Educon 2.2 Reflections

This will not be pretty. This will not be orga­nized. This will not be thor­ough, or ana­lyt­i­cal, or even insight­ful, per­haps. There will be no links, or ref­er­ences, or resources.

I haven’t had time to process much (if any) of what I’ve absorbed in the last two days, and I’ve prob­a­bly missed more than I’ve man­aged to catch. As I have time to go back and review my notes, revisit the ses­sions (thank you Ellu­mi­nate!) and think about all that I’ve learned, I’m sure I will come back and share. But for now, it will just have to be raw and unpolished.

First, Educon really and truly is as adver­tised: it’s all about the con­ver­sa­tions. Some were deeper than oth­ers, some were more for­mal than oth­ers, but all of them were worth­while and helped me grow.

There are so many things I will take away from this con­fer­ence (besides that I will be back and next time I’m bring­ing more of my friends with me). I think the biggest is the power of a PLN. I would not be here if it weren’t for the net­work of peo­ple with whom I have inter­acted online through Twit­ter and Sec­ond Life over the last two years. I wouldn’t even know about it, and it hap­pens in my own back­yard every year!

I was stunned at how many peo­ple I already knew here—and that none of them were peo­ple I’d ever met before Fri­day. All of my con­nec­tions with peo­ple here (and there were dozens) were online.

And that’s the sec­ond thing I learned: online makes a huge difference…but it will never replace face to face. Hav­ing a live, focused, extended con­ver­sa­tion with a flesh-​​and-​​blood per­son is such a dif­fer­ent expe­ri­ence. Even when I “know” some­one online, to talk to them in per­son, as I had the oppor­tu­nity to do with many peo­ple this week­end, is so much richer. Now that I have added that dimen­sion to all of these rela­tion­ships, now that there is a real face and a real voice and a real pres­ence to attach to the vir­tual ones, the con­ver­sa­tions I have from this point on with them will main­tain a depth that they never had before.

And that’s the third thing I learned: face to face isn’t enough any more. None of these peo­ple work with me. None of them live near me. (Well, actu­ally one of them lives a cou­ple blocks over, but he might be mov­ing soon.) If this con­fer­ence were all we had, the con­ver­sa­tions we started this week­end would now be over. But since I already have rela­tion­ships with them in my online net­work, we can con­tinue the dis­cus­sions, elab­o­rate and extrap­o­late on them, take them in new places and put them into action.

I can’t recall the con­text, unfortunately—it may even have been in a con­ver­sa­tion about Educon—but I remem­ber some­one recently using the anal­ogy of drink­ing from a fire hose in ref­er­ence to an expe­ri­ence they’d had. That’s what Educon was like for me. A bar­rage of infor­ma­tion, ideas, chal­lenges, thoughts, new par­a­digms gush­ing uncon­trol­lably past me. I gave up try­ing to col­lect it all about ten min­utes into the first panel discussion.

But even what I was able to grab was so rich and reward­ing that it will take me a while to process, and some of it I may not be able to act on for a while. Those few drops are still pow­er­ful enough to sig­nif­i­cantly affect my think­ing and hope­fully will trans­late into action in my job and in my life. Over the next few days and weeks I will try to go back and gather a few more of the drops that I missed. My PLN will help me find even more of them.

If I had to boil it down to one take­away from the week­end (and I can’t, there are too many, but I’m going to be obtuse and try any­way), it’s this: Don’t be afraid to do. Every­one here who is doing inno­v­a­tive, excit­ing, chal­leng­ing things with stu­dents and schools is a prac­ti­tioner mak­ing it work in a real world and a real sit­u­a­tion that has the same kinds of con­straints and com­pli­ca­tions that we all do. They are not mir­a­cle work­ers, and they are try­ing, strug­gling, and often fail­ing. But they keep doing because it’s going to mean more kids learn more.

Per­fect doesn’t hap­pen. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.