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Edcamp: A Professional Development Amuse Bouche

Posted on May 23, 2011 by in Learning, Networking

I spent this past Sat­ur­day at edcamp Philly. Edcamp is an uncon­fer­ence: a gath­er­ing of pro­fes­sional edu­ca­tors that is delib­er­ately struc­tured dif­fer­ently than your typ­i­cal pro­fes­sional con­fer­ence. Instead of a set sched­ule of pre­sen­ters and ven­dors, pre­de­fined and pre­s­e­lected by a com­mit­tee, the atten­dees cre­ate the sched­ule on the fly by propos­ing their own sessions.

The top­ics at this year’s edcamp Philly ranged from “Mod­els of 1:1 Com­put­ing in the Age of Con­sumer Elec­tron­ics” to what was billed as the last-​​ever “Things That Suck” by Dan Calla­han (sorry, Dan, you may never get away from the con­nec­tion). The tone of the con­fer­ence and the ses­sions is almost self-​​consciously casual and irrev­er­ent, cul­mi­nat­ing in a “Smack­down” where par­tic­i­pants came to the podium and shared in rapid-​​fire suc­ces­sion a web site or app they thought was par­tic­u­larly use­ful, pow­er­ful, or sim­ply cool.

This is my third uncon­fer­ence (fifth if you count Educon, which has a sim­i­lar feel, but is more struc­tured). The first time I attended one, I left feel­ing like my head was going to explode from the sheer vol­ume of ideas that had been gen­er­ated over the week­end. Since then, I have had sim­i­larly pow­er­ful responses and believe there is some­thing to this that could be trans­lated into more tra­di­tional pro­fes­sional devel­op­ment are­nas. That was, in fact, one of the ses­sions I attended on Sat­ur­day, and there was some pow­er­ful con­ver­sa­tion around the idea of dis­tricts adopt­ing an edcamp-​​like model for some of their inter­nal training.

But I can’t help but think that there ought to be more to this, also. I’m won­der­ing of some of the energy is sim­ply from the new-​​ness of doing PD dif­fer­ently. There was a con­ver­sa­tion on Twit­ter last night (in which I did not par­tic­i­pate) prompted by a very fair ques­tion by Bud Hunt:

“Have been check­ing in on #edcamp tweets off & on today. Still wait­ing for the use­ful bits. What’d I miss? Worth your time to go to #edcamp? I see plenty of state­ments regard­ing the awe­some­ness of #edcamp, and plenty of smart peo­ple involved, but no steak to match the sizzle.”

I have to agree with him: I seem to be miss­ing the steak, and I’ve been won­der­ing why. It got me think­ing about why edcamp still feels pow­er­ful and impor­tant to me, even though I walk away from many ses­sions feel­ing as though noth­ing of sub­stance actu­ally took place. On reflec­tion (which isn’t done yet, by the way), I’ve come up with some rea­sons that edcamp is still worth the time:

  1. It’s about the rela­tion­ships. The great­est thing I have received from each of the uncon­fer­ences I’ve attended is con­nec­tions with other edu­ca­tors. I have made some very good friends through the con­ver­sa­tions and col­lab­o­ra­tion that has devel­oped from each edcamp I have attended. I have found peo­ple who have sim­i­lar beliefs and inter­ests, and in many cases we have extended our work beyond that day.
  2. My bat­ter­ies get recharged. Each and every time I attend one of these, I am sud­denly immersed in a deep pool of peo­ple who care deeply about edu­ca­tion. In my every­day work envi­ron­ment, I am extremely for­tu­nate to work with sev­eral oth­ers who are as pas­sion­ate about edu­ca­tion as I am, but even so, it is a pow­er­ful thing to walk into a room where there are over a hun­dred peo­ple who have vol­un­tar­ily cho­sen to use their week­end talk­ing about work. It is next to impos­si­ble to walk away from that envi­ron­ment with­out feel­ing ener­gized and renewed.
  3. My map gets big­ger. It never fails that in every ses­sion I attend at an edcamp, I am exposed to a thought, idea, tool, resource, or con­nec­tion that I wasn’t aware of or hadn’t con­sid­ered before. I find out that some­one has already been doing some­thing that I was con­sid­er­ing, and now I have a place to go for advice. I learn about a tool that will solve a prob­lem I’ve been hav­ing, or I add a resource to my col­lec­tion and now have more ways to approach something.

Edcamp ses­sions never bring me to the point of mas­tery of a topic, and often we are no closer to a solu­tion to the prob­lems fac­ing edu­ca­tion than we were at the begin­ning. There are no deliv­er­ables at the end, there isn’t often a great deal of mea­sur­able growth or action.

I’m begin­ning to real­ize, though, that edcamp and sim­i­lar gath­er­ings can’t and won’t be the entire meal. It is more like an amuse-​​bouche: a tan­ta­liz­ing, bite-​​sized taste, designed to pre­pare the mouth for the later courses, to excite the taste buds and waken the senses to embrace the entire expe­ri­ence of the meal to come.

Should more sub­stance, more meat, be brought into the mix? Should the orga­niz­ers of edcamps think about how to begin grow­ing the model out of its infancy into a more sophis­ti­cated thing? Should there be out­comes and evi­dence of real learn­ing at the end of the day?

Per­haps. I leave it for another day to pon­der how that might hap­pen. But for now, I’m con­tent know­ing that edcamp has a very valu­able and worth­while place in inspir­ing me to keep work­ing hard at mak­ing things bet­ter for kids, not only in my own dis­trict, but as part of the larger edu­ca­tion community.

How about you? What other rea­sons is this kind of uncon­fer­ence still worth­while, even if the meat isn’t there yet?

Educon 2011: More Deep Thoughts

Posted on January 31, 2011 by in Collaboration, Leadership, Networking

Yes­ter­day, I wrote about two of my big pic­ture take­aways from the first day of Educon. Day 2 indeed con­tin­ued that pat­tern. I still heard ref­er­ences to stu­dent voice and stu­dent pas­sions in every ses­sion. And my assump­tions con­tin­ued to be chal­lenged, and are con­tin­u­ing to be chal­lenged today as the “Educon hang­over” sets in and the extra thoughts that didn’t fit into the week­end are leak­ing out into the Twittersphere.

There were a cou­ple of other big themes that sur­rounded every­thing at Educon this year. They aren’t any­thing new, but I believe that because they keep com­ing up and aren’t going away, they might qual­ify as endur­ing under­stand­ings about learning.

Connect

Ear­lier this evening, Dean Shareski tweeted:

I don’t care what any­one says,this whole con­nected learn­ing stuff still amazes me.Might not be the total answer but there’s some­thing to itMon Jan 31 21:12:32 via Osfoora for iPhoneDean Shareski
shareski


I believe that con­nec­tion is a mul­ti­plier. When we learn some­thing alone, it has power. But when two peo­ple learn and share together, we both get twice as much out of it. There’s a (for­give the word) syn­ergy in the learn­ing process when we are con­nected with other learners.

Then when we share the learn­ing with oth­ers and they share it, it gets mul­ti­plied expo­nen­tially. There’s some truth to the crit­i­cism that the edublog com­mu­nity (and many of those who attend Educon) can become an echo cham­ber of the same ideas cir­cu­lat­ing round and round, over and over. But con­sider that every day, new faces join this com­mu­nity. They have some catch­ing up to do, and when we “rehash” an old idea in get­ting them up to speed, we can also refine and rework it.

Every per­son who chews on an idea and then passes it along to the next per­son adds a layer of value. Chris Lehmann con­stantly reminds those who praise him for what he has done at SLA that he “stands on the shoul­ders of giants.” We also stand on each oth­ers’ shoulders.

It can be intim­i­dat­ing to enter a con­nected com­mu­nity. It’s easy to bounce around, watch­ing every­one else who’s already con­nected and think that there’s no room left. I under­stand that a few peo­ple expe­ri­enced this at Educon and left feel­ing iso­lated. I’ve been con­tem­plat­ing whose respon­si­bil­ity it is to cor­rect this. I do believe this com­mu­nity is a wel­com­ing one: in the cou­ple of years that I’ve been actively Tweet­ing and blog­ging, I’ve found dozens if not hun­dreds of peo­ple will­ing to hear my ideas and engage in the con­ver­sa­tion with me. Those who jump in and start con­tribut­ing and look­ing for ways to con­nect won’t be dis­ap­pointed. (As if to rein­force this exact idea, as I was writ­ing this post, I saw a link to this doc­u­ment from Chris Lehmann’s ses­sion at Educon. Check out the high­lighted sen­tence that one of the par­tic­i­pants added.…)

But I think we also need to go out of our way to invite new voices into the con­ver­sa­tion. We need to model our own learn­ing com­mu­nity after the ones we want to see in our class­rooms and schools. If any stu­dent feels alien­ated, we’ve not done our jobs as edu­ca­tors. Like­wise, if a fel­low teacher-​​learner feels we’ve cre­ated bar­ri­ers to enter­ing the con­ver­sa­tion, what does that say about what we really value in a learn­ing community?

Act

The last theme is that we need to take action. This also hap­pens to be the even­tual cure for the echo cham­ber. This also hap­pens to be the hard part. In sev­eral ses­sions, we were really good at explain­ing our rea­son­ing, at expound­ing on the prin­ci­ples, at build­ing a case and build­ing a the­ory. When the leader asked, “So what do we do with it? How do we put it into prac­tice? How do we make this hap­pen?” There was gen­er­ally silence.

I’ll be bla­tantly hon­est: I’m not sure I know the answers to those ques­tions either. But I do know that this year—instead of hav­ing an awe­some week­end of con­nect­ing with other edu­ca­tors and learn­ing from them and reflect­ing on the process in a blog and then for­get­ting about it until next January—I’m going to fol­low Lisa Thumann’s lead and cre­ate an action plan.

At the same time, I’m reminded that talk­ing or writ­ing about some­thing is tak­ing an action. Words are pow­er­ful, and words can change the world. For me, words are often the best way for me to have an impact on some­one else, so blog­ging and talk­ing about these ideas is my first step at tak­ing action. But I don’t think we can stop there.

I wres­tled a great deal this week­end with whether change needs to hap­pen through evo­lu­tion or rev­o­lu­tion. This isn’t a new dilemma, but I thought about it from the action angle this week. In my sphere of influ­ence, it often feels like all I can do is chip slowly away at bits of the cor­ners, and I won­der if that will be enough to ever make any kind of dif­fer­ence for kids. Then I real­ize that while I’m chip­ping, I can also keep talk­ing about the ideas, and per­haps I can help oth­ers decide to start chip­ping at their own cor­ners of the prob­lem. If enough peo­ple chip slowly, it won’t be slow any more.

I Don't Know

Posted on September 18, 2010 by in Gifted, Networking

For the fourth post in our series on gifted edu­ca­tion we turn to Jeff Aga­menoni, who posts as @teacherman79 on Twit­ter. Though rel­a­tively new to gifted edu­ca­tion, Jeff’s expe­ri­ence in edu­ca­tion and hon­est per­spec­tive on teach­ing made him a nat­ural choice to invite as a guest blog­ger here. Jeff is also active in Sec­ond Life and Quest Atlantis.

My name is Jeff Aga­menoni and I have been teach­ing for 17 years in a vari­ety of posi­tions, mostly mid­dle school, in Great Falls, Mon­tana. I am in my sec­ond year as a gifted and tal­ented spe­cial­ist and I learned a ton in my first year. I hope to con­tinue learn­ing about how to be more effec­tive with my stu­dents as I move into my sec­ond year.

When Ger­ald asked me to guest blog, he posed the ques­tion, “How are we going to meet the needs of the gifted pop­u­la­tion as we con­tinue mov­ing into the twenty-​​first cen­tury?” My ini­tial response was that we need to be chang­ing the way we deliver instruc­tion for all kids in much the same way. I told this to Ger­ald and he said I needed to think it through more thor­oughly. So I did, and the truth of the mat­ter is, I really don’t know. There are a cou­ple of things, how­ever that I am fairly cer­tain of.

I believe the answer lies some­where within the con­cept of Con­nec­tivism. New tech­nol­ogy, to me, is not about the machines, the appli­ca­tions, or the search engines; but about its abil­ity to con­nect us to oth­ers. Most experts I have read talk about the impor­tance of group­ing gifted stu­dents as a means of pro­vid­ing them with increased learn­ing oppor­tu­ni­ties. They also talk about con­nect­ing gifted stu­dents to experts in their fields of inter­est. Not only do cur­rent tech­nolo­gies increase our capac­ity to con­nect gifted stu­dents to one another, but they increase our capac­ity to con­nect our stu­dents to other great teach­ers and experts in a vari­ety of fields. I believe I have begun doing this on a small scale and I believe my job is to con­tinue to try and increase the scale at which I con­nect my stu­dents with each other, to other great teach­ers, and to experts in a vari­ety of occu­pa­tional fields.

The sec­ond thing I began think­ing about last night is some­times it seems in edu­ca­tion we focus more on what we need to be doing dif­fer­ently instead of what we are already doing right. I believe most teach­ers really want to do what is right for kids, but every year, no mat­ter what hap­pened in the pre­vi­ous year, it seems it has never been enough for some peo­ple, usu­ally peo­ple who haven’t been in the class­room since last cen­tury. So, teach­ers who are read­ing this: you did a great job last year, and keep up the good work. I am cer­tain that in some way, you touched a kid’s life.

Finally, I love con­nec­tivism and hav­ing a PLN. I con­nect to my PLN in a vari­ety of places includ­ing twit­ter, blogs I read, and sec­ond life, among oth­ers. I believe that with­out it (my PLN), I would be lost and extremely unsure of how to approach issues like the one that Ger­ald asked me to guest blog about. I think it is impor­tant to con­tinue look­ing at and dis­cussing how we can improve the way we deliver instruc­tion to our stu­dents. Hav­ing a strong PLN and a will­ing­ness to be a lit­tle reflec­tive gives us the abil­ity to accom­plish that very impor­tant goal.

ISTE 2010: Emerging Themes

Posted on June 28, 2010 by in Design, Learning, Networking, Technology

Two themes are emerg­ing in what I’m learn­ing here at ISTE 2010. These aren’t new ideas by any stretch, even to me. It’s just that they are being dri­ven home in very pow­er­ful and deep ways.

The world is small and flat. Not pre­cisely in the sense that Thomas Fried­man meant in his book, but in the sense of con­nec­tions and rela­tion­ships. As I said yes­ter­day, I can hardly turn around any­where with­out see­ing some­one I know, or meet­ing some­one I’ve con­versed with on Twit­ter. Today I met Jeff Aga­menoni and Sue Waters, from Mon­tana and Aus­tralia respec­tively, and with whom I have chat­ted many times over the last cou­ple of years. (Sue, of course, reminded me almost imme­di­ately that I for­got to bring her the choco­late I promised her. And then I took her seat in the Blogger’s Cafe. Great way to treat some­one I’ve just met.)

When our stu­dents leave our schools, they are going to land in a world where they need to relate not just with peo­ple who live and work near them, but with peo­ple around the world. It’s not optional any more. Every­one is your neigh­bor. Dis­tance is now mea­sured not in miles but by your abil­ity to con­nect with dif­fer­ent chan­nels. The more com­mu­ni­ca­tion tools you know, the closer you are. Kids are going to have to be able to find peo­ple and be found, to build their own dig­i­tal homes and tell their own dig­i­tal stories.

Which is the sec­ond theme I’m see­ing over and over:

Design is an essen­tial skill. Garr Reynolds in his book and blog, Pre­sen­ta­tion Zen, talks about how often peo­ple treat design as an after­thought, as though it’s dec­o­ra­tion to be painted on after mak­ing the con­tent. But design is much deeper. It is ulti­mately about effec­tive com­mu­ni­ca­tion and facil­i­tat­ing con­nec­tion. If a valu­able mes­sage is obscured by poor design, the mes­sage will lose power, or the recip­i­ent will give up before it gets through.

Just as kids have to learn how to con­nect with the world and man­age those con­nec­tions, they have to learn how to effec­tively use the prin­ci­ples and tools of design to enhance their com­mu­ni­ca­tion. The only way we will ever be able to teach those skills is to use them ourselves.

So my first take­away from the day is that all edu­ca­tors, not just the ones who like that “tech­nol­ogy stuff,” have to become con­nected and become design­ers. It’s not optional any­more, because we will be putting our kids at a dis­ad­van­tage if we don’t get there.

Hallways: The Original PLN

Posted on April 15, 2009 by in Networking

The Tall Tale Parade Passes By
Image by Old Shoe Woman via Flickr

Social net­work­ing, if you believe half of what you read, is a 21st-​​century, Web 2.0 phe­nom­e­non that has exploded onto our cul­ture through our youth.

Any­one that was around before the Web was even a 1.0 knows this is hog­wash. Social net­work­ing has been around as long as there have been humans. The older I get, the more I under­stand that every­thing comes down to rela­tion­ships. My suc­cess as a teacher, in par­tic­u­lar, depends far more on the rela­tion­ships I develop than it does on what I know or my ped­a­gog­i­cal skills. There are many tech­nol­ogy tools that I’m learn­ing to use to strengthen and grow those relationships.

But the more I think about social net­work­ing, the more I real­ize that we’ve had them in our schools for­ever. They’re called hall­ways. Class­rooms may be where instruc­tion takes place, but they are essen­tially pri­vate islands, iso­lated from the school com­mu­nity. The hall­ways are the pub­lic face of the school, and they are where the con­nec­tions hap­pen. I’ve observed a few things tak­ing place in hall­ways over the last few weeks that I’m con­vinced make schools oper­ate well and make the learn­ing that takes place in the class­rooms more effective.

Class­room “Home Page”

As I walk through a school, I can some­times get a glimpse of what is going on inside a class­room through the door. More often, though, I only know about the class through their pub­lic face: the hall­way space just out­side. Some teach­ers use this inter­nal build­ing “home page” to the fullest, giv­ing us ongo­ing, devel­op­ing pic­tures of what the stu­dents are learn­ing and their growth over the year. In my expe­ri­ence, these class­rooms and these teach­ers are the ones gen­er­at­ing the most learning.

Cour­tesy and Respect

Within a class­room, the stu­dents and teacher nego­ti­ate over the course of time an under­stand­ing of how things will work. Often, the rules–stated and unstated–can vary widely from one room to another. I visit four­teen dif­fer­ent class­rooms besides my own every week, and I see so many dif­fer­ent sets of pro­ce­dures and expec­ta­tions for behav­ior it is some­times dif­fi­cult to keep track of what is appro­pri­ate in each.

But the hall­way is a dif­fer­ent world. Out there, every­one in the build­ing, as well as the larger com­mu­nity, have to func­tion with more broadly accepted rules of cour­tesy and respect. It is in the hall­ways of a school that many young chil­dren first learn the con­cepts of pass­ing on the right and stop­ping at inter­sec­tions. They need to learn how to travel as a group, and when to allow oth­ers to have the right of way; how to be aware of oth­ers’ per­sonal space and respect­ing the learn­ing going on in rooms as you pass; wait­ing your turn, nav­i­gat­ing new spaces, and han­dling respon­si­bil­ity. (Do you remem­ber the excite­ment and anx­i­ety you felt the first time you were cho­sen to be the messenger?)

Col­lab­o­ra­tion and Planning

We teach in an inclu­sive envi­ron­ment today which requires more than pos­si­bly ever before that teach­ers work together and share respon­si­bil­i­ties within class­rooms. The real­ity of school sched­ules means that a sig­nif­i­cant amount of that plan­ning hap­pens on the fly. It is com­mon for me to run into a col­league as I pass by in the hall and we will stop to have an impromptu meet­ing to dis­cuss a stu­dent or plan an upcom­ing les­son together. The hall­way is some­times the only oppor­tu­nity I get dur­ing a day to see and inter­act with my fel­low teachers.

Com­mu­nity Infrastructure

Within a school com­prised of indi­vid­ual class­rooms and grade lev­els, the hall­ways pro­vide a means to develop a larger, build­ing com­mu­nity. Office bul­letin boards, par­ent spaces, the school store, the main lobby, and hall­ways out­side com­mon areas like the gym, cafe­te­ria, and audi­to­rium, are all oppor­tu­ni­ties for devel­op­ing the unique cli­mate and char­ac­ter that defines a school. The hall­ways in a school set the tone, and can tell you a great deal about how tightly con­nected the net­work there is. I can often sense within a few min­utes of walk­ing into a school what the cli­mate is like and how peo­ple will inter­act there.

Some of the best schools turn hall­ways into addi­tional learn­ing spaces, too, by set­ting up areas for stu­dents to work and putting up activ­i­ties and infor­ma­tion. One school I visit, for exam­ple, has a “Word of the Week” posted out­side the library. Stu­dents and vis­i­tors walk­ing by can’t help but see the dis­play and think about the intrigu­ing vocab­u­lary word as they walk by every day.

(As an aside, I was struck as I was search­ing for a pho­to­graph to accom­pany this post that pic­ture after pic­ture showed vacant, ster­ile hall­ways with lit­tle or no dec­o­ra­tion, and in most cases lit­tle or no color at all. It makes me won­der if the instruc­tion going on in those build­ings is sim­i­larly vacant and sterile.)

Hall­ways are what con­nect the dis­parate pieces of a school into a com­mu­nity. Hall­ways are one of the ways that real rela­tion­ships can occur in a school, and the mem­bers of the com­mu­nity need to rec­og­nize their func­tions and importance–as well as their limitations–in order to make the most of them. We can think of hall­ways as sim­ply a way to get to the rest room or the office. Or they can become a place where we join together with our col­leagues to build a net­work that can deal with the chal­lenges con­fronting us in our efforts to make learn­ing happen.

Hm. Sounds just like the “new” 21st-​​century, Web 2.0 social networks.

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