Subscribe

I have moved to newlyancient.com and will be writing regularly there! Content on this domain is no longer updated, but will be maintained as an archive in its original form.

Tag Archive for 'conference'

HabariCon

1 year, 5 months ago 1 Comment

Tags:

I’m excited to be here at the iPony headquarters for HabariCon ‘08. If you aren’t familar with Habaricon, it is “the annual Habari Convention, uniting the user and developer communities in friendship and collaboration.” Habari is a great new blogging platform I have recently gotten involved with. The community is great, and I really look forward to meeting some of the giants of development, like Skippy and Chris J. Davis.

This will be a fantastic and educational event which will highlight the excellence of the Habari community. I am told that the sessions will be recorded, but I will be live-blogging the sessions for those of you who didn’t make the registration deadline. Finally, there is supposed to be a major announcement in the closing keynote, which I will be sure to tell you about as soon as I find it.

Live Blog

Skippy coming on stage now; a great introduction by Skippy, who organized the conference. iPony’s facilities are great! Skippy talking about the importance of community: without a good community, no software can be successful. Etc, etc. He says this is true for everything, not just software. He has a point: every business and project needs a strong community. “People are the project.” Now he’s talking about importance of keeping community appear open, but also keeping it “pure.” Semi-permeable membrane type of situation: let in the good contributions, keep out the bad. he says it’s a balancing act. I agree, not easy to contrast the needs of the community with the needs of the software. Finally, he is thanking the organizers of Habaricon. I’d like to thank them to: this is shaping up to be a great conference. Off to grab some donuts…

Unfortunately, there was a wifi outage and I couldn’t blog the first two sessions. Suffice to say that they were fabulous. I’m writing this as I eat a cheese sandwich provided by the wonderful Everything 2.0, a very innovative startup I have recently learned about. (Their public website isn’t launched yet, so I can’t link to them)

The Cabal is The Community truly was an interesting discussion of supporting the community, while also furthering the goals of the founders. Though the ethics were questionable, some questions were very interesting. In education, this an issue which has some very real applications: students should be included in curriculum and program design, but their contributions should be suitably filtered. This session worked with the issues of contrasting openness and security/quality.

Sorry for dropping the live blog folks. I’ll be back later after the keynote and a discussion with some of the devs with more thoughts. (And the scoop on the special announcement in Keynote)

The special announcement: this was actually a joke. April Fool’s! The Habari team and I had a great time putting this on.

EduCon 2.0: Learning is a Conversation

1 year, 7 months ago 7 Comments

Tags:

EduCon logo

As I write this, I am traveling at 70 mph along the highway on my return from EduCon 2.0. My thoughts are speeding even faster. For me, EduCon 2.0 has been a great experience on so many levels. Right now, it is hard to even begin to grasp the individual components of the sessions when I am still reeling from the experience in general. I am sure the conversations will continue in the weeks ahead and I look forward to participating in them. For now, I want to keep track of some of my initial reflections.

Giving faces to the voices

One of my primary reasons for wanting to attend an education technology conference was to connect faces to the people. Somehow, the 32 by 32 pixel icons on Twitter just don’t do people justice. Thankfully, I got the opportunity to connect with many people from my Twitter network. Whenever I read those 140 characters, I will now hear people’s voices behind them.

Of the individuals I met, some especially stand out to me. George Mayo seemed to have passion emanating from him throughout. After spending just 5 minutes with him, I could really tell how much he cares about what he is doing. That passion he brings with him really makes him an engaging character to be with. I sincerely look forward to collaborating with him upon more projects.

It really takes meeting or listening to Will Richardson to understand who the man is. Previously, I had thought of him as just another talking head, an intellectual. After meeting him, I can see how much strength he brings to projects: strength of character & intellectual strength. (He also has huge hands.)

Tyrone was a great companion throughout the conference. He brought some strong ideas to the sessions he was in, and was unapologetic in stating them. Others from my twitterverse who I finally had a chance to meet were Konrad Glogowski, Joyce Valenza, Margo, Cathy Nelson, Karen Janowski, David Jakes, Carolyn Foote, Sylvia Martinez, Kristin Hokanson, Liz Davis, Lucie deLaBruere, Patrick Higgins, Christian Long, and many others (I’d better stop before Google tags me as a linkblog).

The value of a conversation

EduCon was really about the conversations—the discussions and occasional debates. This is what real learning looks like; real learning is not a single individual lecturing or presenting upon a subject. Real learning is an individual getting the ball rolling, then sitting back and watching where the conversation goes. As much as I try to think of blogging as a conversation, a 5 minute authentic conversation is truly worth 1,000 posts.

I think this is what we need to capture in schools. I wish my classes looked like the sessions at EduCon, infused with informal conversational learning. Often, this is an issue we run into when implementing technology in the classroom: teachers do not change their pedagogy based upon the technology. Having a blog is marginally better than having a weekly newsletter if you do the same thing with it. In the same way, an authentic conversation can be had without technology. No matter the medium, these asynchronous and synchronous conversations need to be happening in our schools.

Change uses the Socratic Method

I came to EduCon with a lot of questions. I left with even more. If I learned anything this weekend, it is that Socrates was the best teacher and learner in the world. He understood the importance of asking questions, and that is the soul of learning. A good learner, whether they be given the title of student or teacher, is not afraid to question anything and everything.

I do not think that I even know the questions, let alone the answers. Too often, technologists are quick to propose technology is the solution to everything. This makes me think of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Universe. When asked what the answer to “Life, the Universe, and Everything” was, the most intelligent system in the world answered 42. This is not a flaw in the machine—it is a flaw in the user. Until we understand the question, we cannot know the answer.

I leave you to ponder what EduCon was for you. What was your most interesting conversation? What new questions do you have? Let’s practice the art of conversation.

Pensieve Post

1 year, 10 months ago 30 Comments

Tags:

I’m going to be in Boston (with questionable internet access) for the next 3 days, so I wanted to get some thoughts out of my head. Consider this my personal Pensieve post.

Microphone

Fearful? Stupid? Blind? Egotistical?

We really have a problem with perception in education. Technology is perceived too much as invasive to the learning and thinking structures. Technology is seen as basically a virtual reference book and type writer - no social aspects to it. Technology in school is something that is called upon when needed - to look something up or write a “final draft.” Instead, it should be seen as a constant companion, always there to socialize, share, research, and learn. Unfortunately, we are a long way from that. Before we even start leverage the possibilities of the web, teachers need to be comfortable with technology in the class room.

A prime example of teachers being afraid of technology was this Wednesday. We were going to be watching In The Time of the Butterflies as a collaborative project between social studies and history. At the end of the day, we were supposed to have notes about what we saw. Naturally, I took out the laptop to take my notes. The second the facilitator saw a laptop he screamed across the room, put it away right now. Afterwards, he went into a lengthly rant about how this movie should be regarded as the same thing as class - no technology. At the end of his self-centered rant, he asked me this rhetorical question: would you have a laptop in class? (He thought the answer was no) Well, yes I would. Besides proving beyond a doubt (and confirmed by other students) that this teacher is a jerk, this shows the problem with education today. Traditional teachers think that it could never possibly be used in the classroom for any purpose besides mischief. They never pause to think computers could (or should) be used to facilitate learning, understanding, or even note taking. Hopefully, we can change that - but it is going to be a slow process.

Talk, Talk, Talk

Over the last couple of days, there has been a flurry of activity in the edutech community. K12Online is in full steam. There are interesting conversations in EdTechTalk almost every night. I have also been interviewed a couple of times. First, informally on Kristin Hokanson’s show. I also got a few minutes in EdTechWeekly. Finally, Steve Hargadon asked some great questions in my interview with him. Definitely a very productive week!

Gutsy Guy

I’m upgrading my old boxes to Ubuntu Gutsy. In addition, I’m hoping to convert my parents to Linux. I’ll also be upgrading my MacBook Pro to Mac OS X on October 26th. Lots of new technology in the world!

Conference Planning

I’m hoping to attend an education conference or two in 2008. I might even be running a student strand at EduCon 2.0 or NECC. If you’d be interested, please add your name to this list. However, none of this will be cheap. (Even if I can secure a scholarship) Therefore, I am now accepting donations on my blog. If I don’t get enough, I may have to integrate ads into my feed and/or the next reboot. If you can spare a few dollars and you support education, teens, free WordPress plugins, or random charity please use the button below to donate to a worthy cause - namely, me.

Now I’m off to Boston! I’ll hopefully be able to tweet this weekend though.