Wise Contradictions

First Reflections on Educon 2.2

Educon 2.2 is something of an un-conference.  Instead of presentations, facilitators lead conversations. The conference is hosted at the Science Leadership Academy, a public charter school in Philadelphia, led by Chris Lehmann.  Over 500 educators from primary and secondary schools, a handful of school administrators and higher education professionals attended.  Largely, this group self-selects.  Many pay their own way, all give up a weekend to be there.  It's one of the best educational gatherings that I've had a chance to participate in.   

My head is still spinning, but I'm going to highlight three areas:  1) the overall participatory environment at SLA and the conference  2) Jeff Han on Multi-touch interaction experiments and finally, 3) a conversation that I facilitated about online teaching and learning.  

1) Students managed all of the logistics from tech support, to checking bags to helping people find sessions.  They also joined sessions and shared their experiences.  That students were central to the conference permeated all of the sessions and made the experience authentic in a way that few conferences are. Chris Lehmann spoke about how he and his colleagues create this community on a session he facilitated about leadership.  I'm a bit in awe of Chris--it's great to hear about it AND see it in action at SLA.

2) Jeff Han presented Pixel Perfect, a spin off of his "multi-touch interaction research." 

More on Jeff and his work here: http://cs.nyu.edu/~jhan/ftirtouch/index.html  Jeff was eager to hear from us about how we could imagine the data visualization tool used in education.  It's worth looking at the videos of Jeff showing how the touch screen works--but it feels like something out of a movie, where instead of interacting through a keyboard we manipulate data with our hands.  At a glance, one might think, oh, it's an interactive whiteboard--but it's much, much more than that.   Many people can be on the board at the same time, it's as sensitive as an iPad's touch screen and it's wicked fast.  Jeff argues that we have plenty of processing power, but that we're not making enough advances from the interface side.  He also envisions a day when the technology is as cheap and ubiquitous as wall paper. From an educational use perspective, we imagined ideas for collaborative writing projects, virtual dissections and geographic analysis, but somehow I wished that we picked a few specific curricular contexts and started with educational goals.  Nevertheless, it was an amazing conversation.

3) I facilitated a conversation on online teaching and learning best practices.  I was struck by the deep and broad interest in online learning as a means of both student engagement and continued professional development for educators.  Barbara Treacy, the Director of EdTech Leaders Online,  a capacity building program for K-12 organizations, among other educators, joined in the conversation, along with other teachers who are designing educational experiences.  Barbara posted their checklist for educators designing their own online courses  as well as basic tips for online facilitation.    Sean Musselman posted a podcast summarizing the session. 

I am still processing the event, but I am glad that I was able to have conversations with educators about our open Educational Technologist  opportunity, want to check out the mind map that David Warlick posted http://www.xmind.net/share/_embed/dwarlick/sunday-morning-panel/ 

 

I would like to thank all of my peers at Educon for making it such a wonderful event, to Chris Lehmann, and the teachers, students and parents at SLA and of course, Kristen Sosulski and the NYU-SCPS for giving me something to talk about.

 

Facebook Gets Pushy with Friend Coaching

Has anyone noticed that Facebook's suggestions are becoming more aggressive? Perhaps their new tagline could be "Facebook, your digital friend coach: We help you find friends, provide guidance on how to connect with them and never let you forget a birthday."  Sometimes the reminders have a sad quality about them.  Today, I was prompted to help a friend find more friends--is there something that triggers this prompt? 

Then there are the paternal reminders, "you haven't spoken with Jack in a while, send him a message,"  Forget that Jack used to taunt me about my height in high school, "Hey Jack, what up bro?"   And then there's the seamlessly unlimited supply of friend suggestions, and despite how inane they are, I can't resist clicking on them.  I wrote earlier on the Five Phases of Facebook, and I'm still at acceptance.  I am grateful for friends tagging good reads, sharing reactions to the season finale of Dexter, or encouraging folks to support health care reform, or same sex marriage, but I remain perplexed by the stream of quizzes, and Farmville updates.  I'm also struck by the conversations that start here.  My college consitutional law classmate debating with my Parisian neighbor out here in the 'burbs.   Facebook, where worlds collide.    How's your Facebook experience these days?  Love it?  Hate it?  Can't imagine life without it?  

Classical Music Rocks: Zander Explains Why

I'm coming out of the rock and pop closet and declaring my love for classical music. Benjamin Zander, a conductor gave this talk on how classical music speaks to all of us at the Technology, Entertainment and Design Conference. He's managed to explain how classical music is magic in a way that I've never heard before. This talk is as much about leadership and our shared humanity as it is about music--very much worth watching and listening too--as are the other TED talks. They are indeed "ideas worth spreading."

Innocents Do Good

Robert Strauss, a former Peace Corps Country Director recently opined in the New York Times that "For the Peace Corps, the number of volunteers has always trumped the quality of their work, perhaps because the agency fears that an objective assessment of its impact would reveal that while volunteers generate good will for the United States, they do little or nothing to actually aid development in poor countries. The agency has no comprehensive system for self-evaluation, but rather relies heavily on personal anecdote to demonstrate its worth." He argued that the Peace Corps sends too many recent college grads who lack the skills to do their jobs. I disagree with Strauss and wrote the following response. Other letters both agreed and disagreed with his assessment. Perhaps it's not fair to generalize from one's own experience--which goes for Strauss and me.