Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

I must say I was brimming with pride during the Tlt Summit. Our division presented 10 of the 60 non-commercial sessions. As one of 28 school divisions in our province and one of the smaller ones, I think this says something. I don’t apologize for bragging about the people I work with.

Because of a last minute cancellation I was asked to do an additional session. I immediately jumped at the opportunity to suggest the conveners invite Carla Dolman to do a session on her use of cellphones in the classroom. Maybe my smartest decision of the year. Carla agreed and decided to bring with her a half a dozen kids to help her. You should have seen these kids.

I wished I’d have capture it. Carla began briefly by outlining the thoughts behind the experiment to use cellphones. After about 15 minutes she paused and asked for questions. The audience of about 75 immediately began asking the students questions. “Did it change your learning? Were you tempted to use it to text or call in off task ways? Was it just a novelty? How did students who didn’t have a cellphone feel? Are you still using it for learning?” Hard, challenging, important questions. These 13 and 14 year olds handled them with a poise and sophistication that would make any teacher or parent proud. I sat back with awe and pride as they took turns, not by design, but simply as polished presenters would in responding to questions and concerns. Wow. Then Carla allowed them to share their formal presentation where they discussed the details of their learning as well as educated the audience about the language they communicate with everyday. Finally they had everyone take out their phones and begin showing them how to use bluetooth and soon they had everyone buzzing with learning as they facilitated a hands on learning experience.

While the story about cellphones is a great one itself, watching students present ideas to a real audience about something they were engaged with was another Tlt highlight. They blew me away.

Now I’m thinking about how I might get them to share their story with more people in yet another live, interactive setting. I feel a ustream presentation coming.

I’ve been looking forward to this conference for a long time. It’s been about learning, celebrating and having a lot of fun. For a province of one million, we’ve put together quite a line up of people. In no particular order, some random thoughts:

• Twitter is real. Meeting f2f people like D’arcy Norman, Brian Lamb, Jennifer Jones, George Siemens and Cindy Seibel as well as those who live her in Saskatchewan is cool and slightly surreal. I spend more time with these people than the majority of people I’d consider my working colleagues. Some might view that as sad, I don’t.
• Back channeling provides push back. Whether it’s in twitter, ustream chats or informal discussions, no one gets away with much. Generally I agree with Alan November’s talk and position but am glad I have to think deeply about things.
• We could use an open space format. Alan November says, “it’s not about the technology” and George Siemens says, “it is about the technology” How about the two of them unwrap that idea in an informal discussion. Add Stephen Downes into the mix and you’ve got something. I’d be there in a minute.
• I hope I make some people mad. We’ll maybe not mad but if there’s some discourse, some disagreement, there should be some learning. My session with my IT manager on ET call IT might ruffle feathers. I think I’ll ruffle a few more tomorrow, at least I hope anyway. But I’m not a bad person.

Oh and by the way, Brian Lamb is fun to watch.

There’s still more good stuff to come.

I’m excited to be the newest convener for the K12 online conference. As a past presenter and participant, it’s truly a great opportunity to provide teachers with a format and platform for sharing.

This year we plan to podcast regularly on the decisions and direction of the conference. Transparency is something we all believe is important.

So head over to the K12 site and have a listen, then subscribe so you don’t miss another episode.

The call for proposals for the 2008 K12 Online Conference is out today. The theme for this year’s conference is “Amplifying Possibilities“.

The growth of this conference over the past 2 years has proven its value ten fold.  We’re looking for creative, enthusiastic people to share their learning during this conference. While many of you share daily, the K12 conference offers a unique format and gathering of ideas that makes it a very easy place to both introduce and challenge each other with new ideas. Please consider submitting a proposal. You’ve got 6 weeks to put something together. You can do it.

Today I made 2 presentations entitled “Are you Published?” for Showcase 2008.  You can get all the details including the slidedeck and the video (posted below, so if you’re planning to attend this session on Tuesday, this may or may do it for you). In most cases, I rarely walk alone, whether it’s a pre-call out for ideas or links, or live appearances, I have a plethora of resources that I can tap into anytime. Today was no different.

I invited Will to return the favour (btw Will, you still owe me a few more appearances) and share some ideas (about the 14 minute mark) about publishing which sparked some great discussion and questions. So he gets in from sledding with his kids and chats with us for about 10 minutes. I carry on. Then David Warlick watches via Ustream and at just the right moment (35 minute mark), skypes in to share his thoughts on Lulu.com ( I had asked David earlier so it wasn’t a purely random interruption). So I went to the back of the room, grabbed a water and allowed David and Will to do their thing.  It’s been said often, that the minute you open up your laptop, you’re no longer the smartest person in the room. I never was anyway. But this is what learning ought to look like; finding and connecting to others that help you learn more. Easy, free and personal. Low hanging fruit.

I realize this is not profound or new, but I just wanted to share.

Technorati Tags: showcase2008, davidwarlick, willrichardson, skype, lulu

Quick podcast ala Bud the Teacher, 12 minutes long on some reflections of things I’m working on.

Show notes: 

• Project Based Learning
• Cellphone Video Post
• Dale Basler twit
• Wes Fryer
• Jeff Utecht
• Vicki Davis
• Clay Burell
• Maria Knee
• Kathy Cassidy
• Erin Remple
• Lisa Parisi
• Alec Couros’ class
• Showcase 2008
• Tlt Learning Summit
  

If you haven’t already, you can subscribe to my podcasts in itunes….Click this

 

 Podcast 36...Project Based Learning and other stuff: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

I had breakfast with Steve Dembo and met Rushton Hurley, founder of Next Vista. Among the range of conversations we had was specifically about conferences since we are indeed attending one. I was reminded Steve of his podcast from about two years ago when he shared his experience with open conferencing. From that podcast I was able to run my own open conference and incorporate its principles several times since then.

While I have no illusions that mainstream conferences such as FETC will go so far as to engage in the controlled chaos of an open conference, there are some simple things that would make much more sense and provide participants with a much better experience and allow them to do more than simply come away with one good idea.

Most conferences have pre-conference workshops which are designed to provide an in depth opportunity to explore some concepts or develop skill in a particular area. The main conference offers concurrent sessions or keynotes that are meant to challenge and/or provide awareness of these ideas. This seems backwards. Here’s the idea I shared with Steve and Rushton.

I recently attended a 2 day First Nations conference where I went to a session on the second day on a documentary highlighting the work of 10 schools doing exemplary work with First Nations students.  Each segment was about 5-7 minutes showcasing the various schools. It was a great documentary and I immediately wanted to know more about some of these schools. I realized after that several of these schools hosted sessions on day one. I didn’t know that or make the connection.  Had the documentary been shown at the beginning of the conference I’d have definitely checked out those school’s sessions to find out more, ask questions and solidify my learning.

Thursday, I went to Alan November’ssession on Cultivating a World Class Ethic. In it he refers to RSS, Custom Searches, Skype and a host of other tools and ideas. Alan is acompelling speaker, I’ve heard him many times and know the impact he has on his audience. But I’m sure they left with more questions than answers. I think that’s good thing. But where’s the follow up? Howlasting is this? What if during his presentation he was able to refer to upcoming workshops at the end of the conference that would help them understand more about RSS, custom searches and Skype? What if the conference committee began with finding great speakers like Alan and then based on the content of his talk, found follow-up workshops that would support and deepen their learning? I’m know conference committees attempt to categorize and try and find balance in presentations but most participants don’t easily make these connections and have the opportunity for more just in time learning. Open conferences are designed to do just that; meet the needs of learners right now.

So that’s my idea. Not a radical shift but one that I feel might help transform conferences from being hit and miss efforts.

Technorati Tags: fetc, alannovember, nextvista, stevedembo, rushtonhurley

It’s been over a year since I’ve effectively been away from technology for more than about 2 days. That meant, 141 unanswered emails, and over 1000+ unread feeds and pages of twitter I’ll never read.

Truthfully it’s not even 5 complete days without access. I’ve grabbed a few minutes here and there between my father’s dialup connection and some downtown wireless. Not even sure why I bothered. I managed to answer a few urgent emails and poke my head in the “twitter staff room” but that was about it. If it wasn’t for the online class I’m teaching I really shouldn’t have bothered.

I typically spent over 8 hours a day online. Is that normal? I don’t know. It is my job and my passion so it is what it is. With that time, I’ve learned lots, developed some expertise along with some pretty strong philosophies.  But during my hiatus, I realize as many do, that being disconnected is hard. While I enjoyed my break, didn’t really think about other stuff, when I did have a moment to think I wondered what was going on out there. What was I missing? I wasn’t learning they way I was used to. But for many, even those that want to, they don’t have 8 hours a day to devote to this.

I have to think more deeply about what is really important. When I only have a couple of hours, minutes with people, what is it that I really need to communicate. What things are really significant and what things can be disposable?  I’ve never talked to teachers about twitter for example. Not because I don’t think it’s valuable but for most it’s a bit overwhelming as an entry point of connections. Even blogging, while it is simple to do, offers many very important opportunities, it may be not be critical.

I like Carolyn Foote’s post on 15 minutes a day (Mr. Jakes idea) But of course a starting point is required. Even 15 minutes a day, while great is challenging for me because I’m used to working on 40 times that much.

As I sit here for one of the sessions at FETC, I hear a woman say, “Slow down. I don’t know a wiki from a walki. Tell me where to start.” Of course that’s tough to answer. If I polled a 1000 of my readers, I’d get a broad range of responses, none of which would likely be wrong.

As the Heath brother’s write, I  have the knowledge curse.

Here’s the great cruelty of the Curse of Knowledge: The better we get at generating great ideas—new insights and novel solutions—in our field of expertise, the more unnatural it becomes for us to communicate those ideas clearly. That’s why knowledge is a curse. But notice we said “unnatural,” not “impossible.” Experts just need to devote a little time to applying the basic principles of stickiness.

Kelly Christopherson has similar thoughts. This post has no answers just ramblings and reflections. Every time I write over a couple of days, I find it tough to string the thoughts together. But it’s my space and Rob Wall says you can just write for yourself so I did. But as always your thoughts and comments are critical to my learning so drop a thought on this if you have one. Always looking for stickiness.

Technorati Tags: fetc, carolynfoote, davidjakes, robwall, kellychristopherson, madetostick