I know I haven’t been reading as often or as widely in my aggregator of late, but I’ve been somewhat surprised by how little we’ve been writing about this next election, which, I think is simply put the most important election of my lifetime, at least. I’ve really been struggling with the state of the world more than usual these days. The environment (I think when you travel a lot you really get a sense of what an extraordinarily wasteful society we live in), the global conflicts, the very tenuous hold we seem to be having economically both here and abroad. All of which makes me want to at times crawl under the covers with my kids, a flashlight, and a bowl of chocolate ice cream.

And in a education context, I’ve not been all that impressed with any of the candidates in terms of how they seem to understand the moment and the challenges. But I’ve finally started to do a little more reading and digging, and I came across a pretty interesting assessment of the Democratic field in terms of understanding the Web and its potential for education.

TechPresident is run by the Personal Democracy Forum which was started by Micah Sifry, who also sponsored the PDF event that I was able to attend this summer. Now, Sifry and most of the bloggers on the site have a left-leaning feel to their posts, so this summary will probably end up comparing favorably with the look at the Republicans that is still to come. And, these assessments were made not by any direct contact with the candidates or their campaigns but by attempting to piece together answers based on what they have said in speeches or debates and/or what they have released in terms of policy. But it’s a starting point. Bottom line, Barrack Obama seems to “get it” more than the rest when it comes to the six specific policy goals they are attempting to judge the candidates by, which are to:

1. Declare the internet a public good in the same way we think of water, electricity, highways or public education.
2. Commit to providing affordable high-speed wireless Internet access nationwide.
3. Declare a “Net Neutrality” standard forbidding Internet service providers from discriminating among content based on origin, application or type.
4. Instead of “No Child Left Behind,” our goal should be “Every Child Connected.” (Emphasis mine)
5. Commit to building a Connected Democracy where it becomes commonplace for local as well as national government proceedings to be heard by anyone any time and over time.
6. Create a National Tech Corps, because as our country becomes more reliant on 21st century communications to maintain and build our economy we need to protect our communications infrastructure.

The money quote on Obama is

But by calling for the explicit use of blogs, wikis and social networking tools “to modernize internal, cross-agency, and public communication and information sharing to improve government decision-making” and direct public commenting on the White House website before legislation is signed, Obama is clearly signaling a commitment to a much more robust e-democracy than anyone else.

The short summary of all the major candidates in terms of education:

Edwards–”while his education platform has many strong aspects, it makes no explicit mention of the need to close the digital divide (though in fairness that is covered elsewhere) or how the internet could serve as an educational resource, as a way to expand learning moments beyond the classroom, and as a tool to connect students, parents and teachers 24/7.”

Clinton–”Her speeches and policy statements on education make no mention of the digital divide, rural or urban.”

Obama–”When it comes to education and the digital divide, Obama’s platform is surprisingly less ambitious in imagining technology’s potential benefits (given how broadly he sees its value elsewhere); his main concern appears to be wiring schools.”

Richardson–”Take his education platform: “We should use the best technology to create more flexible learning environments,” he said in his speech on the topic. “We need to increase opportunities for Advanced Placement and online courses.” Umm, is that it? Yes, it seems.”

Dodd–”He also calls for a “virtual learning innovation funding” to support online courses for public schools. Yet, despite a call for “world-class” public schools, he makes no mention of the need for “world-class” internet access for all students.”

Biden–”When it comes to how the internet can transform educational opportunity, however, Biden, like many of his peers, is pretty old-fashioned, talking only about “bringing computers and the Internet to schools,” rather than connecting children, parents, teachers and educational resources 24/7.”

We need to weigh in on this debate, or at least have a debate, I think, as to what the full slate of candidates on both sides have to say about education and technology. Collectively, in this election, we have a much bigger voice than three years ago, and I think we need to use it. Not to endorse a candidate per se, but to engage in and model the ways in which we can promote a wider discussion of the issues and ideas, conversations that will hopefully make all of us more involved in whatever ways that works. I’ll start a tag in case anyone might be interested in chiming in: edelection08

Technorati Tags: edelection08, politics, education, technology,

There were only a few hundred people who hung around until the bitter end of this year’s NYSCATE conference in Rochester when Gary Stager and I had an hour to “discuss” (not debate) the world of technology and learning, and I hope they felt it was worth it. Gary and I really don’t disagree on all that much, we just come from different frames. And I admire the passion with which he holds his convictions about learning and classrooms. And the fact is that I like Gary; I learn a lot from my “discussions” with him.

We UStreamed the event live (David Jakes, producer) and at one point had over 50 people in the room from around the globe. (Yawn…) The backchannel ended up being about 20 pages long, and, as always, it’s an interesting read on a lot of levels (especially as one of the participants.) I’ve embedded the stream and the chat on the wiki site I’m keeping for many of the streams.

If nothing else, it’s pretty cool to include other audiences in events like these. Would love to hear from some of you who were in the room, physical or virtual.

Technorati Tags: nyscate07, garystager, learning, education

Tomorrow, Amazon is set to release “Kindle,” the digital book reader that holds over 200 books and does a whole lot more (i.e. full text searches, annotations, wireless downloads, online surfing, etc.) It’s a huge suggestion, isn’t it, that we might be on the verge of moving one of the last bastions of the analog world online, and I know that this is a real sore point with many who love to curl up with physical books and turn pages. As an article titled “The Future of Reading,” in this week’s Newsweek about Jeff Bezos’ and his new device says:

Computers may have taken over every other stage of the process—the
tools of research, composition and production—but that final mile of
the process, where the reader mind-melds with the author in an
exquisite asynchronous tango, would always be sacrosanct, said the
holdouts.

I’m not so sure. When you think of all there is to read now, and how the form of that reading has been changed by the Web, I think it’s clear we’re in a transition period that is moving us to something not necessarily better or worse but different for sure. (One of my favorite sayings about many of these shifts.) Again, while fully admitting that my personal practice right now in no way reflects the practice of 97.45% of the rest of the population in terms of the creation and consumption of digital content, and while I still love books with pages and read many of them each year, given the choice, I would rather go digital. (Don’t forget, I still love my Tablet PC even if I don’t use it as much these days.)

The bigger question, as the article alludes to, is whether or not this shift will begin to reverse the trend of people reading fewer and fewer books. And I love the possibility, as suggested in the article, that one potential of connected books are connected readers, that this device or one similar may open up all sorts of ways in which we can share the reading with others. Ben Vershbow, author of one of my favorite blogs, says “The idea of authorship will change and become more of a process than a product.” (It already is, isn’t it?) If you want even more mind bending examples (like the ability of liberals to annotate an Ann Coulter book for all of us to read) then read the whole article.

But is the Kindle the device that’s going to make the slope even more slippery? I’d love to try one out, no doubt.

And in the end, I think that’s what I like more than anything about all of these conversations. That in these shifts, in these changes come all sorts of not seen before potential to create connections, to build networks. Like the Kindle, much of this is absolutely different. That’s what makes it fun, don’t you think?

(Note: The Newsweek article is decidedly rosy about this event. For a less upbeat assessment, try this column in Information Week.)

Technorati Tags: reading, kindle, amazon

From today’s Times:

South Korea boasts of being the most wired nation on earth. In fact, perhaps no other country has so fully embraced the Internet. Ninety percent of homes connect to cheap, high-speed broadband, online gaming is a professional sport, and social life for the young revolves around the “PC bang,” dim Internet parlors that sit on practically every street corner.But such ready access to the Web has come at a price as legions of obsessed users find that they cannot tear themselves away from their computer screens.

The story about the “Jump Up Internet Rescue School,” a boot camp for kids who are having issues finding balance. But I have to wonder, how much of that is a parenting issue. Another reason why we keep a lot of band aids in the bathroom cabinet…

Technorati Tags: balance, Internet, culture

I forget what pointed me to this incredibly thought provoking speech by Mark Pesce about the potential of networks, but man…talk about a mind bender. How can you not read something that starts with

The world has changed.  The world is changing.  The world will change a whole lot more.  We lucky few, we band of coders, bear witness to the most comprehensive transformation in human communication since the advent of language.  We are embedded in the midst of this transition; we make it happen with every script we write and every page we publish and every blog we post and every video we upload.

Whoa. Let me pull out a few other tasty tidbits as well, ones that have my brain buzzing a bit more than usual. Like, for instance, this statistic:

…somewhere in the middle of 2008, half of humanity will own a mobile handset.  In just a decade’s time, we’ll have gone from half the world never having made a telephone call to half the world owning a phone.   Unprecedented.  Unexpected.

Now I know you can read that a couple of different ways, but when you think that there are now almost 3 billion people with communication devices in their hands, it makes you wonder about the potentials for leveraging those devices for powerful connections. Connections of the type that are already happening. Or this quote:

The net regards censorship as a failure, and routes around it.

And he gives great examples of how we do just that, from 15-year olds who are releasing the latest Harry Potter novel early to a 16-year old cracking a hugely expensive Internet filter in Australia in under a half an hour. Or these statements:

• The wiring isn’t the network.  The routers aren’t the network. The people are the network.
• The network, in every form, is anathema to hierarchy.
• The network is simply kicking the legs out from under hierarchies, everywhere they exist, for as long as they exist, until they find themselves unable to rise again.  What it really comes down to is this: we are assuming management of our own affairs, because we are now empowered to do so.

He also describes a vision of how our technologies will connect in the future, freeing us from the telcos and Internet providers we are currently dependent on. I’m sure someone can jump in an make even more plain the importance of Meraki, especially in the context of the OLPC, but the way he describes using mesh in his presentation session is pretty powerful.

And, finally, these 5 Mob Rules to think about:

1. The mob is everywhere.
2. The mob is faster, smarter and stronger than you are.
3. Advertising is a form of censorship
4. The mob does not need a business model.
5. Make networks happen.

He ends it with:

Still, there is one thing I can recommend: have courage and keep moving.  Standing still is not an option.  The world has changed.  The world is changing.  The world will change a whole lot more.  Good luck.

I think that might be the scariest part about all of this when it comes to the discussion about schools. I sip the Kool-Aid that says this is “the most comprehensive transformation in human communication since the advent of language” and that we’re only seeing the first effects of that transformation. Maybe I buy into all of that too easily, or maybe it’s just a symptom of the profound changes I’ve experienced in my own experience. Whatever. The point is that of all of the entities in the world that should be focused on understanding this moment, schools should be at the forefront. Standing still is not an option, yet by and large, that’s exactly what’s happening.
 

Technorati Tags: networks, literacy, cellphones

Obviously, I’ve been taking a bit of a blogging break of late. And while I’m not feeling like I’m totally back at it yet, I have found myself doing some reading, getting back into Twitter, and connecting some dots in my brain. Without question, these last six weeks have been mind-numbing…way too many presentations in way too many cities to have much left in the tank at the end of the day to read or write. And I don’t cross the finish line for another few weeks, a point at which I’m sure I’ll simply hibernate for a few days to catch up with everything.

What’s been interesting with this day after day presenting is how my thinking about this message has been tweaked and how certain parts of it have floated to the top. If nothing else, Twitter has made plain the power of the network, and that network has become the focal point of almost all my presentations. (Thanks, btw, to all of you who have answered spur of the moment requests in Twitter or with Skype or others to help me demonstrate the potential of the network. Much appreciated.) It’s not about teaching or classrooms or even kids…it’s simply about learning, about how we can learn, about how we do learn when we are connected. And, most importantly, it’s about how we need to understand what’s happening in our personal learning networks in order to make sense of what the potentials are, at some point, for our classrooms. Nothing really new here, I know. But just a deepening in my own understanding that is pushing me further.

Of course, the network has been helping this. Stephen’s recent posts “How the Net Works” and “The Personal Learning Effect” have been greatly instructive and have caused me to re-evaluate important parts of my practice. The more I consider it, the more I find myself moving away from a frame of social networking towards one of networked learning (which is obviously social by nature). More toward the literacies of networked learning. I find myself reflecting really deeply of late about how we build these connections, how we manage them, how we leverage them.

And that’s fueling my main frustration right now which is how hard it is to get the educators I speak with to be selfish about these ideas and not run toward classroom implementation of tools. I understand why it happens. Part of it is the “drive by” nature of much of my work, something that I’ve begun to shift away from. (More about that at some point.) And, even more, it’s because of the very little emphasis that districts in general put on supporting the personal learning of teachers. It’s all about student results and assessments, and it’s very difficult to look at these opportunities outside of that frame. Invariably, when the questions start, it’s all about how to keep kids safe or how to satisfy the IT people that we should do this or…you get the idea. I wish the questions after my sessions were more about how to cultivate trusted nodes, or strategies for creating connections outside of physical space.

At some point, I want one of the goals and outcomes for the students at my kids’ school system to be that they will graduate with the ability to build their own learning networks in effective, ethical and safe ways. But that will only happen when enough of the administrators and teachers understand that for themselves. Only then will they be able to help my kids add dots to their world maps in ways that teach them the power of networks in the ways we already know it.

Technorati Tags: learning, networks, literacy

New Class(room) War: Teacher vs. Technology – New York Times

• Quote: “All the advances schools and colleges have made to supposedly enhance
  learning — supplying students with laptops, equipping computer labs,
  creating wireless networks — have instead enabled distraction. Perhaps
  attendance records should include a new category: present but otherwise
  engaged.”

  Note: I actually met a high school principal in Ohio last week who encouraged his teachers to tell kids “Turn your phones ON!” when they come to class. Not as in start making all sorts of phone calls, but as in let’s learn how we can use our phones (since just about every student had one at his school) to extend what we’re doing in class. We can try to fight this, I suppose, as many schools are. Or, we can try to inculcate appropriate use from early on by modeling our own cell phone use to access infromation and learn throughout the curriculum. Bottom line is yep, this is a much more distract-able world. We have to somehow find strategies to teach our kids to use cell phones and computers and the like in effective ways, and we also have to bend our thinking a bit in terms of what we ask our kids to do in classrooms in the first place.
   - post by willrich

Google and Friends to Gang Up on Facebook – New York Times

• Quote: On Thursday, an alliance of companies led by Google plans to begin introducing a common set of standards to allow software developers to write programs for Google’s social network, Orkut, as well as others, including LinkedIn, hi5, Friendster, Plaxo and Ning. The strategy is aimed at one-upping Facebook, which last spring opened its service to outside developers. Since then, more than 5,000 small programs have been built to run on the Facebook site, and some have been adopted by millions of the site’s users. Most of those programs tap into connections among Facebook friends and spread themselves through those connections, as well as through a “news feed” that alerts Facebook users about what their friends are doing.

  Note: Cooperation increases competition. Opening up increases competition.

   - post by willrich

Hello, India? I Need Help With My Math – New York Times

• Quote: What the offshore consumer services industry needs, it seems, is a solid success story in some promising market. A
  leading candidate to watch, according to analysts, is TutorVista, a
  tutoring service founded two years ago by Krishnan Ganesh, a
  45-year-old Indian entrepreneur and a pioneer of offshore call centers. Concerns about the quality of K-12 education in America and the
  increased emphasis on standardized tests is driving the tutoring
  business in general. Traditional classroom tutoring services like
  Kaplan and Sylvan are doing well and offer online features. And there
  are other remote services like Growing Stars, Tutor.com and SmarThinking. Yet
  TutorVista, analysts say, is different in a number of ways. Other
  remote tutoring services generally offer hourly rates of $20 to $30
  instead of the $40 to $60 hourly charges typical of on-site tutoring.
  By contrast, TutorVista takes an all-you-can-eat approach to
  instruction. Its standard offering is $99 a month for as many 45-minute
  tutoring sessions as a student arranges.

  Note: What I’m wondering is when we’ll start outsourcing a lot of the simple grading stuff that teachers do now. You want to free up some time to learn, start sending the paper offshore.

   - post by willrich

So I wasn’t there to see it, but Tess and Tucker learned Scratch this afternoon from Andrew, an 11-year old from “across the pond” from Perth, Scotland, during their weekly Tuesday “supplementing school” class. I had to be on an airplane to somewhere, but the early reports are that Andrew did a stupendous job, using Yugma and Skype to show my kids how to start to program their own characters and get all sorts of sprites doing all sorts of things. Neil, Andrew’s dad, (pictured here during the session) really gets to my own feelings about this (please read his post):

The implications of being able to find what you want to know from someone who is willing to share… even if they are not present… turns our traditional model of education on its head… and even more so when you realise that the person with the knowledge you require might be the person you thought you ought to be teaching!

I just find it hard to express how cool I think this is. And what a different world this is from when I was 8 or 9, and how envious I am of my kids, and how much I want schools and teachers to understand this very, very different playing field we’re on right now. I just absolutely love what my kids are learning, not just about Scratch, but about a world where they can connect with other kids, other teachers to learn, a world where walls are irrelevant, one filled with opprotunity and creativity and… I know, I know…I’m in a giddy place again. But I want other parents to feel this, to feel how absolutely incredible and different and wonderful this is.

Thanks Andrew. Thanks Neil. It’s an amazing time.

Technorati Tags: learning, education, networks

UPDATE: Apologies for the double post below. I was playing with Diigo, which does auto Daily Links to the blog, and running to soccer practice, and, you get the idea. Anyway, I’ll leave this up since it’s generated some comments…

Weblogg-ed » What’s Your Process?  Annotated

Seriously. I want to know. What do you do when you read a couple of sentences in a post or article that really resonate? How do you capture and organize those snippets? What tools do you use? How often do you recall those sentences, access them? How do you search for them? Is your process working?

I struggle with this, sitting here in the Buffalo airport, reading through my feeds, waiting for my #&%*$^ delayed Continental flight home, an airline that, it seems, just cannot do anything on time these days. I’ve got a few compelling, short snips, all these great tools, and no mastery of this process. What would you do?

Technorati Tags: information, learning, education

So what does writing literacy look like in the context of these Read/Write Web tools? I mean think of the many different ways that we “write” in our networked lives, ways that differ from the modes that were in primary use just 10 or 15 years ago when I was actually teaching students “how to write” (whatever that means.) Here’s just a quick list of the different ways writing occurs for me today:

• Blogging, which, when I have the time to do it, means expending some intellectual sweat into synthesizing ideas and reflecting on the things that I am reading. It’s writing that is intended to engage; I constantly put myself in the reader’s shoes and try to anticipate reactions and responses because (surprise!) the reader can.
• Commenting, which, when I have the time to do it (and I’ll stop adding that from here on out) is meant to probe or support or question. I wonder, is there a “literacy” to commenting?
• Writing articles or essays for publication, which is the most traditional writing that I do these days. The sense of audience is still present, but there is a huge difference in the way it settles over what I write. I know I may never get feedback on those pieces, that I may never engage in a conversation around the ideas as I do here on my blog. And that changes the voice, the tone, and the style. (Writing books would probably fall in here as well.)
• Tweeting, which has become a bizarre new micro genre, hasn’t it? Tweets are pretty narrow in scope for me. I Tweet  to update my presence (“On a propellor plane to somewhere.”), to ask a question, to respond to others’ Tweets, or to play. But the asynchronousness of it makes it difficult. I’m writing for response, but I’m not as patient about getting that response as I am with my blog. And obviously, it’s mostly reaction, thin thinking, not sweat.
• Chatting or IM, which I am surprised at how much I do, usually in Skype and Gmail. It’s more synchronous, I don’t care as much about misspellings and errors, it’s conversation. But the way I chat certainly varies depending on whom I’m chatting with.
• Writing in video or audio, which I don’t do so much, but have a couple of ideas that I’m working on. Writing in pictures, digital storytelling, can be very compelling and useful but require a different way of thinking about the message, no?

And I’m sure there are others. But I wonder, with all of these different ways now of communicating in writing, does that change what writing literacy is?

All of this comes from a recent post by Barbara Ganley, one of my favorite all-time bloggers and one of the few teachers I think I would actually get into a four-walled classroom with again. In her Creative NonFiction course at Middlebury this fall, she’s leading her students into a whole bunch of different writing environments in ways that I find fascinating. I mean, think of what that course would have been a decade ago. Pretty much essay. Pretty much paper. Maybe some hypertext. Maybe some getting outside the classroom in limited ways. But check out her unit on the uses of multimedia to “write” online. Not only will her students be blogging, they will be creating group “Twitterstories“, linking to pieces of art and posting links to the class Flickr group, writing in one-sentence hypertext shorts, and creating digital stories using the tools outlined in Alan Levine’s 50 Web 2.0 Ways to Tell a Story resource. And more.

Barbara blogs about the course, saying:

This is the most challenging course I have ever taught because I’m asking my students–right from their first days as undergraduates– in large part to unlearn how they have been taught to read, to write, to connect with the measure of their own work. [Emphasis mine.]

When I get to the part about literacy in my presentations, I always ask how many of the teachers in the room are teaching their students to read and write in different modes, in hypertext, with art and photos, in audio and video, using all of them combined. I’m surprised if I get more than a hand or two going up. And I’m sure that what’s happening in Barbara’s class isn’t happening in very many other college courses either. Traditional writing is absolutely still important, but writing is more complex than just text on a page (usually a paper page) these days.

Makes me wonder, with all of the different ways in which I write, all of the different audiences I write for, all of the different ways I attempt to communicate and engage in conversations and connections around my ideas, it makes me wonder whether we’ll ever see these many modes of writing as important enough to teach our kids.

(Photo “Hand (made)” by 3blindmice.)

Technorati Tags: writing, learning, education, teaching

Yesterday’s “challenge” was seeing if I could spend a couple of hours with a group of 11th year students outside of Vancouver and engage them not only in a conversation about the tools but about the significance of what the tools allow them to do in terms of building networks. And I have to say that I was really pleased with the result, not so much because it felt good to be back in a classroom again, and not so much because I  think I had them pretty interested throughout (they actually came back on time from a five minute break.) The best part for me is that I got to pick their brains about social tools and their practice. And guess what? I learned a lot.

I learned that this group of kids, at least, is not one that I will worry about in terms of keeping themselves safe online. And I also learned that that is due in some part to the school’s efforts to teach them that but more that they have learned how to do that from each other. Every one of the 25 or so of them had a Facebook or MySpace site or both, but the vast majority was Facebook. When I asked them why it was that Facebook seemed less prone to suggestive pictures and profanity and other not so wonderful content, the answer was simple: you’re representing yourself there, not some anonymous, made up code name like on MySpace. And you want to use your real name because that’s how the people you want to find you can, and it’s how you find them (What a concept.) And what about those that you don’t want to find you? You simply don’t let them in the door.

I also learned that most of them don’t create and publish too much content on the Web other than the stuff they share on their social network page. But it was interesting to hear the experiences of those that did. One girl has created a number of videos and posted them to YouTube. She is the president of the GLOW club at the high school (“Gay, Lesbian or Whatever”…I so love that name), and one video she made was about “Gay Bashing”. It’s been viewed over 2,000 times, and we pulled it up and watched it in “class.” Good stuff. Now, you can imagine what the 39 comments on the video are like, and when I started scrolling them on screen I quickly went back to the top of the page. She talked about how the comments made her feel, that many of them were creepy, that she was surprised by the level of anger and hatred, and that it times, it scared her. But she relied on her friends for support, and overall, she felt empowered by her ability to create and publish her movies. It was really, really interesting.

And while there were a lot of other takeaways for me, I also learned that they didn’t really understand the potential of networks in terms of their own learning. Not that I expected them to. But I think I was able to get them thinking hard about that concept thanks in large part to a Tweet I put up asking people there to say hi and talk about what the network meant to them. The result was amazing, I think. Now I know that Twitter isn’t necessarily the best manifestation of a learning network, and I gave them other examples from my own practice that hopefully shone a light on the depth that is possible. (I video Skyped-in the always gracious John Pederson to give us his network answer “in person.”) But from an immediacy standpoint, Twitter is hard to beat. And these responses drove home some pretty important points. That learning continues after school. That we can learn with people around the world. That when we connect to people who share our passions, it’s motivating and sustaining.

At the end of the two hours, I was really sad it was over. I asked (halfway begged) them to make me a part of their networks, because I need some young folk in my learning community. Not sure if they’ll let me know how things roll out for them, but for one day, at least, I hope they learned as much as I did.

Technorati Tags: learning, education, networks

I’m just reposting this from Chris’s blog and urging everyone to think about spending a weekend in January in Philly on the cheap engaging in what promises to be some important conversations about what schools can and must become…

“From January 25-27, we’re going to attempt something really quite exciting at SLA. We’re going to host EduCon 2.0.

About EduCon 2.0

EduCon 2.0 is both a conversation and a conference.

And it is not a technology conference. It is an education conference. It is a School 2.0 conference. It is, hopefully, an innovation conference where we want to come together, both in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools. We are looking for people to present ideas, facilitate conversations, and share best practice.

The Axioms / Guiding Principles of EduCon 2.0:
1) Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all members.
2) Our schools must be about co-creating — together with our students — the 21st Century Citizen
3) Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around.
4) Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate
5) Learning can — and must — be networked

We are now making our call for conversations — these are the sessions where people present ideas, lead conversations, engage with people and find a way to update the conference-style presentation in a way that is more interactive, more progressive and — hopefully — takes advantage of all of the ways we’ve found to engage a wider audience.

Proposals are due Nov 1st. Please consider creating a conversation.

(Feel free to link to this post and/or to the conference wiki!)”

Technorati Tags: educon2.0, learning, education

There are moments in this most surreal life that I’m now leading when I’m standing in front of more than a few hundred educators in a large, dimly lit auditorium and this eerie, palpable feeling of discomfort settles in around me. Sometimes, I know, I feel like I push too many buttons. Other times, I feel like I don’t push enough. It depends on the place, the people, the purpose. But when it happens, when I’ve managed to say just enough to almost force those who are still listening to consider some of the (I think, at least) challenging questions I’m asking, this feeling presents itself in this kind of eerie quiet where the only sound I seem to hear is that of arms folding in defense or heads bending in despair. It’s that “digging in” moment where I know now from doing this over and over and over again that a good chunk of the audience is not happy.

I had one of those moments, one of those audiences recently, one where while I think the majority of people in the room walked away challenged in a good way, many also walked away angry in a not so good way. The “yeah, buts” were out in force. And I know that their anger isn’t directed so much at me as it is the reality of schools, the reality of the change, and the reality of the difficult conversations we need to start having. (I’m reminded of Chris Lehmann’s Tweet yesterday that read “When trying to explain how much has changed and how schools must change… where do we start?” Amen.) But in this case, that anger came out in some really remarkably interesting ways that challenged the message and the messenger.

Oy.

Yesterday’s Newsday had an article that said that a recent survey showed 61% of us “would prefer a “computer therapist” who is compassionate and easy to talk to” instead of the typical tech support person. And “52% said they felt “anger, sadness, alienation” when dealing with their most recent computer problem.” Or the most recent in-service technology speaker, I would guess. The new term is “innovation overload.” I feel that too.

But we as educators have to tackle this stuff. My own anger at times comes from the fact that I’m not talking to a room full of plumbers or software engineers or CEOs, people who aren’t working with kids every day helping them (I hope) become literate navigators of this increasingly challenging world. (Read yesterday’s New York Times article “An Internet Jihad Aims at U.S. Viewers” if you want a sense of just how challenging.) We’re educators, for goodness sake. Educate! Innovate! Where is the innovation overload for schools???

In other news, the Times today reports “that all 6,063 [California] public schools serving poor students will be declared in need of restructuring by 2014″ when NCLB requires proficiency in math and reading.

Yeah. Let’s just dig in and stick with what we got.

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