Today, I have been attending remotely/virtually, Educon2.2 a conference held annually in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania through the support of the Science Leadership Academy led by the Principal Chris Lehmann.
What is Educon you ask? From the conference website comes this explanation.
EduCon 2.2 is both a conversation and a conference. And it is not a technology conference. It is an education conference. It is, hopefully, an innovation conference where we can come together, both in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools. Every session will be an opportunity to discuss and debate ideas — from the very practical to the big dreams.
Education conference – that means for everyone? If you are not a teacher, you are not likely to attend this conference, nevertheless, there are some important themes running through the conference which apply to everyone.
Let me explain. The Guiding Principles of EduCon 2.2 include the following five tenets. ( again from the conference site)
1. Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all members
2. Our schools must be about co-creating — together with our students — the 21st Century Citizen
3. Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around
4. Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate
5. Learning can — and must — be networked
Doesn’t matter, if it is your child or your own learning experiences, the ideas that form the basis of the conference will have an impact on how our schools and places of business survive.
One session that I attended made some of the ideas a lot less text bookie. Rodd Lucier and Ben Hazzard ran a workshop called Field Guide for Change agents. The underlying discussion in the room and in the chat room was focused on how to get teachers and school boards to buy into using new technologies in the classroom. But the message was about Changes Agents and that applies to everyone.
Rodd and Ben had the F2F and virtual participants collaborate on an online document which used images to describe how to make change. Two things happened in this session.There are many more but I want to focus on these two ideas.
One: There are some phenomenal tools ( in this case Elluminate web conferencing, a wiki and Google apps) that can be used to connect people globally. I felt like I was in the room even though I was hundreds of miles away. The session was streamed with Elluminate with live audio and video. Here is a snap shot of Rodd responding to questions in the chat room,
Two: The collective wisdom gathered through online collaboration is a very powerful thing.
Rodd made use of a wiki to centre the conversation; then we moved over to a Google Presentation (Slide Show) where we were tasked with adding images and quotable sayings to a Google presentation. We were answering the questions about being a change agent, the challenges and solutions. To review, face to face participants participated in a workshop linked to people working in a virtual chat room – the back channel added another dimension. We became our own break out group sharing our ideas in a virtual way. Here is the chat log.
We were all discussing the same online document, uploading pictures, adding text to that same document, then having a conversation together about the end results. Smart these two men.
Here is the wiki that we used for the workshop. The slide share that follows is the result.
There is still time to attend the conference.
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Love this!–Field Guide for Change Agents! Great information here, Lorna! Thank you for making it available!