Fall CUE, and more we connected, collaborated and curated resources to share. So in true #TOSAChat form we had another fast and furious whirlwind of awesome that ended with a resource sharing extravaganza! View the storified chat to get a good dose of all the #eduawesome.

Powerful Presenters

Having an engaging, passionate and energetic presenter makes a session awesome. So #TOSAChat tweeps started the chat by giving a shout out to their Favorite Conference Presenters. Take a look, lots of great people to follow! 

MUST Attend Conferences

Some conferences come VERY highly recommended from #TOSAChat! Here are a few to consider checking out if you haven't already. Did we leave some off the list? Please share any other MUST attend conferences in the comments!

• CUE RockStar, CUE Black Label TOSA Edition and CUE Admin. Find all the great locations and more at cuerockstar.org or admin.cuerockstar.org.
• FallCUE in October in Napa, CA www.cue.org/fall . Even if you didn't attend you can still see all of the session descriptions and presenter resources at fall.cue.org/list/descriptions/
• National CUE (Computer Using Educators) conference in Palm Springs (March 17-19 2016)  www.cue.org/national
• Edcamps are happening all over the world, all the time. Check out the complete list to find an EdCamp near you! www.edcamp.org/
• NCTE15 (National Council of Teachers of English) is coming up on November 19-22 2015 in Minneapolis, Minnesota www.ncte.org/annual
• ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) will be in Denver, Colorado in 2016 from June 26-29. Check out conference.iste.org/2016/. Even if you can't attend you can still be "at" the conference by following #notatISTE and by joining the Not At ISTE Google+ community. Follow Craig Yen (@CraigYen) to get the Not at ISTE details for this year's conference.
• Google Edu On Air is a full two day conference with Keynote speakers and many, many fabulous sessions to choose from. You can view the sessions and access session materials from last year's conference at educationonair.withgoogle.com/live/2015-may.
• Google For Education (GAFE) Global Summits are happening often all over the world. Check out www.gafesummit.com/ to find one coming up near you.
• Confratute is a combined CONFerence, instiTUTE and FRATernity at the University of Connecticut. Confratute is scheduled for July 10-15, 2016. confratute.uconn.edu.
• The National Association for Gifted Children (NAGC) is coming up on November 12-15, 2015 in Phoenix, Arizona. You can learn more about NAGC and register for the conference at https://www.nagc.org/.
• The Flipped Learning Network offers and annual Flipped Conference (FlipCon). Registration for Virtual FlipCon 2015 is still open and the archives are available for unlimited viewing through December 2015. www.flippedlearning.org/
• Looking for more? Check out this list of K-12 Educational Technology Conferences from EdSurge (@edsurge) shared by Matthew Binder (@BinderBytes)

RESOURCE ROUNDUP! #TOSAChat Style

We ended #TOSAChat with a fantastic crowdsourcing session! The members of #TOSAChat, along with other fabulous connected educators, shared ideas, tips, resources, and more. Take a look at all their awesome ideas, snag one, then copy a blank slide and share yours! Don't forget to add your name, twitter handle, links to any/all resources and a shout out to where you got the idea from. Once you're done follow all of these brilliant educators. You already know they share great stuff!

#TOSAChat Resource Roundup Google Slides Presentation

#TOSAChat was started by Ben Cogswell (@Cogswell_ben), Joe Young (@Jyoung1219), Kelly Martin (@kmartintahoe) and myself  as a way for Teachers On Special Assignment to connect, share and grow together. Check out tosachat.weebly.com to view past chats, storify links and upcoming questions. You can join us at 8PM PST on Monday nights.