Deaf Ears

I went to a conference two weeks ago, and I am still sitting on my “what I learned at (insert conference name here)” post.  It’s not that I didn’t take anything away that is worth squawking about, nor that I haven’t the time to write about it, because, let’s face it, so few of us do anymore.  It’s rather that I’ve been trying to find the way to say it without ruffling the feathers of those who put on conferences all over.

There shouldn’t be any educational technology conferences anymore.

Oh great.  Now it’s out there.  There goes any chance I ever had at presenting at ISTE (or NECC, or whatever it’s next iteration will be).

While I truly love the conference I am speaking of, being that the first time I attended was one of the biggest eye-opening events of my career a few years back, something has changed around the world of education and educational conferences.   What’s changed is not the technology–that’s a given.  What’s changed is that we now ask different questions than we did before. The more “Ed Tech” conferences I attend, the  more I see people there who don’t need to be there.  If we are talking about real change in education, the kind that makes nervous people of those with big jobs in big companies that depend on education as a market, than we’ve got to get different people here.

Instead of the word technology or educational technology being mentioned anywhere in the nomenclature of the conference, why don’t we focus on student learning.

If you can’t show me (preferably with live students) how what you are talking about is credible, gets kids excited to learn, and allows them to share their learning with whomever wants to be a part of it, I don’t know if I am interested.

I know this has been said before, and many times here in this space, but it’s not teaching with technology, or learning with technology, or educational technology.  It’s just teaching, just learning, and just education.  It’s here, it’s your computer connected to the world, and it makes your job easier.  And if  the educational technologist in your district would just let you know about these conferences, it might just become very clear to you.

It’s becoming increasingly clear that these conferences need to recognize the fact that we moved beyond just inviting directors of technology, technology coordinators, or higher-level administrators, but rather classroom teachers, students, and even community stakeholders.

Relationships

These things we call relationships, they are funny things when it comes to our professional lives.  Regardless of what field you are in, you started in that field somewhere.  Depending on where you are now in said field, there are those who you started with in certain positions that either still hold those positions, or have moved on to other responsibilities.  It’s just the nature of what we do, whether that be public sector or private sector.

How you handle that relationship matters a whole lot to your success.

Or does it?

I just wrote this in response to a teacher who reacted to an article I sent out to her department entitled “7 Bad Writing Habits You Learned in School:”

That’s precisely the question I want everyone thinking about. We truly focus so much of our energies on getting the format down and getting the “i’s” dotted and “t’s” crossed, and for many of the students we teach, that is completely necessary; however, as we begin to look at the next phase of what we’d like to do in the district which includes more than just being “proficient” on some state test, can we blend some of the thinking in this post into what we are doing.

And as for making people angry, my advice is that you don’t get the results you really want without making a few people angry along the way. Not that you try to, but when you know that what you are doing will make your students better, you just go with it.

She was asking whether or not it was all right to go forward with some of the ideas in the article, even if it angered some of her colleagues.  My response can be boiled down to very few words: “hell yes.”

We don’t propagate change in systems unless we are ready to have battles that we know will end up with feelings being hurt.  This is a fact that I am still warming to, as it is very contrary to my personality, and since I am creating change at the curriculum level in a district in which I originally taught.  When I think of the alternative, though, I can use that to gather the strength necessary to move forward with the type of thinking that will lead to the schools we need.

Yes, we can create change without alienating everyone on the bus, but there are times when we need to be strong enough in our convictions to say “yes, your voice has been heard and your input factored into the decision, but we need to move forward with this decision.”  Or, more simply, this is how we have decided it has to be done.  In no circumstances would I advocate a lack of explanation behind the decision, nor sound research supporting that decision.  When moving schools forward, we must always ask ourselves, regardless of the position we hold within that school, “does this help/hurt kids.”  Once we have that determined, the rest falls into place.

Image Credit: “Invasion/Relation” from colinwhite’s photostream

Worst Presenter Ever

It’s now a few days since my presentation at TechForum Northeast, and judging by the lack of hate-mail or the searches I’ve conducted on all the available backchannels, I didn’t offend anyone too greatly.  Although, by traditional standards, I may just be the worst presenter ever.

I have to admit, and I did so to open the session, presenting at EduCon has changed the way I view conferences. The format asked for at EduCon, from the start, has been conversational; the standard role of presenter is completely changed to that of facilitator, and that changes the way you prepare. Personally, it becomes a situation in which I completely invert the presenter-presentee experience.  Instead of pursuing the traditional “I speak, you listen” model, the ruling ethos has become

The smartest person in the room, is the room.

-David Weinberger

As I have prepared for the last few presentations I have given I am forced to keep asking the same question: How do you get a group of concerned educators together in a room and just deliver the message are asked to  deliver without turning them loose on one another?

Very simply, you don’t.

You ask pointed questions, and then listen, and listen very closely to what they say.

Think about where you are when you give a presentation, or view a presenter at a conference.  You are in the company of many passionate educators, those passionate enough to travel a distance to learn more about their craft, and most likely lose class time with their students.  Who holds the knowledge in that situation?  The speaker?  perhaps.  But what I am banking on when I present, and this may cancel every proposal I submit over the next few months, is that the best information you will gain from being at a conference is from the people who are there attending alongside you.

That is not to say that I have no role in the learning that goes on in these presentations.  There had to have been something in the idea I had in pitching the presentation in the first place, and there had to be some direction in which I intended the pretty slides I prepared to move in, right?

But would I have ditched all of it to have a great conversation about how to make the schools we work in into the schools we want to work in?  You bet.  My role for them was to put in place the interaction pieces so that they could construct something of value for themselves.

This model should sound familiar…but does it?

Image credits:

“January 25th 2008 – The word for the day is “knowledge”, pass it on,” Stephen Poff

“The Seven Principles of Learning,” dkuropatwa’s set on Flickr