Have you made the Shift? Are you an agent of change?

Where do you fit?

This is Part III of a 3 part series. When I started this series I had an outline that I only vaguely ended up following, but I knew from the start that what I wanted to say was too much for a single post.

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Part I Shifting Education

Are you unshifted, shifting, or shifted?
“To the shifted: You have an obligation to serve others.”

Part II Shifting Learning

“The shift is happening now and if we aren’t shifting the learning experience for students then what kind of education are we giving them?”

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Part III Shifting Attitudes

So where do you fit? Do you offer support to others that have not shifted? Are you helpful to the shifting? Are you effective? I’m not sure that I always am? I’ve been told that my Brave New World Wide Web video, “Preaches to the converted”. I’ve been a tech evangelist that has overwhelmed the unshifted and the shifting too! It’s part of my own learning journey, but a great learning journey with mentors, inspirational – leaders, and teachers in the trenches, doing more than I ever did in the classroom. I’ve also provided support and inspiration to others, helping to guide them and provide resources, giving my time and energy (in very personally rewarding ways).

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I CAN’T!

I first explored the notion that, “I CAN’T” in my presentation ‘The Rant, I Can’t, The Elephant and The Ant’. In this presentation, I had slides (#46-49) that moved from “I Can’t” to “I Can” to “I Must” to “I Will” and that is what inspired the wording for my Shifting Attitudes venn diagram (above).

One of the biggest reasons people feel they CAN’T is FEAR, which is another topic I spend time on in the presentation.

I talk about the hinderance ‘fear’ causes frequently in my blog, such as in my blog post about my POD’s presentation, (on bringing Personally Owned Devices such as iPods & cell phones to schools). In my POD’s presentation I also discuss how our Attitude can be a ‘Big Wall’ that prevents meaningful change.

These are important ideas because I think our ATTITUDE can be both the biggest impetus for meaningful change and also the biggest barrier.

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I CAN!

As leaders we need to have the right attitude and see opportunities where others see obstacles:

“I’ve seen a real shift in my own thinking recently. Forget whining about access, disregard the slow speed of change, get over the obstacles! Go after meaningful results. Engage and empower students. Be a leader and a role model.”

I think that the two areas that we can be the greatest influence to others are:

1. Influencing educators that are stuck believing that they can’t shift, (can not use technology innovatively in the classroom, can not differentiate learning in the classroom, can not let go of who controls the learning in a classroom, etc.)

2. Influencing educators who are shifting their practice, but need support in doing so.

The needs are different, but some of the scaffolding and support we offer one of these groups can also be helpful to the other. (Note: These are not mutually exclusive groups! For example, we can be stuck simultaneously at both of these points around different strategies or tools.)

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I WILL!

So when we offer our colleagues, our teachers, our fellow educators support, what does that mean?

The key elements of SUPPORT are: Time, Resources, and Knowledge, (as well as Inspiration and Motivation).

• Time: Professional Development, Collaboration and ‘Play’ time. (‘The Time’)

• Resources: Equipment, access, (digital/networked/collaborative) repositories. (‘The Tools’)

• Knowledge: Best (actually good) Practice, know-how, and research. (‘The How’)

• Inspiration: Examples, possibilities, and role modeling. (‘The Wow’)

• Motivation: Acknowledge the positive, and High Expectations- for teachers as well as students. (‘The Now’)

That’s just a work-in-progress list, (with a hint of a future post). At a different logical level, there is more required such as a common vision, collaboration and leadership on different levels, learning communities, responsibility and even accountability, (see my pyramid based on Andy Hargreaves 4th Way). But for the purposes of this post, I have been focussing on what we as individuals can do to help shift attitudes, and offering support in these areas is an excellent start!

In creating the Shifting Attitudes venn diagram, I realize that ‘I WILL’ only suggests future action and not de facto ACTION, but to put this final destination into the present tense, (such as ‘I AM’ rather than ‘I WILL’), would be to suggest an end-point or achievement plateau. However, I think that as leaders and as change agents, we are constantly adjusting what we will do as we (also) learn and grow.

The reality is that what I am able to learn and do now is staggering compared to 5 years ago and the educational landscape (or mediascape) is moving at an incredible speed. In the last 5 years many 1-1 programs have buckled under economic strains, but the idea of students bringing their own Personally Owned Devices was not feasible. When I did my POD’s presentation last year, I didn’t imagine that schools would be talking about netbooks and laptops as POD’s, I was thinking cell phones and iPod Touches… The landscape keeps changing. Tools are cheaper, easier to use, and my network is continually keeping me up to date on some amazing possibilities.

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An ‘Open’ Attitude

Attitude can also be a reference to orientation relative to the direction of travel. I said in reference to the idea of education becoming more ‘Transparent’ in the future that,

“Teaching ‘openly’ empowers educational leaders to be educational co-learners. It isn’t about sharing lessons, its about sharing the process and the progress we are making in providing meaningful learning opportunities. Transparency is changing teaching practice into a perpetual learning practice.”

Our orientation towards open, collaborative and networked learning is critical to shifting education, and shifting learning. It isn’t the network or the tool that matters, but rather that we create meaningful connections as part of our learning practice. As George Siemens says in his TEDxNYED Talk, “The network, it’s incidental in my eyes, it’s the connection that’s critical”.

To summarize the importance of openness and networked learning compared to formerly closed learning models, it’s the difference between Wikipedia [stats] and a 5-year old Encyclopedia set sitting on a bookshelf.

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… And so ends the Shifting Series

To summarize my thoughts behind this series:

a) Our educational land/mediascape has shifted;
b) We have an obligation to shift with it, and to help those that have not shifted, or that are shifting;
c) The landscape is still shifting and we have to identify the trends that are heading our way;
d) We have an obligation to our students to look ahead and continue our own learning to support them;
e) Our attitude towards the shift will determine our influence.
f) We need to be leaders that support change, as well as inspire and motivate others to change.
g) ‘We’ have the power of networked collaboration on our side to speed up the shift.

I believe that although the shift has been slow thus far, the networked learning model that we are building is the foundation for exponential rather than incremental growth… Knowing that, I can’t help but have anything less than a positive attitude!

Sue Waters, a friend who has always stepped up and helped me out with just about every request I have ever made to my PLN, sent me an email a couple nights ago. In it she said:

I’ve been asked by some 4th year preservice students to put together a video on the value of blogging. They had wanted me to answer the questions but I decided that it would be considerably better to get videos from people around the World sharing their thoughts — that way we get more ideas.

If you are able to video yourself answering some or all of these questions that would be excellent.
What are some of the benefits of blogging?
How have you used blogging with your students and how has it helped them?
How do the students feel about blogging?
What are some tips for educators new to blogging? (with using them with their students)

So here is the response she got from me, a Canadian living in China:

This was the first time that I used Camtasia, compliments of Techsmith and Alan November teaming up and providing it to all of the BLC09 presenters. It is a great tool that is easy to use with all the features that a Mac lover like myself would expect. The transitions are a little choppy, but I basically sliced and diced up a Powerpoint presentation, ‘This my blog has taught me“, and then recorded my screen as I spoke. The whole process took just over a couple hours and it was a lot of fun to be doing a project like this again, after creating my POD’s are Coming presentation this summer.

I noticed as I watched this and listened to myself that the idea of a blog being a ‘learning space’ came up both when talking about my own blog and when I spoke of the classroom and what technology could do to expand the classroom space. I think that our idea of where learning happens has made a fundamental shift from book knowledge of the last century to anywhere/anytime information access of today. It is exciting to see classrooms make this shift too. Last night I commented on a blog post by a student of Clarence Fisher‘s, in Snow Lake Manitoba, Canada. In a way you could say that I visited Clarance’s class. We live in an amazingly connected world and I love that sharing and learning has become so global.

I’d love to see others share their blogging story, and if you do, share them with me and Sue too!

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(Youtube version)
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Credits: I mention Alec Couros’  ‘Thinning Walls’ in the video and I use the following images which I credited, but not very clearly:

• Head Inside: Brain Wash by ArtWerk / Yanko on flickr
• we need more of it. By wei never sleeps / Wei on flickr
• The World through your eyes By The eclectic Oneironaut / Rubén Pérez on flickr

This is a story I think all educators need to hear. The question I wonder is, ‘Am I telling it in a way that they will listen?’

I told this story at BLC09 last week, and I’ll share some of my experience there before getting back to that question.

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The Conference:

It is hard to describe a conference like Alan November’s Building Leadership Communities-BLC09. For me it is about so much more than just a wonderful opportunity to present, (thank you Alan), or going to fantastic sessions by great educational thinkers and leaders. It is more about down-to-earth conversations with great people. And as I share a few conversations, my greatest disappointment was having to leave early and not getting enough time to speak to all the wonderful educators that I wanted to. That said, here are some people that enriched my experience.

Liz B Davis gave me excellent feedback for the POD’s presentation: “I’d like to see concrete examples of POD’s being used in the classroom.” -Great point! That wasn’t the intent of my presentation, but it is something that needs to be shared. This is my second year connecting with Liz and Lisa Thumann in Boston and again they contributed greatly to my conference experience being a success. They are both educational leaders that are committed to helping other educators in countless ways.

At lunch with Darren Kuropatwa, David Jakes and Dennis Richards, during the pre-conference EdubloggerCon, I had a conversation where thoughts and ideas were challenged in meaningful ways. This was my introduction to David Jakes and I have to say that I’d love to spend more time with him. David is a thoughtful listener who asks challenging questions with the intent of having a deep conversation. Where this really showed was his willingness to have is own opinion changed by responses in the conversation. I’d swap any professional development experience for conversations like this.

During that lunch Darren spoke of how, while circulating the room and teaching, an administrator would come in and ask to speak to him. His response of ‘I’m teaching’ would be blown off because he wasn’t on stage at the front of the room… hmmm. I have been going back to the metaphor of teacher as compass a lot recently, and I think that needs to become a story. “Teachers need to let students steer- it will take a while for many teachers to give up the steering wheel and become the compass.” If we are helping to point the way, we may not be at the front of the class, (at the helm), but we are still playing an important role ‘on the ship’.

Another very interesting conversation at the conference was at dinner with Tom Daccord and Angela Maiers. We talked about telling a story… not just any story, but one that speaks to a teacher new to technology. It was an interesting conversation for me because the more I think about it, the more I realize that my Brave New World-Wide-Web video is one that seems to ‘speaks to the converted’. How do we tell a story that compels people to understand the need for a shift?

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The Story:

So what is the story that needs to be heard? How do we move from ‘One teacher at a time’ to a full-throttle shift on the educational highway?

I believe that metaphors and stories are compelling teachers and that we need a good story to shift education. “We need to change” is not a story, it is a warning. Warnings and foreshadowing are important within a story, but they are not the story. I think the story is about Responsibility while the current model seems stuck on Accountability. This isn’t my idea, it comes from Andy Hargreaves. I said in a previous post on Hargreave’s 4th Way, “The key here it to recognize that there is a coexistence between the two and that this isn’t a dichotomy, but rather a priority: “Responsibility before Accountability”.  This is where schools and school districts have the greatest opportunity to change.” This is actually an easy story to tell because it puts students and teachers first… it recognizes the professionalism of educators and makes change a moral imperative.  This is a story we need to adopt and tell well, otherwise the fear that Accountability promotes will prevail.

Both of my presentations at BLC spent time focusing on overcoming FEAR.  I think the big difference between a ‘shifted’ educator, and one that sits in neutral letting the digital world speed by, is that technology does not scare the shifted.

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The Fear:

What’s to fear? Here are some thoughts, but this list preaches to the converted, it isn’t the story needed.

1.”I have too much to teach” – Somehow the curriculum is just too expansive to ‘add this to my plate’ or to what needs to be done with (or should I say ‘to’) my students. ‘I can’t play with technology and be expected to get everything done’. Would the same be said about a pencil? Technology is a tool, not a product.

2. “I don’t get technology” – Do you know exactly how a photocopier works? No? But you use one… and when you get to the photocopier with a great lesson plan and the thing doesn’t work, you don’t say, “That’s it! I’m never using the photocopier again!” And yet, people try out something techie that fails and it is somehow evidence that technology is ‘bad’, or ‘I can’t do it!’

3. FAILURE – “I can’t because I will fail in front of the students”. We need to model humility and learn from our mistakes if we truly want to see that in our students. “If you don’t make mistakes,  you’re not working on hard enough problems. And that’s a big mistake.”  ~F. Wikzek

4. Control – This is a false sense of security that I don’t really get? Intuitively teachers know that when students take control of the learning, they soar! Yet, the idea of giving up the central teacher-focus in the room seems so scary to many teachers. There are some ingrained (are they learned?) misconceptions that hold a teacher back… a) Every kid needs to be on the same page so that I know that they have at least ‘this much’ understanding of the curriculum, (or stuff that’s on the next standardized test); b) A noisy classroom means that I’m not in control and therefore not a good teacher; c) Criteria is something done to students; d) Assessment is something done to student work.
Who owns the learning in the room? Who should?

5. “I don’t know how?” – A Grade 9 Math student gets over this hurdle even if they have never seen a quadratic equation before… but usually with help. So ask for help! Many tech integrators are tech evangelists. Contact me or any one of the educators I’ve already linked to. If they can’t help you, they’ll find someone that will. What we ‘get’ that people new to tech don’t is that there is no need to take this journey on your own. You have more help than you think, closer and more available than you think.

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The Journey:

As I head off to China in less than two weeks, I’m thankful for people like Dennis and also Jeff Utecht who sincerely offer their assistance ‘any time’. So many more are there to help and I need only ask. What’s interesting about my move is, like Bryan Jackson says with reference to my leaving his school district, I’m “moving halfway around the world (while essentially residing in the same place).” Technology has really made distance and time a moot point in communication and learning. I have so many people to look to for help and inspiration, and I can’t wait to make the jump:

I hope that this new journey brings with it a story that I can share to help others on their journeys.

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The Appreciation:

Thank you so much to everyone who came to my presentations. I hope that you found our hour together worthwhile.

Special thanks to my wife for doing so much to prep us for China while I was preparing for and spending time in Boston.

Thanks to Bob Sprankle for podcasting my presentation… great feedback for me to learn from. If you listen to this, the slideshow above does not include a link to the 5 Minute University that I included in the live presentation. Also, SlideShare editing credit goes to Sharon Elin who has the skill to be an editor for a major newspaper (and I’m talking about  one that survives the next 5 years).

Last year John Davitt saved me, handing his computer over to me just before my presentation, this year Seth Bowers went running up to his room to get me speakers as my presentation was about to start.

Thanks to new blogger and twitter-er Mike Slinger for traveling with me to Boston, organizing Red Sox tickets, and taking care of me between my sessions.

And again, thanks so much to Alan November and the November Learning Team. I’m honoured to have been part of the conference for the past two years and for being part of the team in Louisiana.

And thank you to everyone who reads my blog! Your thoughts and feedback are appreciated!

“I can do that without technology” -Actually no you can’t!

Here is the Slideshare.

This was the presentation I first created for BLC08, and I wrote about it here.

I’ve finally edited it for the web… a tedious task as I tend to use a lot of slide transitions that do not convert well to individual slides. I shared a few presentation notes on this Slideshare, but not too much. This is a great feature I’ll probably use more in the future.

Here again is the Ustream: This version was done for student teachers at Simon Fraser University. As a video, it has a slow start with student teachers discussing a statement, and sharing ideas until about the 13 minute mark. Also, the slides in this video won’t match perfectly to the Slideshare above as I had to explain some of the slides for the stand-alone slide show, but it would be easy to connect the two presentations.

I’ll be using some of this presentation as the intro to one of my BLC09 presentations:

The P.O.D.s are coming!

What are PODS? They are Personally Owned Devices, and they are already infiltrating our schools. For now they get tucked away in lockers and backpacks, but as the saying goes, “If there is an elephant in the room, introduce it!” Students are bringing small machines with huge potential into our schools. It is time to introduce these tools into our classrooms and also to make sure that we have the knowledge and the infrastructure to use them to their fullest potential.

And I’ll probably link to this post in my PODs presentation. I first discussed PODs here.

It’s nice to finally be able to share this presentation and as always, I’m offering it with a CC license:

Feedback, as always, is greatly appreciated.

I had the opportunity to join a team from November Learning last week in Louisiana. Our fearless leader Jim Wenzloff, with GPS in hand, brought together Seth Bowers, Lainie Rowell, Howie DeBlasi and I, and set us up to present the world of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasting, PLN’s and other Web2.0 tools to groups of teachers divided up by grade groupings.

The teachers were great! Their school year just ended and there they were all ready to continue their learning, challenging themselves in a way that, for many of them, was still fairly new and very challenging.

I had the honour of working with the Red Team.

Megan, a teacher in my group, wrote this on a VoiceThread:

“One of the challenges I face  is mastering one piece of technology before a newer one is introduced. I feel as though as soon as I become comfortable with one method of technology, I am asked to learn another and incorporate it into my teaching.”

This really coincided with something that Elaan Bauder wrote as a guest blogger here on Pairadimes. Elaan ends the post:

There is amazing & inspiring work going on around the world, in your own country and in your own district. It is important to not only make it accessible, but also realistic and digestible for teachers. When we support growth amongst ourselves as professionals, we are better prepared to nurture growth for our students – because after all, we are all students in this journey together!

There was a lot of learning that went on in Louisiana, but just as in my 2 Point Oh Yeah presentation, the learning created more questions than answers… at least for me.

When introducing ‘new’ tools to teachers what’s the right mix of breadth and depth? How much should we expose teachers to at one time? And how deep should we get with a single tool, a tool that may or may not interest all of the participants?

How do we differentiate instruction for our learners?

What kind of incremental successes should we build in? (For example, I wanted all of my participants to contribute to the VoiceThread, and to edit and practice working on our wiki).

How important is the process?

Perhaps it is just me, but I wonder sometimes if we don’t drown people with our good intentions? We send wave after wave of information ‘at’ them hoping something floats. This doesn’t work with our students, what makes us think it will work for adults?

Don’t get me wrong, I think there was an incredible amount of learning that went on. In talking to teachers it seemed that they were genuinely excited about what they learned. The goal for this training was that every teacher would take one thing back to their classrooms and to their schools to share… my sense was that the teachers we worked with were excited about doing this!

My questions are about my own practice and my own learning. How can I be more effective and have greater influence when introducing learning tools?

Or is it really the tools that even matter?

In my presentation on Thursday morning to the whole group, I spent a bit of time talking about how as adults we let fear hold us back. Perhaps this is where we need to spend more time. Carolyn Foote talks about having a Beginner’s Mind:

Teachers are often accustomed to being considered the “expert mind,” so it is not just that we are asking teachers to see the uses of a particular tool in the classroom–what we are really asking is for is an entire paradigm shift–for teachers to approach their classrooms with a beginner’s mind, a child’s mind.

I’m trying to bring that beginner’s mind to what I do as a presenter. What can I tinker with and try in order to help teachers play and learn more meaningfully?

Another thing that I’m still trying to figure out is how to effectively ‘show’ teachers the value of a PLN?

As Miguel Guhlin says here:

If you fail to connect to the network of learners, you miss out on a global conversation about what you are passionate about. And missing out is a darn shame because it can save you time, energy, and increase your reach, no matter how brilliant (or not) you are. That’s a powerful idea. Smart people get smarter because they have access to the network of learners. People who are just starting out are able to learn as fast as they can to accomplish what they need to do.

Something interesting happened at the dinner table with our team on Tuesday night, (we were joined by Thomas Daccord and Brian Mull who were working locally with another group). The waiter asked, “Where Y’all from?” And we had to go one-by-one around the table naming different cities across North America, and yet we were there as a team. And now miles away from them, I am hyper-linking to them and inviting them, and inviting you,  to help me look at my own growth and learning. This sharing, linking and conversing is hard to quantify to someone who doesn’t live it.

How do you explain that a simple request on Twitter leads to a flurry of emails and a list of great examples of effective use of digital tools for learning that I never could have found on my own?

In summary, a lot of great learning went on in Louisiana! The question now is how do we meaningfully continue it?

How do we improve our effectiveness in promoting meaningful integration of technology for learning?

How do we show teachers the value of developing a PLN?

How do we continue to challenge ourselves on our own personal learning journeys?

I grew up watching Sesame Street and singing along to ‘Who are the people in your neighbourhood‘.

Well the concept of neighbourhood has really changed for me. I showed this movie in Powerpoint format at one of my presentations at BLC08 this summer. Afterwards, I think it was one of 3 people, (Liz Davis, Laura Deisley, or Maria Knee), that asked me how many people from my network did I think were in the presentation? I had no idea? Tonight I thought I’d start the search.

See the video on this blip.tv link or click below for it to open in a new window.

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Click to play in this window

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So, here are some of the people that are in my digital neighbourhood, that as a result found their way into this video. (In order of appearance). (Networked teacher images)• Alec Couros | (Blog Comments)• Liz Davis •Wesley Fryer | (Twirl/Twitter) • Martin Pluss •Konrad Glogowski •Sue [Sujokat] • Helen Otway • Melanie Hughes | (Plurk)• SMeech •Liz Davis •GingerTPLC •Jeff McCord | (Del.icio.us bookmarks) •Kim Cofino • Angela Maiers •Chris Lehmann • Jen [injenuity] • Ken Allan | (Google Reader Friend’s shared items) •Darren Draper •Dean Shareski •Lisa Durff •Liz Davis •Susan C Morgan •Kris Bradburn | (Google Documents) •Alan November •Kris Bradburn | (Connect and Protect) •Dave Sands | (Connecting from suburbs) •Kim Cofino • Derrall Garrison •Darren Draper | (Well rounded teacher images) • Jeff Utecht | (The competition) •Lisa Durff | (Blogging) • Arthus •Kris Bradburn | (Wikis) • Clay Burell • Vicki Davis • Julie Lindsay

That’s 30 people, some appearing more than once. Other than intentionally using items from Alec and Jeff, each one of these ‘sightings’ are incidental… but significant. Beyond these connections I also have Jabiz Raisdana, Dave Matheson (one of just 3 local connections from my district), Sue Waters, Karen Janowski, and Claudia Ceraso commenting on my post introducing the video.

Claudia didn’t just comment on my post, she wrote a response post that has challenged my thinking. When I’m done here I’m going to her blog to respond… to continue the conversation, and the learning. Claudia may live and work in Argentina, but she has influence over me. Geography and physical proximity no longer matter. (Case-in-point: Sue’s comment offers me advice from Austrialia.)

My digital neighbourhood spans the globe! But this is more than an issue of geography, it is also about influence and significance. Some of these connections are ‘loose’, like the local bus driver on Sesame Street, but others have greater meaning to me.

I may never meet some of these people, but they are my teachers, mentors and friends. This is my network, not my neighbourhood… and networks are fundamentally different than groups/(neighbours). It truly is a brave new world-wide-web, and if we aren’t engaging in the opportunities it provides us then we are missing out… and the same could be said for our students.

It is now a month after BLC08 and a recent comment has stirred up some thoughts that sent me back to a blog draft I wrote months ago. On Defragging my brain after BLC08, Angela Kerns mentioned that of my nine ‘take-aways’, #3 and #4 resonated with her:

3. Face-to-face meetings with your network are powerful… very powerful.

4. More learning happens in the halways and at meals/socials than in sessions. Create opportunities for Learning   Conversations.

What is most amazing about BLC08 is that these two points are still resonating with me. Liz B. Davis, Lisa Thumann, and Laura Deisley adopted Dave Sands and I, and took us under their wings. Many of the discussions we had were of a quality that left me wishing that I had recorded them! Thanks to these ladies, I connected with many people that were in my network, but had never met, and I also met amazing people who are now part of my network.

But these learning conversations didn’t happen in the presentations at the conference. It was the conversations we had outside of the sessions that were really incredible.

Liz lived very near our hotel and so a car ride, or a chat walking her home would become an in depth conversation about strategies to promote technology integration or a debate about comfort levels with having students as social networking friends. (O.K., I’ll admit an embarrassing story here just for a laugh… as Dave and I walked Liz home on the second night, I walked into a pole while texting my wife… the rim of my baseball cap saved me from potential head trauma. Mental note: don’t walk and text in the dark!)

The conversations were not all heavy, Lisa and I razzed each other on the issue of ‘to Plurk or not to Plurk’, and Joyce Valenza always made sure everyone was having fun even when sharing our thoughts on education. But it seemed that very often the conversations, whether light, frivolous or funny, always went back to education.

Even at the dinner cruise social, (that Dave, Donna DesRoches and I almost missed after an ‘Amazing Race’ style route), it seemed that the learning continued:

On the boat: Clarence Fisher wanted to know the name of a fort we cruised by, but no-one could help him until Alice Barr handed over her iphone. Clarence used this experience in his presentation the following day to exemplify how information is abundant now and we need to go beyond rote memorization in what we teach.

On the bus ride back to the hotel: I had an in-depth conversation with Pegggy Sheehy about avatar gender. I never considered that I would ever choose a female avatar for myself until this conversation… biases I didn’t even know I had were challenged!

At the hotel restaurant: Darren Kuropatwa, Laura and I took a little idea I had about a Twitter version of 366 Photos and developed it into what would be a great project. Hopefully we will expand on it in the fall and maybe launch for the month of February.

Everywhere we turned we were having learning conversations. This seems to happen when you surround yourself with amazing people… people who are catalysts and agents of change.

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With each person I mentioned above, I linked to their blogs. Each of those blogs are in their own way agents of change… they are inspired by teachers and learners wanting more out of ‘institutional’ education. They are not the works of dreamers dreaming, but rather the work of catalysts reflecting, experimenting, learning, questioning, designing, succeeding and failing, and yes dreaming too.

What makes this so meaningful though, is the connections we make to each other, and the learning we gain from linking, meeting, and creating opportunities for learning conversations to happen.

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Are you an agent of change? Are you a catalyst that makes things happen? Do you create opportunities for collaboration? Do you initiate and inspire learning conversations? 

Keeping education meaningful and relevant is an ongoing process of evolution or emergence. The process requires us to learn and to change too.  We need to evolve. We need to learn, encourage learning, and allow learning to emerge.

In Science change occurs through hybridization or mutation… ideas go through this too. Institutional education doesn’t do this on its’ own.

In Science catalysts are often used in tandem. Different agents combine to make a chemical reaction happen faster. Catalysts of change work well together too. We learn from each other and interact more meaningfully from the learning of others. Often we need feedback loops to help us make sure we are making the right things happen… after all, change can be both for the better or the worse.

But if there is one thing I can be certain of, change needs to happen. Students today are interacting and engaging with the world in ways that would have seemed like science fiction to us.

If we are not agents of change then we are agents of boredom and mediocrity, the keepers of the status quo…. static… in stasis. 

Create opportunities for Learning Conversations. 

Be a catalyst that inspires learning.

Be an agent of change! 

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Photo of Change Agents, after the BLC08 boat cruise
by Joyce Valenza on flickr

Description: Since keeping a blog I have learned that little lessons can form big ideas, altering what a teacher can and must do. I’ve recently moved my blog, and in doing so, I have reflected on every post along the way. Here is an anecdotal look at a few things my blog has taught me.

Here is the second part of the presentation where I ask participants to join in on the journey or the conversation…

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Thanks for being part of my presentation… answers to your one question, thoughts, feedback, and comments are all welcome. If you blog a response, please add a comment with a link below.

“Leading the Transition”

I’m in the session now… WOW… so I’ll be brief.

Alan asked me to start a Shared Google Document here it is: http://fon.gs/blc08precongdoc/

And here is the Ustream: http://fon.gs/blc08preconustream/

Here is what it looks like from my perspective: (I pulled out my tablet which is on my lap to do this post)

Special thanks to my new friend Lorraine, who put the camera on her computer, and took care of the camera operation… tough job as Alan moves around a lot!

Hope you enjoy the Ustream!

As a fun aside: photo of the desk in my hotel room after Dave and I arrived and started recharging things:

How much is too much?

I like to lurk in Twitter, but I’m having full-on conversations with Plurk. I just spent over an hour putting my Firefox tabs into diigo. After that I started cleaning up my desktop and found a screen capture I made on twirl over a month ago:

I also bookmarked this Liz Davis post because I could easily have written this introduction… and in fact have done so several times in my head:

I continue to be amazed by the affect that blogging has on my thinking. Everything I do and see and experience is filed away as a potential blog post. I make meaning of my world in ways I never did before. I am constantly composing posts in my head. It makes for some incredible learning experiences, but can also make it hard to sleep.

So as my three presentations for Alan November’s BLC08 approach, and I’m hours-and-hours away from being done, I feel overwhelmed and overloaded.

And so, I’m going to be unplugged from my microblogs (Twitter and Plurk) as well as this blog for a few days. I’m going to bookmark some tabs on my Tablet PC then shut down there too.

It isn’t something I want to do, but rather something I have to do. The problem is that these tools are great for learning and communicating, but they consume too much time. An hour of work turns out to be 15min. of work and 45 min. of reading, reacting, conversing and otherwise being engagingly sidetracked.

I’ll surface in a few days, probably starving for the interaction, but for now it is all too much and I have a few presentations that I want to make meaningful and powerful to what will probably be a very diverse audience.

So, L8R, TTFN, and So Long and Thanks for All the Fish.