#ULearn15 #Excited

Well, here we are. It has finally arrived and I have finally arrived. It's the first time I've been back to Auckland in 18 years, having lived here from 1987 - 1997. The ride from the airport was surreal. So much of the scenery, the buildings, and the businesses are drastically different - they weren't there before! As soon as we got to Pah Road, it all started to come back to me. Street names, stores, parks... they echoed in my head and I felt... I don't know what I felt. It was just strange.

But I'm excited for tomorrow. The event, the people, the speakers, the topics, the discussions, the people... everything. I was last at ULearn in '09 in Christchurch. It seems like a lifetime ago. I was a first year teacher. A noob. And I felt like a noob (not a nice feeling most of the time, particularly when getting stomped by smurfs) without even a tenuous grasp on my pedagogy, my understandings, or my content and there I was on a massive conference with bells and lights and whistles and speakers and jargon, all flying at me at a rate I couldn't begin to comprehend. I had fun though :)

Here I am, sooooo many years later ;) and I can now (almost) understand some of the jargon. And I've got a slightly clearer view of what I like and don't like about the system I have chosen to inhabit. I am becoming a quiet disruptor, an instigator and an infiltrator. I am a white-hat hacker starting on my true journey. I feel like I am where I belong.

Anyhoo, here's a vlog entry :)