Question 31 of 365: How can we be “present” in spite of our digital presence? #educon

[Video to come]

I found myself more present at Educon than I have been in months. I sat and talked to people and looked them in the eye and felt an underlying purpose for the connections I was making. I felt this last year, but I had all of this disjointed connectedness (twitter hashtag following, e-mail checking, blog posting, etc.) that distracted me from simply being held in a given time and space and letting that be enough. This year, I was able to sit with the people that I love and listen and think and wait for something to occur the I couldn’t predict at the outset of the day.

Perhaps I was just too egotistical to believe there was anything more I could learn from a face to face community that is random than the network of people that I had hand picked to follow on twitter. I am now engaged in the act of belief.

I believe more passionately and irrationally in the power of seeing someone, truly seeing them for all of the hope they have and all of the baggage that they carry. I have faith in the fact that something fantastic will occur if I do not allow my distractions to get in the way of my real purpose for having the conversation in the first place.

I find myself asking if this is something I can replicate away from these people and this place. Can I really wrap myself in the glow of intense thought, passionate observation, and authentic speech?

Yes.

I heard it last night from Chris Lehmann. Someone that he trusts once told him to never stop talking. Whatever he did, never stop thinking through the things he knows to be true and being a community of people who want to talk about those things and make them materialize. Another mentor of mine once said that “talking is the act of deciding your future.” Once you have said it, it comes into being.

So, to be present is to be talking. Not just with your mouth, but with your ears and your intention. Talking requires the will to be with someone and show them that you want to help them create the future.

And if you aren’t saying anything, then I have no use for you. If you aren’t someone who is really willing to “talk with me,” let me know that and I will find someone who will. I will be present in talking with anyone. There is something beautiful and perfect about talking with someone who will really talk back and push you and challenge you to create the future with them. I am here to do this, and I will never leave.

The digital connectedness should lead us to these moments. If we never have them because our technology gets in the way, then we are further away from one another and not closer together. If the technology keeps us from this kind of “talking”, it is a falsehood that I can’t afford. If I am truly searching for the truth of these questions, we need to talk more and tweet less.

Question 30 of 365: What is my innovation in education and why does it matter? (Educon 2.2 Session)

I dig down deep in the ground, finding a root of a living tree and pull at it like rope until I can hold it in my hand and see what it is that is helping the tree to grow. And then I do the same with another root, pulling and pulling until I can feel the rough texture and earthy smell. Then I tie the two roots together, tight and fast. I replant the two roots and watch as the trees start to intermingle, germinating new fruit, different then when they were alone.

They are better for having made the connection. They are better for having the ability required to expand into one another’s space, and better for being allowed time to find a single wish to inch up toward the sky. The trees soon are so intertwined that no one can tell the difference between them and their fruit is so delicious that people who eat it can hardly believe that they ever knew a world without. I eat the fruit too, but I also gather as much of it as I can and I share it with others. I gladly cut it up and serve it with fruit from other trees. I make whole meals with this fruit or allow everyone to simply help themselves to pick it right off the tree. And then I move on to another set of trees, where I must dig and pull and tie and watch, in the hopes of creating something new. I must find these roots, the essence of these towering wonders and join them together. It is my innovation, but perhaps not singularly mine.

Educon Conversation, better late than never.

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I have been going back through some of my audio files recently and I found a really good conversation from Educon 2.1.

This conversation was from John Pederson‘s Session, The Networked Learning Manifesto: Welcoming Parents into the Conversation.

You can find the actual Manifesto that sparked the conversation here.

The participants that I recognize from the audio are:

• Will Richardson
• David Warlick
• Kevin Jarrett
• Bud Hunt
• Zac Chase
• Andy Carvin

There are many voices that I don’t immediately remember or recognize, however. Which is a little sad because there are a lot of really good voices in the room.

The original recording for the session is here, but I believe that the audio isn’t quite as good as this excerpt. There is also a follow up conversation at Parents as Partners.

This is the kind of conversation that I need to keep reminding myself to come back to. Some very smart things were said about going to where parents are and becoming a person to them first before trying to “get them on board” with technology and networked learning.

I hope that we all follow up on the promise that this conversation evoked.

The On Button Archive

While I was doing some searching over at Tweetgrid (my absolute favorite way of looking at twitter in real-time), I came across these notes from my Educon 2.1 Session, The On Button: Instant and Always on Collaboration.

I figure that now is as good a time as any to put up the archive of that presentation and to highlight just how good Live Blogging can be. Sarah, a teacher in “midcoast Maine”, did a wonderful job of capturing the questions and ideas from the conversation that we had at Educon.

I love the idea of being able to archive not only the video of a conversation, but also the conversation that happened about the conversation. Here is a list of links that also were talking about this session. I can’t wait to hear where else this session goes:

1. List of Sessions
2. Twitter Feed for the session
3. The original Wiki page

What I am more interested in, though, is how are you aggregating the conversations that surround a learning event? How can we make sure that the supports for our sychcronous environments do not go by the wayside.

Expanding on The On Button

I received an e-mail from an attendee of my educon presentation, The On Button: Instant and Always on collaboration. She was asking about one of the items in the presentation, in which I described adding an opml file (which was created by a Live Search OPML creator). Rather than simply e-mailing her and walking her through it, I decided to use ScreenToaster in order to do the nuanced topic a little more justice.

Here is the link to the tutorial.

Now, I have been a big fan of screencasting for a long time, but until tools like ScreenToaster and Screencast-o-matic become more common place, I don’t think that we will really start using it as a way of communicating our thoughts. When it is easy enough to demonstrate your learning, I think it is heinous not to create an archive of that learning.

I guess my biggest question is, how much learning has dissapeared because e-mails get deleted or the school period ends?

My next question is, what can we capture now that we couldn’t capture before?

Why shouldn’t students be able to show what they know, literally.

(Also, as an aside, I will be expanding on many of the ideas of my presentation over the next few weeks. Let me know if there is anything specifically that you would like to hear more about.)

Create something every day.

One of the big revelations for me at educon was that creating things is the only way to sustain change. You cannot influence things to change. You have to create what you would like to see and make the change real for people.
 
Concretely, I mean that every student, every teacher and every administrator should not be allowed to leave their buildings with being able to truthfully say that they created something new that day. The following things do not count as creations:
 
1. Grades
2. Worksheets or any answers to lower level thinking questions
3. Meetings or notes from meetings
4. Email (unless it is cross-posted somewhere else)
 
Another reason why I believe that everyone should create something every day is because no one will be removed from learning if this happens. If you have to go through the process of creating something new, you have to also go through the process of demonstrating learning or of even learning something new. We would no longer have teachers who are out of touch with students or administrators that are out of touch with teachers. If we are all engaged in the act of creation, we are all speaking the same language.
 
We must, therefore, create an economy of creation as well. We must require creation as a requirement for participation in society. If we all now have the ability to publish quickly and create regularly, why are we so timid about requiring it of others. (That being said, anyone feel like poking holes?)
 
 
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I have never thought so much or slept so little…

So, I have been the youngest person in the room ever since I finished college. This is both a blessing and a curse.

It is a blessing in the fact that I can claim that I never taught without blogging. It is a curse in the fact that my life experience is so sufficiently small that it seems almost inconcievable that I couldn’t have intelligent ideas about how to change schools. No matter how much I believe in what I am saying or how well I flesh out my ideas, my inability to look older is still a major flaw.

The best part, however, and the reason for my post is that because of the way I look, speak and write, people tend to push me harder than others. I have had more push back on my thoughts than any other time, and I have lost more sleep this weekend in thinking through the issues that I most care about.

It is beautiful to be challenged on the merit of your work.

My session went well, but it only went well because I was able to put ideas out there and see if they stood on their own. I want more of this. I want to be able to have more opportunities to react to well developed thoughts and questions.

This weekend, to me, was about taking the time to let our work stand for itself. This weekend was about thinking about what is going on in our schools and seeing if it holds water. It is about pushing back from all sides and seeing what is pushed up in the process.

The question I really want to ask is this: How can we ensure that all perspectives are pushing equally? How can we get all of the voices in the room to test what we are talking about? If we only have some people pushing, ideas get pushed down. If we only question the ideas we don’t agree with, the ones that we value will never grow.

So, whatever you read on my blog, tell me I am wrong.

Push me to be better. I want to be better.

The educon 2.1 opening panel.

Idea one: The purpose of school is not to churn out a finished product. Innovation doesn’t come from a place of completion.
 
Idea two: If we mean 99 percent of the places that we call school, I would say there is no purpose.
 
The purpose should be to be THE place to go and create, learn, and build real things.
 
Idea three: The purpose changes. Does the purpose take into consideration of all cultures and ideas. It can’t just be the transmission of values, other than inquiry.
 
Idea four: The purpose of school is to create community.
 
The best thing you might be able to do in a day is getting the students to talk to one another.
 
Idea five: The purpose of school is to learn how to communicate.
 
You have to be able to present arguments and convince people that you know what you are talking about.
 
Calibrate what students know as important, difficult, and original.
 
Idea six: The purpose of school is to expose kids to people who are actually doing what is possible.
 
Perhaps it is in finding out how things really work. Perhaps it is in not knowing everything. Perhaps it is in knowing exactly what you want to do with your life.
 
Idea seven: The purpose of school is to be the great equalizer. But the system can’t keep up.
 
We need to fix it so that schools are what they should be.
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Networks are cities.

I am on my way to educon 2.1 right now, looking out into the night (don’t worry, I am using my phone in airplane mode). For some reason there are no clouds out there tonight, and all I can see are the bright lights of cities, clustered together and beautiful. What I am thinking about as my mind is still trying to wrap itself around the conversation I will be leading on saturday, is that the lights of a city look like the networks that I dream about.
 
I want networks that are far reaching and bright. I want to be able envision the whole thing all at once or focus on a single connection. I want to hop from network to network. I want to see far off into the horizon and know that there are other networks thinking about the same things I am.
 
I want the network to be on every time I look, glowing more radiantly in the node that need my attention right now. I want knowledge to run around my network like the people push on out toward their well ordered lofts in the city and winding single-family house lined roads in the suburbs. I want my network to bring me in for a landing every once in a while, grounding me in what is really so important: taking the time to get to know an individual and seeing them as more valuable than any amount of community created or knowledge gained.
 
(I know this post is pretty flowery, but I am away from my family for the first time since my son was born. I may be a little wistful on the blog for the next few days.)
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Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

Networks are cities.

I am on my way to educon 2.1 right now, looking out into the night (don’t worry, I am using my phone in airplane mode). For some reason there are no clouds out there tonight, and all I can see are the bright lights of cities, clustered together and beautiful. What I am thinking about as my mind is still trying to wrap itself around the conversation I will be leading on saturday, is that the lights of a city look like the networks that I dream about.
 
I want networks that are far reaching and bright. I want to be able envision the whole thing all at once or focus on a single connection. I want to hop from network to network. I want to see far off into the horizon and know that there are other networks thinking about the same things I am.
 
I want the network to be on every time I look, glowing more radiantly in the node that need my attention right now. I want knowledge to run around my network like the people push on out toward their well ordered lofts in the city and winding single-family house lined roads in the suburbs. I want my network to bring me in for a landing every once in a while, grounding me in what is really so important: taking the time to get to know an individual and seeing them as more valuable than any amount of community created or knowledge gained.
 
(I know this post is pretty flowery, but I am away from my family for the first time since my son was born. I may be a little wistful on the blog for the next few days.)
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Posted via email from olco5′s posterous