This weekend I was in Philadelphia. I met amazing people, had great conversations, and attended inspiring professional development sessions. All from the comfort of my office swivelly chair. And yes, I watched most of it in my pj’s.

I was at Educon 2.1 via Mogulus, a broadcasting platform that allows for video streaming and simultaneous chat. I really do wish I had been there in person, but to attend virtually was a great second-best. Maybe next year? I’d probably have to take a week off to get there and back! There were 350 physically attending. I wonder how many took part like me. Chris Lehmann, the faculty and students at Science Leadership Academy did a great job of bringing in a wider audience.

The conversations in the chat room were fascinating–at times a lot of “push back” on my own thinking (a term new to me in the last six months–not all heads nod, respectful disagreement, alternate points of view). I wish I could find the chat logs to see what I read and said.

In Bud Hunt’s presentation he used a tool called Ether Pad. Looks like an amazing tool for synchronous collaboration. One chat room discussion was about the true value of blogging. Someone contended that most blogging was essentially drivel, and not worth an audience. (I hope I am being fair, because I don’t have the transcript). I guess blogging either finds an audience or it doesn’t, like any other form of publication. Think of those bins outside bookstores with deeply discounted stuff that won’t be read. At least dead blogs don’t clog the landfill.

Another discussion was about whether books belong in school anymore. I really want to read the chat log on that, because I was a bit incredulous. This is not about textbooks, but any book. The chatter said they were inefficient. Can’t get my head around that. Maybe I was feeding the trolls on that one.

Alec Couros’s session on open learning was lively and satisfying. I wish I had thought to change browsers to Internet Explorer from FireFox as it was really choppy. They talked about online identity, sharing and the “gift economy”, who owns data and more. I actually recognized a dozen faces in the room, which in itself is quite amazing to me. Again, can’t wait to see the encore presentation.

I could not have pictured on-line learning being this engaging and inspiring a year ago. I have been taught so much by so many in such a short amount of time. It’s remarkable and humbling.

How has learning on-line through such virtual conference experiences affected you? What is missed? And does it matter?

Image: Grace’s Ghost by Pickadillywilson

I was just looking.

Used to be, I would browse the bulletin boards of my school at the end of the day to get a sense of what other teachers and students were doing. This teaching gig is pretty lonely, so I’d prowl for inspiration. I’d see the products of teaching and learning, beautifully displayed, and I would try to infer the process behind them. I suppose other teachers (and administrators, and parents, and kids) have done this, too. There is a lot of imagination required to figure out the teaching behind the results–and I know I wasn’t always right about what really went on.

Now I’m looking elsewhere.

Personal learning networks have changed all that. Teachers are opening their classrooms to each other and the world. I have learned so very much from others. Case in point: via Twitter, I began reading Diane Cordell’s blog. She shared a fabulous beginning-of-the-year activity to get her students thinking about class rules using images from Flickr as visual prompts. She wrote about the process, shared the links and the finalized SlideShare. The activity got her kids thinking both divergently and convergently about how a classroom can work as a community. I needed to do that, too.

So, I stole her idea.

It’s a good thing.

I used some of the same images, close to the same process, and like Diane, I’ll be sharing it with parents. The ideas the students came up with weren’t always what I expected, as was the case in Diane’s class.

OK, it’s not technically stealing if it is offered to you. I could say I was inspired by her, or motivated by her creativity, or piggybacked on her strategy, but stealing does sound a bit more…subversive. And in a way this sharing across the distances is still revolutionary. She’s in up-state New York, and I am on the west coast of Canada. I won’t ever get to see her bulletin boards. But I won’t need to. With blogs, wikis, SlideShare, Twitter, the Classroom 2.0 Ning, and a host of other networking tools, I have other ways to find inspiration from colleagues I’ve never met in person.

Here’e what my students and I came up with:

Now go ahead, steal this, please. I’ll steal from you if you steal from me.

Image: Peek a Boo by John A Ryan Creative Commons

I often find myself wishing there was a way to watch people in action with their students. You get a sense of what they are about through their posts: über-organized, creative, resourceful, kind, funny, engaging, reflective, generous, approachable–or not. But wouldn’t it be neat to observe for a day? What would you learn? Some of your assumptions would be confirmed, but there’d be surprises, too.

Given the chance, I’d perch on the wall of Clarence Fisher’s class in Snow Lake, Manitoba. I’d rub my little forelegs together with glee. I’d be somewhat familiar with what goes on in his room, because Clarence is quite transparent about his practice. His podcasts from the K-12 online conference and his ustream presentations say a lot about what he believes about his students and what they can do. His recent pictures of his classroom (taken in that surreal time before the students arrive) had me (and Brian Crosby) wanting to channel him. I will, and am going to post pics of my work, too.

Clarence teaches roughly the same age group as I do, and he’s a generalist teacher, as I am, so I think I’d recognize many of his strategies, but I’d learn a bundle. I want to see how the learning is orchestrated. He talks about being a network administrator for his kids–helping them grow their personal learning networks. Does that promote student efficacy and engagement? Bet it does.

What I’d likely see:

• hive-like activity: not all doing the same thing at the same time, but a sense of purpose none the less
• students showing respect for each other’s opinions, but still willing to challenge them
• peer mentoring and coaching, students teaching the teacher
• students comfortable with thinking, willing to take risks
• students engaged with content as amplifiers not mirrors, as David Warlick describes

Clarence’s first unit on Global Lives sounds like a great hook, and he’s injected rich and relevant content and activities for his students to chew on. I’d love to be a kid in that class–forget being a teacher.

It is tempting to whine, I’ll admit. I have one computer in my room, so I can’t reproduce the circumstances (1 to 1.5) Clarence has. I’m 1 to 30. But, I now have a data projector + iwb and internet access in my classroom which is a universe more than I had four months ago, so I’ll go with that, and work for more.

So thanks for inspiration, Clarence. Thanks for modeling and sharing. Have a great year.

And fellow voyeurs: where would you like to be a fly on the wall?

Image: Green Bottle Fly by jpctalbot Creative Commons license

Here’s one post that caught my eye: What Makes a Good Blog? His first point is:

1. Good blogs have a voice. Who wrote this? What is their name? What can I figure out about who they are that they have never overtly told me? What’s their personality like and what do they have to contribute… What tics and foibles fascinate make me about this blog and the person who makes it? Most importantly: what obsesses this person?

Scott McLeod, at Dangerously Irrelevant, talks about the uncovering of personality through the social web. “Chink by chink, brick by brick, pixel by pixel – the picture becomes more clear and complete. Is this someone with whom I want to connect? Is this someone with whom I want to converse? Is this someone from whom I want to learn?”

I notice the blogs I go back to have a voice, a personality revealed through the style, content, and tone of the author. I have been enjoying Michele Martin’s The Bamboo Project blog, particularly because her voice is honest. Bloggers whose humanity, not infallibility, shine through their posts keep me reading and learning (though, yes, I admit to reading bloggers whose arrogance pushes me out of the room). Michele’s latest post, In A Panic, points to a side of life most of us keep hidden: dealing with stress and anxiety. This is so familiar:

My first inclination when I feel the panic rise is to stuff it back down, like an inappropriate relative who pops up at a gathering to say embarrassing things in front of the guests. I keep smiling and nodding and speaking over my panic, as though by pretending that it’s not there, it will decide to go away. Sometimes it does. Usually, though, it’s simply biding it’s time, waiting for the moment when my attention is turned elsewhere.

I’d like to say that with the years of teaching I have under my belt that I don’t get worried at this time of year, but I do. Just twelve days ’til school starts, and I am feeling the surge of panic–I don’t feel ready. Yes, I am excited, but…well, it’s the same worry about the unknown that kids experience too.

Perspective and optimism have helped me in the past: I will get through this! I remember telling myself during pregnancy that the only way out is through (which is both literally and figuratively true). And then there is the voice of Dory (Finding Nemo) reminding me to “just keep swimming, just keep swimming–that’s what we do, we swim, swim, swim.”

So, on blogging: what aspects of a blogger’s revealed personality most interest you?

And on school: how will you stay afloat this year?

Photo: Why so glum?? by bensonkua Creative Commons license

I am looking ahead to 14 months or so remaining in my master’s program. The action research piece starts this Fall. I have wrestled my question into focus (I think) and now comes the reading, the designing, the writing, the thinking and doing. And as Lady Diana was so fond of saying, “It’s all rather daunting.”

But who knew?

Apparently I can bypass all this and Find my degree now. Just a drop down box away. Yippee! Technology rocks!

One of the elements of the learning stew I have been serving up in class is drama. I am really excited by the enthusiasm and deep learning that comes from enactment (drama) strategies. Jeff Wilhelm’s book Action Strategies for Deepening Comprehension got me going. All of his books do. The strategies he describes, like role plays, tableaux, and mantle of the expert, hook kids and connect them to content in an active and personal way; they play with the language, the ideas, the images. They explore the possibilities of what if? and get closer to the answers of how come?

In examining the question “Is Web 2.0 going to lead to School 2.0?”, David Warlick says in one of my favourite posts,

Students stop being mirrors, and instead become amplifiers. Their job is not merely to reflect what they encounter, but to add value to it. Content and skills are no longer the end product, but they become raw materials, with which students learn to work and play and share. Information is captured by the learner, processed, added to, remixed, and then shared back, to be captured by another learner/teacher and reprocessed. Each exchange and improvement not only runs on the energy of students (learner/teacher) curiosity and intrinsic need to play, work, and communicate information, but it also generates energy, which the teacher (teacher/learner) channels.

Warlick is not talking about drama strategies at all, but he could be. I find it powerful how neatly his ideas transfer from technology to other active, engaging methods that don’t necessarily involve or require a tech element. Project-based learning, inquiry, and math explorations come to mind.

So here is where my [limited] stew metaphor takes me, for now at least:

Technology is not the carrot that students chew own (technology as enticing add-in), nor is it the bowl that contains the learning (technology as sole vehicle for learning). Technology is one of the spoons that stirs the mix and lets learners serve understanding and experience to themselves and others.

Hmmm. Metaphors have a habit of getting away on me. Better get out while the gettin’s good.

pot-au-feu italian by shok Creative Commons license

I chose that tattoo to be the constant reminder of my indebtedness. I have been blessed by so many rich relationships and experiences in my life, and by support from a myriad of places. People have encouraged me, acknowledged my efforts, and given me critical feedback that has helped me take risks and refine my understanding.

And then there is the trail of breadcrumbs left by others…little morsels to nourish me, that fertilize the dendrites courtesy of (among others) the blogging community. I keep finding the most interesting stuff here–after someone else has found it first. I feel grateful for this culture of sharing, and now I am going to try my hand at giving back.

Here’s to the crumbs.

Image: we need more of it by wei never sleeps (Creative Commons Attribution license)