This week a big group of us went to AERA to present materials and see other presentations. AERA is the American Educational Research Association, and educational researchers from around the country come to share their ideas and findings. I was told this year's conference had 16,000 participants (!!), and it took place in New York City at four different Times Square-area hotels for five days.

The MacArthur Foundation's Digital Media and Learning grant-recipients were there in full force, with about 15 sessions and a large reception celebrating the work of the various grant winners. It was wonderful to feel like a part of that group of dynamic researchers, and to meet some of the people I had only heard about.

Personally, this was my first time attending AERA, and I am already planning to go next year! I have been to a few conferences, but this was my first experience feeling such collegiality and camaraderie at an academic conference. Besides the MacArthur grantees, a highlight for me was attending a professional development session on Qualitative Analysis of Video: Using Video and Audio as a Data Source led by David Woods of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research and Kay P. Uchiyama of the Poudre School District in Fort Collins. This session was very useful for our research at NML because I'm starting to plan coding of video interviews for some of our upcoming research and publications.