Although we won’t be able to see everyone in-person at the annual VSTE Conference, we will still have plenty of great learning experiences and ways to connect with educators from around the state.
If you’re attending the conference, and especially if you are presenting, there are some things you can do before the opening day on December 9th to enhance your experience.
To start, visit the Conference schedule and login or create an account. Then go to the settings and update your profile. Since we won’t be able to have the usual hallway conversations, this will help your fellow attendees find and connect with you.
Next, review the schedule and find the sessions you would like to attend. Sched (the web service we are using) makes it easy to browse by day, session category or vendor/sponsor, but you can also search by keyword or name of a person.
When you find a session you might like to attend, click the circle in the block to add it to your personal schedule. Remember that this is just a collection of sessions in which you are interested. It does not guarantee a spot in the room (we will have limits to the number of participants in each live session) and does not obligate you to attend.
Since recordings for all sessions will be available for 6 months after the conference, include the sessions that you can’t attend live but might want to catch up on later. Also, presenters are encouraged to upload materials and add links to their resources in the listing for their sessions, so Sched will also be the place to come when you want to do more exploring into a presentation topic.
Finally, encourage your friends and colleagues to join you at VSTE 2020. They can view and browse the schedule without registering and even attend the sessions on Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning at no charge. If they see something they like, “walk up” registration will remain open for most of the conference, so they can pay and join you for the Friday spotlight with Lynmara Colón, the keynote with Kim Lane Clark on Saturday morning, and all the great sessions on the weekend.
While it cannot replace the experience we would have had if we were able to meet live, we hope that you will find much to learn and people to meet at the VSTE 2020 Virtual Conference.
