One of the things I asked Jeff early on in planning for Learning 2.0 in Shanghai last week was whether or not I could do something a bit different in my sessions. I just did not want to “prepare” a 45-minute presentation to “deliver” to the people in the room for a variety of reasons. I’m sure the genesis of this feeling was because of the “unconference” format we used at Edbloggercon last summer in Atlanta, but I find myself more and more questioning the “get up in the front of the room and impart knowledge” model that is so thick with irony in the context of this conversation that it just doesn’t feel quite right anymore. So, anyway, what I decided to do for my five sessions was to simply offer up a topic, prep 10-15 minutes of discussion starting context, and then sit down and try to facilitate a conversation. Happily, Jeff was all for it.

For the most part, that’s how it worked out. Sheryl and I decided to combine one of our sessions, and we basically ran a discussion on overcoming obstacles around some key questions. And two of the sessions ended up being slated as “unconference” sessions where I prepped even less and just tried to let the conversation fly. But the other two had me talking for about 15 minutes on the topic and then just opening it up. And from my standpoint, at least, some fascinating discussion ensued. And what was great was that Jamie McKenzie sat in on one, Gary Stager on another, and Wes on a third. And they all contributed to the conversation. I just played the good group therapist and tried to reflect and deflect, prod and probe, without giving too much of my own bias away. (I will say that someone who I least expected came up later and heaped on some genuine love on what transpired conversation-wise in one of the sessions. It was a nice moment.)

On a number of different levels, I guess this could be seen as selfish. For one thing, I didn’t have to do as much work, and for another, I got to hear and learn about other people’s ideas and experiences instead of simply conveying my own. That’s not to say that there wasn’t some work and deftness that went into leading a worthwhile discussion. But it is a much different beast from nailing together that PowerPoint or that wiki page and then going through it step by step, filling up the allotted time. And my bottom line takeaways were that a) for me at least, it was a much more fulfilling experience, and b) for the participants, I think, it served a more effective purpose. (If anyone was in the rooms with me for those sessions, I’d love to hear your feedback.)

So here I sit, as do many of us right now, I’m sure, thinking about NECC 2008 and the looming deadline for proposals about a week away. And I am seriously struggling. Because I want to do something really different. Something disruptive…not in a bad way, but to push the envelope a bit. I want to bring the unconference to the conference, not just have it on it’s own separate day, and I’m wondering how to best do that.

Without totally cutting my throat here, it’s becoming obvious that traditional conference formats just aren’t as needed as they used to be. That’s not to say that there still won’t be 14,000 people (not including you) in San Antonio trudging from room to room, getting a look at the latest tools or ideas and learning just enough to make them dangerous, and wallowing in the multi-gajillion dollar vendor floor picking up huge Best Buy bags that will end up in the nearest landfill a day or two after. (My, how many laptops we could buy for kids and teachers with the money getting thrown around down there.) And it’s not to say that getting together face to face is no longer important. (K-12 Online is an amazing undertaking, but the totally virtual conference leaves something to be desired as well.)

In this world, every moment can be a conference session, one that’s much better than watching some slide show. I mean seriously…throw a dart at any conference session list and see if you hit one that can’t be done better through the network. (Ok…there are some, I know. But what percentage? 10? 20 percent that would be worth traveling the distance to see?) Somebody somewhere of late talked about this new, on demand, speed learning a la Twitter that’s cropping up, and it is pretty powerful. Tweet that you want to learn something and voila…instant classroom. The other day, John Pederson and I decided to learn Yugma (worked for him…I still can’t get it to see my Skype list.) And then Jeff tweets that he’s trying WiZiQ and all of a sudden I’m in a room with about 10 other people from like 10 other continents and we’re all chipping away at it, trying to figure out what works and how. And after you read Jeff’s post on the topic, tell me he woulda’ walked out of a conference session able to write that.

Point is, I think, that there is a better way today than sitting in that room facing forward doing what all of our kids do. (And look, I’m guilty as charged here too in terms of most of what I do when I present.) And that’s why Edubloggercon left us all in a daze. Because it wasn’t that. It was participatory (if you wanted it to be.) It was passion, not passivity. And, I don’t know, but yeah…I want my kids teachers to be learning the way I do rather than spending my tax money to sit in those sessions. If that comes across as hubris, my apologies. But I’ll gladly pay their way to the next Edubloggercon, wherever that might be.

So, I’m askin’…how do we bring the unconference into the conference?

So what am I learning at Learning 2.0? This is a bit of a very tired brain dump, but, I’m learning that…
 
…the teachers everywhere struggle with many of the same challenges and pressures that teachers in the States struggle with, by and large. The one big thing they don’t struggle with is NCLB.

…that teaching at an international school can be an amazing and rewarding experience. I’ve been struck by how many of the people I’ve met here have parents who taught abroad, and how many of them can’t imagine teaching in the US again (though many of them did.) That’s not to say that they are all expats, but it is interesting to hear them talk about how “hard” it is to come back to the States, for any number of reasons.

…that for the first time, if I had it to do over again, I would seriously consider taking my kids abroad for a year or two to give them a more global perspective. That’s not to say that they still don’t have the chance to immerse themselves in another culture before they get out to their real lives (and I think now I’m going to give them a lot of encouragement to do that), but as I flipped the pages of the yearbook in the office at the Concordia International School where the conference is being held, I saw a bunch of kids from all over the place who were getting a pretty amazing experience. For some reason, I’m really loving the sense of adventure that seemed to jump off of those pages.

…that Susan Sedro, Clay Burrell, Kim Cofino and others are just as compelling and interesting as their blogs suggest, and that they are doing some really fantastic things in their classrooms with these technologies. It’s been great to get a chance to talk with them and hear their contributions in my sessions.

…that things are cheap, really, really cheap here. And on some level that conflicts me. I am really looking forward to this afternoon and the next two days when the conference has ended and Jeff (pictured here) takes us around to where the “real” China is. (Where we are right now is kind of an upscale expat village where mostly corporations house their workers.) But I’m also somewhat put off by the zeal for buying knock off Rolex watches and designer clothes. China is a huge contributor to the environmental problems of the world, (the air here is just not right) not to mention all sorts of human rights violations and poor working conditions that I have not doubt surround the production of all that junk. And while I’m no saint, consumerism in general will be the death of us all. I keep wondering, how are we going to help our kids navigate the looming environmental crisis if we ourselves can’t do it. So, downtown Shanghai will either blow my mind or make me more depressed. Maybe both.

–that Gary Stager is a really good guy, which I already knew, btw. We may not agree on everything, but more than most, Gary wants kids to learn in engaging and meaningful ways.

We wrap up at noon today…that’s midnight EST, as my body is still well aware. Photos, I have a feeling, are going to be scarce as Flickr is blocked here and while the Firefox plugin seems to be working, the upload isn’t working. I’m going to have to get my brain around how to do it.

Technorati Tags: learn2cn, china, shanghai, learning, education

So it may seem strange to start my first blog post ever from China with a picture of my daughter, but the reason I’m feeling so giddy at the moment (aside from about seven hours of sleep after a 27-hour travel day) is because I am just loving my Skype, Skitch, connected from wherever I am in the world life. It’s about 9 am here in Shanghai and I just got off an hour Skype video call with my kids (where it’s about 9 pm) where I, like I normally try to do, helped them with their homework (Tess and I had an interesting conversation about “bartering”) and asked about Tucker‘s soccer practice and talked baseball. (My Cubbies are hangin’ in.) I know it’s not the same as being there, but I have to tell you it’s pretty darn cool to be half a world away and still be able to see them and interact with them. And I loved snapping pictures of them on my end with Skitch and then giving them the link so they could see what I just posted and watch their faces break into huge smiles, all within, literally, 45 seconds start to finish. In five years, I know, that’ll seem like nothing, but right now, it’s a big deal.

Sheryl and Wes and I arrived about 9 last night and Wes was by far the most productive on the trip, writing about 37 blog posts, doing a couple of podcasts, and getting yelled at by the Chinese authorities at the airport for taking pictures in the  customs line. (I’m sure they are on Flickr by now, which, btw, is blocked here.) Jeff picked us up and brought us to the hotel where I crashed hard after flipping through the dials and seeing almost nothing but English and American sporting events and something that looked strangely like “Chinese Idol.” Could that be? With my very limited first impression, I guess I’m almost disappointed at how Westernized it all feels. But Jeff is promising to show us the real Shanghai on Monday and Tuesday after the conference which I am looking forward to greatly. And, my own personal angst was about the air quality here…on the drive last night, you could only see about a mile or two ahead the haze was so thick. And Jeff said that was a great improvement over the last three years…they’re gearing up for the Olympics next year, you know.

So now I’ve got an afternoon to get my brain in gear for what promises to be a pretty interesting unconference-y conference with folks from around Asia. It will be really interesting to see what their take is on all of this. I feel pretty much out of my element, and in those cases I usually end up learning more than anyone, especially with the focus that Jeff and the organizers have put on the conversations. I’m leading five sessions, two of them are going to be totally unconference, one to discuss the Cult of the Amateur as it relates to Learning 2.0 and the other titled “Teachers as Learners; Learners as Teachers.” The other sessions I’m going to “present” for about 10-15 minutes and then hopefully use the rest of the time to talk about “The Big Shifts in Learning,” problem technologies in schools, and our own personal learning practice as educators. There will be a lot of Twittering going on, so if you want to follow that conversation just tap into the Learn2cn feed. And don’t forget the almost mandatory Ning site for the conference that has, I think, the coolest Ning banner to date. Hope to see you in the mix.

Technorati Tags: learn2cn, shanghai, learning, education, China

So something shifted a little bit more for me this week at Building Learning Communities. Or maybe it solidified. Whatever it did, it’s feeling pretty powerful at this moment.

I think a lingering hangover from Edubloggercon in NECC had something to do with it, but having another chance to spend quality time talking to people like David Jakes, Dean Shareski, Darren Kuropatwa, Ewan McIntosh, Barbara Barreda, Marco Torres, Chris Lehmann, Joyce Valenza,  Christian Long and many others was just such a kick. And as I left this morning, I felt really sad on some levels, because even though I know the learning will continue, the conversations and connections we were making were just…just…scintillating for me. What was so cool was that 80% of my waking hours were spent in some sort of immersion in this conversation among people who ooze passion for it. I mean, read through some of the chatcasts on Dave’s blog. Good lord that’s some intense back channel chat. And it’s not so much a love for the tools as it is a love for what the tools allow us to do, to experience. It was just one pretty raw learning moment after the next, and it’s a feeling you don’t want to lose.

And that is where some of my thinking really solidified, that passion part. I know this sounds corny, but I was really wishing that every one at that conference could have experienced the same connection that I felt to this community. The one here where we’re just all talking about how we figure out what needs to happen, what we can do, what the world is going to look like, and how we can help shape it. Where, yeah, we ooohhh and ahhh over someone’s iPhone, but a minute later we’re back to talking about where all of this is headed.

And what shifted for me was walking into two of my presentations and basically chucking the script because it just didn’t feel relevant. I mean how ironic is it to talk about school transformation in a setting that looks like a…um…school? And I just got tired of it. I desperately wanted to hear other people’s voices in my sessions, and so starting with the one I wrote about on Wednesday and the morning session yesterday, I just decided to try to facilitate a conversation and see where it took us. And, I don’t know about anyone else in the room, but for me, it was pretty powerful.

Last night on the dinner cruise, I had the honor of being interviewed by some of Marco’s former students who were there to capture snippets of the conference in snippets of video. After they finished, we started talking, and I asked them what they thought of the conference. In a word, they were incredulous that teachers would come to an event like this and sit in long rows of chairs dutifully listening to whoever was in the front presenting. They talked about how people were coming up to them asking them for technical assistance, and how, in general, they were awestruck at how far ahead of everyone else they seemed to be. It was an amazing moment for me, to hear their reflections, because I found them so powerful. They just couldn’t understand it.

It was great.

One more story. Ewan was everywhere at this conference, and no one created more and published more content than he did. He’s amazing. I was looking at his pictures on Flickr and yearning to understand how I could make my own 35mm Nikon do what his 35mm Canon was doing. Believe me, it wasn’t the camera. So I snagged him and made him sit down with me on the bus to Boston Wednesday night and started picking his brain. My camera was different from his, so he had to experiment a bit with it to figure it out…learning in action, right? But he did, and then he took literally two minutes to show me how to begin to play. Not how to take a certain picture in a certain way. Not how to prepare for every shot. But how to play and experiment and take a picture, look at it, make an adjustment, try it again, reflect, reshoot, etc. until I finally got what I wanted. And if you look at my photostream, I think you can begin to see pretty quickly when that bus ride took place.

I learned just enough to teach myself. Pretty cool.

This was a great week. Really. I mean it.

Can’t wait for the next one.

Technorati Tags: blc07, learning, education

Some random reflections and thoughts from Building Learning Communities Day 1:

–In a lot of ways, I can’t believe this is my fourth BLC conference, and if nothing else, the one thing that really stands out is that there is very extensive intellectual (if not practical) understanding of the Read/Write Web as compared to my first year here when a lot of people looked at me funny as I talked about blogs and RSS and the like. Yesterday at a session that Tim Tyson was running about leadership, just about everyone said they wanted to learn more about Web 2.0 stuff, and in a weird way, it was a moment of some validation. Another signal that the train has left the station. But still, the fact that I am still doing a lot of talking on an introductory level speaks volumes, especially about RSS.

–Although the conference has doubled in size this year, from 300 to over 600, it so far has retained its feeling of intimacy. And I just never go to conferences where there are so many people from outside the US. One really funny moment today was sitting down for lunch with a contingent from Northern Ireland and asking them what they thought of the workshops and presentations. They all said they hadn’t learned a thing, and they were serious. It seems they’ve been talking about this stuff for a long time over there. After a little prodding, they admitted their thinking was getting tweaked, but it was fascinating to listen to them talk about the ways in which they were already rethinking their schools.

–There is one technology director here who brought two kids from his school to attend the conference. What a concept. Can you imagine a conference where really high level ideas about schools and education were being discussed where there were just as many students in the rooms and in the discussions as adults? Whoa.

–For some reason, I decided to get pretty edgy in my “New Literacies” presentation and I basically started by saying the whole concept of having people get up and give a presentation at conferences like this is really becoming ironic amidst all of this talk about conversation and collaboration. And so it was nice in that about 15 minutes of the hour (at least) was taken up with discussion. While Tim’s keynote this morning made plain the power of publishing, I wanted to push past the feeling that the product was the end of the process, and I tried to move the concept of what we can do now into the realm of building sustained, trusted, relevant, safe learning communities and networks in which the products nurture the conversation and the learning. That creating and sharing a movie or a podcast or blog post is important, but it is the connections we make around those artifacts, the discussions and interactions that surround them from the community where the most powerful learning takes place. It’s where the “meta” stuff happens, where the true potential lies.

–Ewan McIntosh is a rock star. Plain and simple. “The Italian mafia makes you an offer you can’t refuse. The Scottish mafia makes you an offer you can’t understand.” Priceless. David Jakes and Dean Shareski came back from Ewan’s second session awestruck, and I was truly sorry I was presenting opposite. (That is one of the personal frustrations of this conference…so much I want to learn and see.) Waiting for Jakes to post the “Chat Cast.”

–For reasons yet unclear, I am falling more in like with Twitter. Oy. Jakes put up a reflection on his blog that really resonated.

With Twitter and Skype, I have access to immediacy. My aggregator and my del.icio.us network (18 people I follow, 80 who follow me) are more asynchronous, and not as immediate. I need both types of networks.

Amen.

–I found this quote this morning via Stephen Downes and used it in my presentation.

 “We have been seduced by our inability to imagine ourselves as superfluous to student learning.”

Now I’m serious…that wins the “Best Sentence in a Blog Post of 2007″ award (so far at least.) Amen. Amen

–Warning: We’re all heading downtown tonight…Tweets ahead.

(Photo “chatcast” by jutecht.)

Technorati Tags: blc07, learning, education

That’s a question that I’m really trying to get my brain around of late. In the past few weeks, I have really ramped up my rhetoric to teachers in terms of trying to get them to examine how these technologies challenge their own personal learning. How can the connections we make with these tools affect their own learning practice? How can they begin to understand what the implications for learning are for their students until they at some level understand them for themselves? And so on. And for the most part, heads nod politely in agreement.

But, here’s the thing. By and large, most of the questions that come up during the workshop or the presentation run along the lines of “how do we keep our kids safe with this stuff?” or “if I want to put up my homework for my kids is it better to use a blog or a wiki?” or “so parents could subscribe to these RSS feeds, right?” All good, useful, legitimate questions. But very far removed from the personal learning focus I’ve been trying to articulate. In fact, when I stand by these teachers and hear their questions, when I look at them directly and say “well, that’s a great question, but I really want you to focus on your own practice here, your own learning,” more often than not what I get is a scrunched up face, a biting of the lower lip, a feeling that their brains are saying “AAARRRGGGHHH.”

And even as I sit in this session with Tim Tyson at Building Learning Communities, one principal says “I want to learn more about these tools so I can help my teachers use them in the classroom.”  I want to jump up and say “No! You are missing a step! You want to learn more about these tools for yourself so you can help your teachers learn from them too.”

So what’s that all about? Is it just habit? Is it just such a focus on curriculum delivery that “learning” is all about how to do that job better? Is changing the way we do our own business just too darn hard? Or is this such a huge shift, this idea that we can actually learn through the use of technology that most people just don’t think they have to go there, that they can just keep using it as a way to communicate without the surrounding connective tissue where the real learning takes place?

Or, maybe it’s just me…

(Photo “Having to read the old books again” by Edublogger aka Ewan McIntosh.)

Technorati Tags: blc07, learning, education, read/writeweb

Plain and simple, despite some down moments, this was the best NECC I’ve attended. It was, for the most part, a fun, creative, good space to be in, and I learned a great deal even though I realized yesterday that I hadn’t attended a formal session. (That is actually kind of bizarre, isn’t it? And now of course I realize I missed a great deal.) But it just felt like I was getting so much from the conversations in the Blogger Cafe/Camp and at the other meet-ups throughout the five days that the sessions felt kind of unappetizing. And when I was prepping for my spotlight yesterday, I kept struggling with the same thing…the feeling that that model of someone standing on a stage talking for an hour paled as compared to just having a conversation. The whole experience has challenged my thinking a great deal.

And one other thing that kind of blossomed out of this whole thing was the Twitterish, synchronous conversation that started popping out everywhere. Jeff posted the Skypechat transcript that a bunch of people were having during my presentation. Many of them were in the room, but Clarence Fisher was supervising a science exam in Manitoba and Dean Shareski was out in Moose Jaw. And as Jeff Twittered out the fact that the chat was taking place, more people joined in along the way. It reminded me of ILaw at Harvard a couple of years ago where they actually projected the back channel IRC chat onto the screen as the presenter was presenting. (Now THAT was chaos.) For me, the benefit of tracking the reaction and thinking as I read through it a day later is really fascinating. The learning continues.

So I’m leaving NECC with a lot more optimism, not necessarily that things are going to move any faster or that the challenges are any smaller. But with a real sense of glue. We may not have succeeded at EdBloggerCon at crafting the elevator pitch or figuring out what the new story is, but there is now a sense, at least to me, of more of a collective mission. One that we can already start thinking about for next year in San Antonio. What are our goals? What do we want to have accomplished by then? What are the benchmarks? I took the liberty of adding a new page to the EBC site.

There is an election next year, you know…

Many thanks to everyone who contributed to my learning this year. Hope I added something useful to the conversation.

Technorati Tags: necc07, necc2007, education, learning, blogging

Yesterday at NECC was one of those yin/yang experiences, with one of my worst conference moments ever, which, as these things go, preceded probably the best conference feel good ever.

The Yin: I was on a panel with two other featured speakers that I thought was supposed to be a discussion about how Web 2.0 and School 2.0 are playing out and what it all means for the public education system. What it ended up being was about a total of 15 minutes total of actual conversation and 45 minutes of attempting to coax the audience into submitting best practices for the panel leaders’ new book about Web 2.0 tools in schools. Not to say that the ideas that many of the people submitted weren’t interesting and of value and worth listening to. But I have to say, I felt pretty used. And the total irony of the moment was that in this “Web 2.0″ and “School 2.0″ session that was supposed to celebrate the uses of the tools, the random notes were being taken on screen in a very un Web 2.0 tool called Microsoft Word. No transparency. No collaboration. No thought to sharing.

And no surprise.

I’m sure this is going to come across as conceit, but as much as there are many sessions about 2.0 this and 2.0 that, as much as the exhibitors are trumpeting all this great 21st Century learning stuff (all labeled “Safe for Your Students!” btw) there is still very little real “getting it,” real understanding of how these tools change everything, real appreciation for the transformation that so many folks at EduBloggerCon expressed on Saturday. Yep, everyone is on the train, but hardly anyone still knows what’s feeding the engine.

But the folks at the Blogger Cafe do. And that’s the yang. I don’t know how many of them will blog about it, (probably most) but the cafe is turning more into camp as people basically say “forget the sessions…this is SO much better.” And so we linger and talk and teach and learn and bond and I swear this is the best experience I have ever had at a conference (and I’ve been to a lot of conferences.) It’s just too much fun sticking around all of these people who share this itch and want to continually keep scratching it. (Check out Jeff’s Twitter feed to see what I mean.) The passion is palpable. In some ways it’s extended what started on Saturday, and it feels like more of a classroom of the future than most of the other models being bandied about.

The important thing for me is that even though we’re all heading out today, class is still in session. We’re just moving over to the virtual cafe where the pace slows down a bit and the laughter isn’t as loud. And just like the physical space, we drop by, hang out, speak up or listen when we’re able. And the learning continues. That’s what’s so powerful about all of this. That’s what I keep hoping more people will experience.

Technorati Tags: necc07, necc2007, learning, blogging, education

Pretty amazing that the 40 computers in my open source session at 8:30 were claimed by 7:45 and that a good 150 people (if not more) crammed into the room by the start time. (The photo was taken at about 8:15.) And even more amazing that the Internet connection basically went dead but I think the presentation went pretty well anyway. I’d guess about 40% of the people raised hands when I asked how many were bloggers or used blogs. And some really good questions saved me from tap dancing too much.

But what was really amazing was that totally unannounced, the superintendent at my own kids’ school up in New Jersey showed up. (And Laura, if you’re reading this, it was great of you to come.)

The Blogger’s Cafe has been the place to hang this morning, and yes, it’s official…”we” have “arrived.” At least on the surface. Maybe David has already done it but I wonder how many Read/Write Web sessions there are going this year. Must be close to if not over 100. And “2.0″ is everywhere on the exhibit floor, where I did my annual 30-minute walk just to see all the stuff I wouldn’t buy. (A couple of exceptions, but once again, if you totaled up all the money being spent on displays and schwag and the carbon footprint for getting it all here, you could easily buy a laptop for every kid in the country who needs one. And I’m sorry, but from the “let’s see how much junk we can give away that will end up in a landfill” category, Best Buy needs to be outlawed next year. This sound eerily familiar to a post I wrote last year, I think.)

Not to be cynical, (just can’t shake it) I’ve been wondering (and having great discussion with Cafe-ers) about just what station we have “arrived” at, however. It’s feeling like “I Can Blogville” which I guess is somewhere on the route to “I Can Help My Students Build Their Own Learning Communitiesville” or something like that. At the Google booth, I watched a line 10 deep snake up to take a turn at trying out Blogger. One after another, the Google guide showed people how to post. One after another, you could see the “Gosh, that was easy!” reaction. It was pretty cool just lurking, watching it. But again, I wonder to what extent that will somehow lead to an understanding of what changes in a network, where the real power is.

It’s not in the publishing. But I guess we have to get there first.

At any rate, if anyone from the session is reading, thanks so much for coming…would love to hear what your reactions are, and welcome to the blogosphere.

You’re halfway there.

Technorati Tags: necc07, necc2007, blogging, education, learning

So I added the “I” in the above because I have absolutely no doubt there will be many more of these unconferences to come. This has been a good day, on a number of different levels. I’m really, really fortunate in that over the years I’ve had the pleasure of meeting many of the people in this community, and it’s been very cool seeing them all again and being all in the same space. But there are many folks here who I don’t know or haven’t met, and it’s great hearing those perspectives and voices as well.

I’m not going to dive too far into the topics and the readouts…lots of other folks are doing that. But I’m really thinking about community in the physical and virtual contexts. We had a pretty provocative discussion led by Sheryl that reminded me how different these spaces are, and how complex they are to navigate. It’s something that, once again, has to be folded into our curricula throughout our time with students. And I really believe that we have to have our own brains around these different iterations of community that our kids will be working in.

I’m not sure how far down the road we’re getting on answering any of the big questions. But we’ve started some conversations that I’m sure are going to continue. Steve, who has done such a great job of making this happen, said at the outset that he’ll be interested in seeing what transpires from this six months out. I’m feeling, at this moment at least, that we may have actually pushed further forward by that point. And I’ve come away with at least one “big” idea that’s relevant to my own search. But I’m still trying to listen and divine (if that’s the right word) some guiding principles for this conversation…

Anyway, so far, so good.

Technorati Tags: edubloggercon, edubloggercon07, necc07, learning, education, blogging

Those of you who have read this space for a while know that Lawrence Lessig is one of my heroes. I know…it’s somewhat of a geeky choice. But he’s without question been one of my greatest teachers in the last six years. I’ve seen him speak on about half a dozen occasions, and each time I am just inspired by his passion and dedication to challenging the traditional thinking about intellectual property and copyright. In many ways, I’ve tried to emulate him in my own presentations, albeit badly.

The news is that Lessig is moving on to different challenges, leaving the focus of the last 10 years to take on political corruption for the next 10. In his recent blog post about the subject, he talks about how he has come to believe that while we will eventually come to our senses about IP and copyright issues, real lasting change is incumbent on changing the system that makes the laws first. “Our government can’t understand basic facts when strong interests have an interest in its misunderstanding,” he writes, noting that this is at the heart of the corruption of the process. And later, “I’m convinced we will not solve the IP related issues until these “corruption” related issues are resolved.”

As I read the post, I heard all sorts of echoes to the school reform conversation we’ve been having in this network, much of which I’ve articulated here already from time to time. It’s no secret that I have not been optimistic of late that systemic changes can be made to this thing we call public school education through grassroots understanding of why change needs to occur, a position that in itself has not been made exceptionally clear to date. And that while I still really believe that helping to start conversations around these ideas and these changes can have a positive effect (in terms of in some way helping to generate some thinking and discussion around where we need to go,) I’ve been feeling myself moving away from the school reform conversation of late. I’m not so much interested in figuring out what School 2.0 means or is right now as I am just looking at my own kids and asking what are the skills and literacies that they are going to need when they their life’s work and what’s the best way to help them acquire them. I know this: it’s not their school in it’s current state (again, nothing new if you’ve been reading for a while.)

And so, as I write this (and post it) while barreling down I-95 somewhere in North Carolina, about three hours behind schedule, I’m heading to NECC with some real questions on my brain. My hope is to do a lot of listening and thinking, and less talking. I’ve gotta figure some stuff out…

Technorati Tags: necc07, lessig, education, learning

This may be a first for a huge national conference, but Steve Hargadon and NECC have put together a list of every session being offered in Atlanta and given each a specific tag that presenters and attendees can use with blog posts, photos, video…whatever content they want to publish. Just bring all those tag feeds together with a tool like PageFlakes and you’ll have your own session magazine. Pretty cool.

Which has me thinking about how to use that tag as a presenter… I’m open to ideas.

Technorati Tags: necc07, n07s584, n07s167, n07s688, education, learning, Richardson

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So, this may be a bit of a flier, but I just threw the following session description up on the EduBloggerCon Unconference page:

Getting Our Blogs in a Row: Crafting a Compelling, Cogent Message for Change…ok…terrible title, I know. But is there anyone interested in taking an hour to discuss the creation of a short list of talking points regarding the uses of the Read/Write Web in education? What key points should we be making? What key points CAN we be making? To whom should we be making them? What questions do we need to have answers for? How can we best package all of that? I know this sounds like the beginnings of a marketing campaign, but it might be worth a try…or not. Maybe we can start a wiki to dump ideas in beforehand? Will Richardson and Chris Lehmann.

If you think that’s something worth throwing some time at, go put your name on the list. If you have any ideas on how to make it work, leave a comment here. And if you haven’t added your name as an attendee to this free, all-day Saturday before NECC extravaganza, whadda ya waitin’ for?

Technorati Tags: necc07, edubloggercon07, learning, education, unconference

So this could be the largest gathering of “edubloggers” in one place in the history of…um…the last few months at least. (See the simulation photo at right.) We’re at 90 attendees and counting, and as someone famous once said, “that’s a lot of buttons.” (Steve‘s in charge of buttons, btw.) If you haven’t got your name on the list for EduBloggerCon in Atlanta yet, get on over to the official wiki and sign yourself up. (There’s also a page for “wannaattendees” to sign up to watch from afar. Like they have better things to do…) The important news is that David and my wife’s grandmother’s best friend Miss Francis from Hogansville (sorry, no Google Maps Street View yet) will be in charge of the “Down Home EduBloggerLunch” featuring all sorts of game and the finest grits. Really looking forward to that. (What’s that Dave? No one told you?) I’ll bring the sweet tea. Decaf.

Anyway, really hoping everyone can make it. The whole unconference thing seems to be working pretty well so far, at least for those of us whose desktops are cluttered with icons that came from god knows where. For you organizational types, pack the Alka Seltzer. There is an “organizing” page on the wiki that hasn’t had any love in about a month, but the “sessions” page has been wiki-ing right along and is the place you can make your own presence felt before the event. And yes, most are sessions 2.0.

In all seriousness…I’m gettin’ there early. Hope to see you.

(Photo “17:01” by Hugo*)

Technorati Tags: edubloggercon07, necc07

I’m moblogging on the train home from NYC with my can’t live without broadband modem and I am, in a word, juiced. It struck me in the middle of this really amazing Lessig-Benkler-Scoble-Boyd-Jarvis-Sifry-Rosen-etc. fest that as much as I love the asynchronous connecting and learning that happens when I read their work and their blogs, this f2f stuff still has immense power for me. I mean, I would gladly take a seminar course with any one of these people because of the energy that happens in meatspace. My brain hurts just listening to the ideas and observations that they all bring to the table. Even so, I know conferences like these are somewhat of an aberration.

A few quotes that made me take notice:

Lawrence Lessig: “I’m optimistic about the way in which the copyright conversation has evolved.”

Eric Schmidt, Google CEO: “People who are searching are people who are learning. And learning is always a part of a good life.”

Yochai Benkler: “We are beginning to learn what it means to have social production of the public sphere.”

Thomas Friedman: “The role of education in this world is “navigation” (as in helping student learn to navigate the many complexities of a Read/Write World.)

Seth Godin: “The really good news is that we can start electing people we are proud of.”

By many: The idea that the big change that is upon us is that the ability to participate is getting cheaper and easier all of the time.

I know all is not rosy with the world, that there are still huge inequities, that the world is not getting flat for everyone, that politicians are currently simply playing at Web 2.0, and that the underlying structures haven’t moved very far. But, recent pessimism in this blog aside, I’m leaving this day feeling pretty up about the prospects in general.

Check out the rest of the blogging from the conference at Technorati.

And just one note before the giddiness wears off. How cool is it to be able to connect via Skype with someone from England while on a train moving through the New Jersey countryside? I know, I know. I’m very, very lucky. But it helps me imagine a day…

Technorati Tags: pdf2007, learning, education