Monday, March 24, 2008

The Calm Before the Storm

Noon today marks the first session of the 89th annual conference of the American Educational Research Association (AERA). Close to 20,000 educational researchers (and people interested in education research) will descend on New York City for this year's conference. Through Friday there will be around 120 concurrent sessions every 90 minutes or so. That means that most days there is time to attend 4 or 5 sessions out of about 500 or so.

As with any conference this size there will be sessions that are phenomenal and sessions that are horrible. The trick is to pick the right ones. Given the large selection, there are usually at least a half-dozen sessions centered on topics that interest me and involve somebody who I've read, so I'm hoping I don't pick too many duds this year (I had pretty good luck last year).

I'll be posting anything that I find extraordinarily important/interesting, but I don't know when or how since the conference is hosted by a number of hotels -- all of which likely feel the need to charge extra for internet access despite charging exorbitantly just to stay there.

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