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?

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 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.

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.

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.

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.