Counting Down to EduCon 2.0

What a whirlwind month and a half it’s been in my little world. The shift from technology coordinator to curriculum director has brought about tremendous changes, ones that were predictable and ones that took a while to surface. Add to that the fact that I agreed to give some presentations lately (Turning On Learning, Franklin Lakes School District, TechSpo), and my time to reflect and write has been hampered considerably. And where I used to use late hours or early morning hours to write and reflect, those times have been taken up, rather gladly, by falling asleep with my son at his bedtime (if you have children, going to sleep with your child at their bedtime is such a guilty pleasure). So now on most nights, I am crashing at close to 8:00pm. Say goodbye to any late night reflection.

One of the most immediate changes I noticed was the natural progression from focusing solely on technology and its integration to focusing on issues of teaching methodology and long-term planning of instruction. In a perfect world, one that we are trying to create in our district, the two, technology and teaching methodology, curriculum planning, and long-term planning for success are all seen as one job. However, I am thinking more about aggregating that whole now than I ever did before, and the solutions to the problems will take much longer to sort out than those that I ran into as tech coordinator.

I must say thanks to several of you out there, like Kim Cofino, Barry Bachenheimer, Robin Ellis, Kelly Christopherson, Darren Draper, and Scott McLeod for pushing my thinking on the topics of school change, idea management, and coalition building. It took me a while to see just where my thinking was taking me as I was reading their writing over the last few months, but as I look at the different challenges that are put before me, I see more clearly that a good deal of my “quality ideas” have come through conversations on their blogs or with them directly.

Konrad Glogowski posted recently about his relief that he is able to approach the upcoming EduCon 2.0 Conference in Philadelphia with a focus on reflection. I couldn’t agree more, and while my reflective space has change, as has my ability to commit time to it, this conference is something I’ve been looking forward to for some time. I remember hearing and reading from people throughout the summer (post-NECC and BLC) that there was a need for more conversations about what really needed to happen in our schools. EduCon 2.0 is a step in that direction.

As the days get closer, I am sure I will be linking out to some of the venues for virtual participation.