14 Signs You Know You Are At The LEGO LEAP Conference?

Yesterday was another amazing day of learning and connecting. I decided to share a few things about how to identify if you are at this amazing conference.

So you know you are at the LEGO LEAP conference when...

• you see adults jumping and hollering when two robots move because of daisy chain.

• talk about Raspberry pi and Adafruit are not our favorite fruits to eat but still make us happy

• Beagleboard and Arduino are not discussion topics about pets

• studying a program for a robot that displays a threshold for light is AMAZING and somewhat of an Inception movie mind blown moment

• a presenter uses the coolest word ever - Amalgamators

• you are being pushed out of our comfort zones in every possible way and is a great reminder of what our students go through in our classrooms.

• when you don't get the topic that you want, instead of pouting, the people get down to work and create something rather cool and very useful for the classroom

• adults spending more time than necessary creating a minifig avatar for online discussion

• you feel relieved to know about never taking batteries out of a robot while it is shutting down.

• Content Editor has just become the new Powerpoint

• so many great discussions about education in general which excites me. The conference ideas go beyond LEGO to what really can we do to help prepare kids for the real world. One of my favorites lines spoken over these last few days is "Lego is not the answer, but it is an avenue." That is powerful and true for anything.

• people speak with a fierceness in their ideas about their passions. This is why the discussions here are amazing. When someone speaks it is about something dear to them and therefore the conversations are real. Real conversations are powerful and you don't have to waste time going through the motions of trying to create fake dialogue.

• tired, but sad to see the conference come to an end. I feel that I need a 2 month sabbatical to go home and put into practice and play all the ideas I have been charting and learning. 

• feeling humbled by everyone here is a great feeling. You know this is a great conference when I leave with 30+ ideas to explore and insights and learning that will help me be better. If I walked away not feeling humbled by the content and people, then the conference is not good. This conference is beyond good. It is AWESOMESAUCE! and has challenged me more than any other opportunity I have had in education.