Yesterday morning I did a keynote presentation for our High School Pro-D day that I called:  ’It’s not about the Technology -(and it’s not a secret)‘. I’ll share this online after I get back from holidays.

The night before the presentation I sat and looked at what I had prepared and hated it. I wrote on Twitter: “I’m just over 10hrs away from presenting & want to totally revamp my presentation. Not a great feeling.” ~ It really wasn’t.

I appreciated the support and advice given to me, especially from Lisa Thumann, Jen Wagner and Shelly Terrell who all offered to take a look at what I’d done. The problem was that I didn’t like my presentation enough to send it to them… then I fell asleep. I woke up at 3am and realized that I was stuck with what I had, I just didn’t have enough time to change my presentation with just over 3hrs before I had to catch a cab to the train (Qing Gui) station.

I had to deal with the slides I already had. My presentation was broken into different sections that each had the item that is (not a secret) in brackets. I took all those titles, wrote them on post-it notes and juggled them around.

I broke up my presentation and, like Lego, reassembled the pieces into something different. I moved from a scattered bunch of ideas into a story. Suddenly I had a presentation I was happy with.

I slept on the train and when I woke up I ended up in a wonderful conversation with a man who spoke to me in Chinese and continually asked questions that I didn’t understand, and then talked about me to those around us. My broken and very limited Chinese did not serve me well.

Setting up for my 8am presentation we couldn’t get my laptop sound to go through the auditorium speakers without horrible feedback. Small speakers were brought in, (I almost brought my own, but I was at this auditorium just 2 weeks ago and knew that it was well equipped). With the small speakers and addition of my mic, all was good… or so I thought!

I tried to go to the primarypad.com/ pad (an etherpad clone) that I had set up with all my links, and as a backchannel for the session, but I couldn’t get wireless. It seems the new campus wireless doesn’t reach the auditorium other than a few rows in the back.

I started my presentation and within 30 seconds the power went out. I picked up my laptop and said to the 100+ audience members, “Ok, everybody gather around here.”

I started a conversation about ‘What tech tool can’t you live without, that didn’t exist 5 years ago… and by the time people had discussed this with their neighbours and we started sharing as a group the power turned on… “POP” … that would be the sound of the ceiling mounted LCD light bulb burning out.

That’s when I asked a new question: “How many of you have had the experience before of having a lesson planning epiphany… suddenly you are up late at night planning… you head into the school before class starts in the morning and when you get to the photocopier… it’s BROKEN!“ ~Most teachers raised their hands.

“So, keep your hands up if you said something like, ‘That’s it, I’m never using the photocopier again?’“ ~All hands went down.

Sometimes ‘technology’, be it a photocopier, a presentation, or even a pen doesn’t work.

Eventually we got going. I didn’t get to more than 1/2 of my slides, but found a great place to stop so that it felt like my presentation had an ending. Judging from the standing-room only in my break-out session afterwards, what I did was well received.

~~~

There were a lot of reasons to roll my eyes and complain. There were a lot reasons to let frustration prevail… and there was an opportunity for me to model for everyone that it really isn’t about the technology.

What the day was about was professionals getting together and learning, and when it comes to learning, the hardest thing to ‘fix’ is broken attitudes!

Kudus to the staff, they were patient with me, asked a lot of great questions, and eager to learn new things. Reflecting now, the only thing that feels broken is the title of this post.

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!

___
(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.

—–

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?

—–

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.

—–

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.

—–

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.

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

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This was my final presentation that I did at BLC08. I never ended up posting it and now I’ve just recently re-presented it for some student teachers at Simon Fraser University.

[Update: July 20th, '09 - new post with SlideShare available]

Afterwards, I had them contribute to a VoiceThread, just like I did with the TLITE presentations, and with my first – two presentations in Boston. Then I created a Diigo Classroom with them… (I should have spent more time on this final part!)

In my presentation, ‘The Ant’ is a metaphor for a networked learner. Ants work together and do so much more than they could as individuals or even as smaller groups. But, I’d call this the weakest part of the presentation… So how do I fix that? I let my network do it for me!

Here is what happened during the presentation

My (Twitter) Network in Action Part 1: The Shout-Out (Read from the bottom up.)

But that’s just a small sample of the power of a network. Sunday night Heather, a student in my session, sent me this e-mail:

Hey David

I have a quick question, i am going to do a wiki with my bio 11 students
with microbiology.  They have to go online and type in a virus and give a
whole bunch of information.  But how do i know which students did what?  I
did it with wetpaint.  And i have blocked all access just in case the
parents have issues with it.

I’ve never tried Wetpaint. I went to two different Wetpaint pages and didn’t have an answer for her so I went back to Twitter!

My Network in Action Part 2: Seeking Help (Again please read from the bottom up.)

It took just a few minutes to get help from someone in Thailand that I’ve never met face-to-face. We may not have met (f2f) before, but Jeff Utecht is in My Neighbourhood. I actually used the images from one of his posts for my Brave New World Wide Web Slide Show then Video.

Another Tweet by Jeff ended with “Let me know if you need any help”. Thanks Jeff, and thanks also to Jen Jones for inspiring this post! I used one of her blog posts in my presentation above.

And I’d like to say thank to Bob Cotter, Cheryl Oaks, Penny LindBalle, Steve Sokoloski, Maureen Tumenas, etalbert, Lesley Edwards, Mrs_Banjer, Derrall Garrison, Sue Waters, Amanda Salt, Elizabeth Lloyd, Silvia Tolisano, Ian Hecht, Neil Varner, James Gill, Kathy Cassidy, James McConville, Lorraine Orenchuk, Brian Crosby, and Dean Shareski for contributing to the networked ‘conversations’ above.

Ants are individually insignificant, but networked in a collaborative way, they literally move mountains! Networked teachers and educators like these I’ve mentioned are moving mountains too, and it is my hope that Student Teachers will see the value of becoming networked and having their students be networked too!

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.

A year ago I went to see my friends Dave Sands and Brian Kuhn presenting to parents that were part of a 1-1 (one laptop per child) pilot program at a Middle School. Little did I know that I’d be moved to that same school as the Vice Principal in February, and that I’d be co-presenting with Brian, to the parents in the program, one year later.

Brian did a great job preparing the presentation and with similar philosophies it was very easy to contribute meaningfully to what he had prepared. 

The key messages we brought up sounded eerily like my 3rd presentation at BLC08 in Boston, but I’ll have more on that later.

As we were giving the presentation it occurred to me that 1-to-1 is about exposing teachers (and parents) to possibilities as much as it is about doing the same for students. The fact is that not long from now we won’t need 1-1 classrooms because students will be bringing their own computers/movie cameras/mp3 players/web browsers/instant messengers/calculators/agendas to school with them:

I predict that in about 5 short years almost every Middle School student will own an iPhone or its’ equivalent, and they will be connecting to our wireless network via bluetooth for absolutely free. Students will be ready, willing and able to use these tools in our classroom… will teachers be ready enough to maximize the opportunities and learning experiences these tools (coming to our classrooms for free) will provide? 

I’ve been hearing a message from a lot from technology-using teachers recently… “I can’t go back”! Teachers are beginning to see that technology in the classroom is more of a necessity than an opportunity.

One-to-one is not a program that can be sustained across an entire district, it would be too expensive. However this program is ideal to pilot with willing teachers… teachers who recognize that the classroom of the future will give every learner access to tools that would have costed a fortune just a few years ago… tools that some students are already bringing to our classrooms… tools that students will bring to our classrooms of the not-so-distant-future in abundance!

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.

- – - – -

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.

- – - – -

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! 

- – - – -

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

This presentation has two parts:

1. Where do our learning conversations need to go? Here are three guiding principles to help us find our way:
• Not the Knowing, but the Process of Inquiry.
• Not covering the curriculum, but ‘uncovering’ the curriculum.
• A focus in innovation, creativity and design.
How do we model this… every day?

Here is a VoiceThread with questions from the presentation… please share your thoughts!

Here is the video Famous Failures that I couldn’t get the sound to play for.

The second part is only shared here… not within the presentation.

2. It is the questions we ask ourselves and our students that help make Project 2.0h’s great. This take-it-with-you powerpoint presentation will help you provide the scaffolding for engaging digital projects.

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Thanks to everyone who came to this presentation!

Everyone is welcome to comment on the VoiceThread, or this post!