Belinda Kuck of Davis School District contacted me recently through my blog and said, “We are starting a 1:1 pilot in our district this year. I am the library media supervisor in our district and I would be interested in your thoughts about 1:1 and how libraries support students, teachers and curriculum and digital libraries.”

This was my response:

1. I think the library should be the hub of the school.
2. It should be the place students want to go and it should be available whenever possible (no easy task in many schools with limited staffing)
3. Librarians today should spend just as much time, or more time, preparing and collecting digital resources for teachers as they do books etc.
4. Digital resources are not just web pages but web-based tools that enhance teaching and, even more so, learning.
5. Books are still an important part of a library and they aren’t being replaced, but a librarians job now goes well beyond books!
6. As much collaboration as possible should happen between the librarian and the teacher, and as much as possible it should be co-teaching time when a class goes to the library.
7. Students time in the library should not all be prescribed/teaching time, they should have time to read, research, and even play.
8. Reading is still one of the most important skills needed and libraries should run activities to promote reading.
9. Tools like diigo and delicious are invaluable to a library and they should be used by librarians, teachers and students.
10. I’ve collected some library links that I think all librarians (and for that matter teachers and administrators) should read, and they can be found here: http://delicious.com/dtruss/library/

I didn’t talk specifically about 1:1, but I hope I’ve given you some food for thought and once I get my school up and running I will be happy to share thoughts about Library support and moving to 1:1 as my school is also doing this for the first time this year, with our senior classes.

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!

If you haven’t joined Classroom2.0 yet, do so. It is a great network of teachers, of many different technological competencies, all sharing and contributing questions and ideas. I went there this morning to find a link to a Mathcast that was happening, but I ended up reading a discussion thread started by John McCullough, which took most of my attention away from the Mathcast.

In John’s discussion, Pre-service Education… Social Networking, not., he states:

I’m a college professor that teaches future teachers how to integrate technology. For a couple years, I’ve been teaching my students the awesome world of Blogs, Wikis, and other 2.0-related technologies, not just how to use them, but how to integrate them effectively as a teacher. However, even though they are digital natives of social networking, my students don’t seem to recognize the educational implications. They don’t see it, and the effective integration typically has never been modeled for them, (and I’m pretty sure I’m not helping very much). In addition, trying to take “I’m a student” thinking individuals and convert them into “I’m a teacher” thinking individuals in regards to social networking in education has been a battle that I seem to lose more often than I win.

And John asks:

What do you think about pre-service teachers’ skills and knowledge regarding social networking, as well as pre-service education on the same topic? I would love to read your comments, suggestions, and experiences.

This was my response, that I thought I’d also add here on Pairadimes:

Hi John,
I’d like to share a few ideas here although I’ve never taught pre-service teachers.
1. First I’ll share. I have presented to pre-service teachers before and I have some links I’d like to share.
This includes my ‘The Rant, I Can’t, the Elephant and the Ant‘ presentation I did to pre-service teachers and my newest addition to these links, Cindy Quach’s look at effectively using collaboration tools.
2. On the topic of collaboration, I think most of these ‘digital natives’ we talk about are very good at connecting to socialize and communicate with their peers, but not to collaborate and learn.
3. Digital collaboration is not intuitive and collaboration roles are context and purpose driven, not general in nature. Thus, learning intentions, purpose and expectations for collaboration need to be explicit or the contributor’s role in sharing and contributing isn’t clear. If these things aren’t clear, then how do I as a contributor add meaningful value?
4. ‘Ownership’ is key. I had a Ning network for Grade 10 Planning and it was teacher-driven until I opened up the forum for them to generate some topics, suddenly the site came alive. The topics varied from important issues, to favourite hockey teams, to a lively debate on whether ‘boys are better than girls’… but what happened after that was that the students started sharing more on each other’s blogs and class discussions.
With student teachers, I would think that generating the content of the site would be as important, or perhaps more important than with any other group since, as mentioned here many times, you want them to see themselves as teachers.
Hope this helps!

Reflecting now, I think my last point is incorrect:

We want ALL learners to see themselves as teachers and contributors to the learning… content creators.

A google document is a collaborative tool, but I’ve been a contributor to many such documents where others have not, and I have also been a non-contributor on a few. Putting a class on a google document does not necessarily make the process collaborative: It can create a group of contributors, participants, editors, and lurkers, but should we call that collaboration in any meaningful way, just because there is the potential for collaboration? What is the intent, purpose and expectations for the learners and contributors?How are they accountable for their contributions?

Things have changed and we need to change too. As I said in my comment on Cindy Quach’s post:

You said it well, “Most writing that is published electronically is, by nature, works in progress.”…A work in progress that can be collaborated on, linked to, added to, and elaborated on. What I really like about the differences in your three examples is that the roles of the contributors vary, and inadvertently you are teaching your students to understand that they can meaningfully contribute with and to others in different ways. A necessary skill in a new world of literacy and technology.

On a related topic, how important is the process in collaboration? I think the quality of the collaboration can be just as important as the quality of the finished product of that collaboration… but often the expectations for how to meaningfully participate/contribute/collaborate aren’t clearly defined, and seldom assessed. If we want to see, and teach, meaningful collaboration then we have to know what it is that we want to see, and clearly define that for our students.

If you know of any assignments or projects that clearly define the collaboration process, and/or assess that process, then please share them with me.

I first wrote about Andy Hargreaves and the 4th Way back in October, (with an important update added to the bottom of the post in early November). The pyramid below is updated from that post, taking feedback from Hargreaves himself.

Administrators from our district met and discussed The 4th Way last Thursday and we were guided through some activities to encourage us to explore the text and to examine which of Hargreaves’ principles we are doing well, and which ones we need to focus on.

I like the recommendation of putting ‘Teaching and Learning’ at the top of the pyramid. I think that puts the role of both educators, (as a teacher and a learner), and students where they belong at the focal point of what is both important in education and meaningful in educational change.

We need to have a common, clear, inclusive and inspiring vision.

We need to collaborate at all levels of community… it really does take a village to raise a child.

We need to be active learners taking part in lively learning communities, networked with effective role models.

We need to be responsible and effective teaching professionals, lead learners fostering meaningful learning.

During our session, we got to see some exclusive video interviews that Hargreaves gave, and I realized that embedded, but not explicitly mentioned, in my pyramid is the idea of professionalism… This is where ‘Responsibility’ comes from. To me Hargreaves’ notion of “Responsibility before Accountability” is key to the 4th Way. The following was completed on a little reflection card we filled out and handed in, (I’m glad I took a photo of it first).

I wrote:

We need to be unified and collaborative.

Not unions, but professional organizations.

Not corporations, but community leaders.

Not top-down, but shared leadership.

Not teachers, but co-learners.

Not standardization, but a process of inquiry.

Looking at this list, it unintentionally follows the patter of: Not accountability, but responsibility.

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.

In The 4th Way, Hargreaves says,

“Unions have missed an opportunity to raise professional standards among all their members and increase their credibility and transparency among the public. Government, meanwhile, has kept an iron grip on defining and controlling professional standards. This is professionalism without power—and teachers know it.”

Professionalism, and the ensuing responsibility that comes with it, empowers educators at all levels. In the end, we need to be accountable, but not to governments, or unions, or corporations. We need to be accountable to ourselves as professionals and educators, and we need to be accountable to the student in our schools.

Professionals acting responsibly and holding themselves, and others, accountable in the interest of teaching and learning.

Sometimes that means that we let corporations into our schools but we dictate the conditions and we expect them to be there as community leaders, not advertisers, (and we hold them accountable to this if they don’t do it responsibly). Sometimes we need to let parents and community members share their expertise and not worry that they are doing something that is defined as a union job. Sometimes, (dare I say often), we need to let students dictate what they want to learn, because they are passionate about an area of interest, and let go of the curriculum.

Maureen Dockendorf said at the end of the session about Hargreaves’ 4th Way, “It’s not a program, it is a set of principles”.

This is a great point, as The 4th Way is not prescriptive. Expanding on this idea in a discussion with Dave Sands later he said, “It’s not steps or even a set of principles, it is a philosophy or a way of being.”

Dave continued, “This is how an organization, a society, and a world moves to a greater state of consciousness. This is how we take responsibility and ultimately move to accountability.”

On a final note look at what I highlighted above:

Professionals acting responsibly and holding themselves, and others, accountable in the interest of teaching and learning.

Do you notice where the power lies is in that statement?

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Like many, I learn best visually and when engaged with others. Even having a conversation with my own staff helps me think my way out of the box. The instant feedback of others is often necessary for me to be challenged and experience growth. It works wonders for problem solving, creating choices, engendering support and inspiring change. One would think that Professional Days would have the same kinds of effects.

The fact that many sessions at Pro-D are inspirational is without debate. It is exciting to hear about the amazing things that other educators are doing with their practice – and I feel honoured that they give up their time to come and share with us at Pro-D. They give us license and encouragement to try something new, take some risks, and hopefully effect vast amounts of improvement in our own practice.

However, I have often left a conference, workshop, or keynote speech feeling a bit demoralized and debilitated – probably pretty much the opposite of what the presenter would have expected. For a time, I just kept my mouth shut about it and said nothing. But as my years of teaching experience grew, so did my willingness to be frank about what I saw as my own “shortcomings.” I was both happy and dismayed to discover that many others had similar experiences at Pro-D – indeed, some of whom are professionals that I highly respect.

Don’t get me wrong, these sessions are inspirational. But the other half of the equation is the reality that seems to set in during the session or after it is over. Some thought processes might reflect something similar to this:

Guilt/Shame – “I haven’t been doing that” / “I’ve been doing it wrong”

Often the presenter will identify some antiquated ways of doing things, or even go so far as to say they are wrong. Wanting the best for our kids, it tends to feel like we aren’t doing the best we can for them, and in some cases are even being a detriment.

Fear/Uncertainty – “I don’t know how to do that”

Sometimes the presenter introduces something that is foreign or complicated and it instills fear about the unknown.

Overwhelmed – “How do I even begin?” / “It’s too much”

Of course it makes sense to show us all the end product – we want to be wowed, and the process to get there might be lengthy and mundane. But without a map to get there we can feel lost and the task too great to undertake.

Shut Down/Defeat – “I can’t” / “I’m not good enough”

All of this can result in not very much change: It’s easier to stick with what we know—we’ll do it later—there isn’t enough time to “figure it out”—obviously we don’t have the skills that the person presenting does—etc.

Any time I have been asked to present at a Pro-D, I have done it. As a nervous public speaker, I am not the most confident about my abilities to deliver a useful, riveting workshop. But I do it because I have no hesitation sharing what I have with anyone – and I want to give back to my professional community. What do I try to keep in mind when presenting so that people don’t leave with any of the aforementioned feelings? Here are some suggestions (and I’d love to hear more):

**Relate to your audience by telling them the kinds of things you were doing before you changed your practice with your new method/strategy.

“I also used to teach PowerPoint every day before I discovered the impact of this Media Literacy program”

**Validate some common practices, and then talk about how your new method/strategy could improve them.

“Teaching this lesson out of the Math textbook works ok, but using Lego-Dacta manipulatives totally improved how my kids could visualize the problem solving questions”

**Identify the parts of your method/strategy that may seem foreign or complicated to others.

“When I first started using the online program with my class, I thought it was strange that the menus were located on the side – but I got used to it pretty quickly”

**Give the audience your email or your Twitter ID and encourage them to contact you if they have questions or hit roadblocks. Give a sample activity to try with their class, and tell them to email you with feedback afterwards.

**Near the end of the presentation, review some starting points for teachers. Give a handout or send an email with step-by-step instructions on how to get started. Or give a “Top 5” list of the most important points you covered.

**Emphasize that these major changes will take some time, and that teachers shouldn’t expect themselves to accomplish all of it at once. Suggest biting off small chunks and making goals, like trying something new each week or each month and developing change slowly. Teachers are more likely to shut down if there is too much to change all at once.

A Twitter colleague (@bengrey) asked a question the other day:

“A very high percentage of what many presenters demonstrate at conferences, isn’t happening in their own district. Why?”

I think it’s because of many of the reasons I’ve stated here. 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!

—

About Elaan:

Elaan Bauder has been teaching for 8 years in the Coquitlam school district. Originally trained as a primary teacher, she moved into middle school and had spent most of her time teaching core classes at the grade 8 level. This is her first year teaching Computer Explorations to grades 6, 7 & 8. Some of her passions are Shakespeare, travelling, floor hockey, sushi, and ice cream.

Contact Elaan:

Email: e_bauder (at) hotmail (dot) com

Twitter: @elaan

—

After reading The Fourth Way article in Educational Leadership/October 2008, by Andrew Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley, I’ve been trying to apply personal meaning to this new way. The 4th Way has five Pillars of Purpose, three Principals of Professionalism and four Catalysts of Coherence. But I think The 4th way rests firmly on just one pillar!

“An inspiring and inclusive vision that draws people together in pursuit of an uplifting common purpose.”

Beyond that the other pillars involve Collaboration in order to achieve the vision and common purpose being pursued. The Principals of Professionalism come from having Learning Conversations, or from Collaborators involved in an Active Learning network. And finally we need *accountability Responsibility to ensure the changes that we make are meaningful. I specifically avoided the term ‘assessment’, as that term suggests measuring things in ways that may not necessarily measure what we would consider progress. No ‘standardization’ as Hargreaves suggests! Hargreaves’ Catalysts of Coherence are embedded throughout the pyramid.

We need a common vision of what we are in this for… Why schools are important? And how are they of value to our society and to our students? We need to be collaborating more effectively.

In doing so, we need to meaningfully connect Community, Educators, Students and Schools. We need to harness the strength of networks and learning communities and, equally as important, we have to create the time for these communities to meet as part of an educator’s (and student’s) day/week.

We need to be reflective learners, *accountable responsible to our communities that we share our learning with. Principles of Professionalism and Catalysts of Coherence will help us get ‘there’… but we need to collaborate and figure out where ‘there’ is first.

Maureen Dockendorf spoke of:

Not the Knowing, but the Process of Inquiry. Not covering the curriculum, but ‘uncovering’ the curriculum. A focus in innovation and creativity… how do we model this… every day?

We model this by creating meaningful learning communities based on professional inquiry and by giving those learning communities the time and resources to make things happen.

*See update below.

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Inspirational reading and viewing:

School Reform in 5 minutes by Chris Lehmann. Also see his What I want to talk about post.

What business are we in? by Clarence Fisher.

If “It’s not about the technology.” Then What is it About? by Heidi Gable.

Letting Go by Alec Couros

21st Century Pedagogy by Greg Whitby on YouTube

Raising Expectations by Kelly Christopherson

We are ready for The 4th Way!

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*UPDATE: November 2nd, 2008

I originally had “Accountability” in the top arrow, but a colleague suggested that I change it to “Responsibility” in keeping with Hargreaves’ idea of “Responsibility before Accountability”.

In a letter to my Superintendent, Tom Grant, Andy Hargreaves suggested that “Teaching and Learning” be at the top of the Pyramid. He said, “ We would put teaching and learning at the top, though and reflection all around it, probably.” I may change this yet again when I get an understanding of how to represent ‘all around it’ visually. Hargreaves also said to Tom, “It’s great that you are the first in to the fourth way, and in your own way which is entirely as it should be.” This truly is an exciting time for us!

*Update: April 28th, 2009 See my new post: [Part 2]

Heidi Hass Gable has done something special!

Here is her presentation, What I Want for My Children:

Her post simply says this:

My hope is that it will move you, it will motivate you,
it will make you think and it will inspire you to get involved in your child’s education,
to support your teachers and to be part of creating great schools!

Her subtitle: ‘Creating Great Schools — Together’ gets immediately to the heart of the matter.

The power of the message comes from the action she asks from parents…

… and what does she ask of teachers and all other educational partners? The exact same thing!

This comes shortly after the 5½ minute mark. This is what changes this video from a parent’s perspective to an educational partner’s perspective.

“If we want these things for our kids, then we have to do them for our teachers as well.”

Doing what’s best for our students, our kids, is what education is all about. It is what a collective WE want.

‘What I want for my children’ is a move in the right direction of meaningful collaboration that can only make our schools better.

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

For a while now, I’ve been using my blog as a learning space to reflect on professional development… and after BLC08 there still seems to be a lot to talk and think about. But there is a problem: My brain is full.

Here are some brief ‘take-aways’ to jot down before things spill out and away.

1. Never do 3 different presentations at one conference. At the very least repeat one of them. Enough said.

2. Online networks develop meaningful friendships. I’m blown away by the immediate connection I made with so many people in my Twitter network.

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.

5. Sessions influence us, and sometimes anger us, but it is our opinions and attempts to make sense of things that matter.

6. As we reflect and question why we do things, we continue the learning.

7. We don’t need to be there to learn.

8. Ewan made it clear that if we create meaningful spaces for teachers to connect, and if we make those spaces useful to teachers, they will connect in new and meaningful ways. In my opinion, usefulness comes out of purpose and design… two things we need to work on.

9. We need to connect with others to meaningfully learn. COLLABORATION time is essential for learners of all ages.

10. Don’t say more than you need to just to fill the space.

“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: