Staying away

This is the first time in a few years that I did not attend NECC
virtually. I have never attended physically, but I have anticipated
all of the thinking and writing that happens during this conference.
This year, however, I am on vacation. I have not taken a vacation from
thinking or pushing myself in all things ed tech. Rather, a vacation
from the competition for attention. A vacation from large halls with
standing room only (for even virtual attendees). A vacation from
second-hand commentary standing for research.
 
Really though, this vacation isn’t about escaping NECC. It is about
sleeping on a hammock with my daughter and waiting for the warm Austin
wind to take us away from everything that plugs in.

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

Making moving easy…

Every night this week and last I have been packing. I have been
packing up my family to move us to someplace better, with more room
and more possibilities (and more than one bathroom). This move has
gotten me thinking a lot about what to keep and what to let go of.
Without extending a metaphor too far out, it has also gotten me
thinking about how to move an entire school or even a district from
digital learning systems that they currently use, to ones that have
more possibility and room to grow.
 
And, what can we leave behind in this move. When you move from an
email based system of communication to a feed and “friend” based
system of communication (twitter, facebook, or even project wikis),
what is no longer neccessary?
 
 
When you move from a server based architecture for storing learning
objects to a cloud based repository, what is gained and what is lost?
 
The specifics are becoming more and more clear to me as I pack things
up. As I pack up our assessments for the online school, getting them
ready to move again, we can leave behind proprietary formats. We need
to be able to plug them in anywhere and reuse them for many purposes.
 
As I pack up all of our content, I realize that we can leave all html
pages without an edit button on them.
 
And, as I try to put all of our tools and resources for collaborative
and connected learningn into their box to be ported over to a new LMS
or to new PD spaces, I am realizing that there is no box big enough to
hold all of them.
 
Every tool must be allowed to connect to others, just like every
person must be able to connect. If there are tools that do not
connect, they will be packed away permanantly and placed under the
stairs.
 
Well, I am off to pack some more, but I will continue to think about
what can and can’t be thrown out when we make big shifts in education.
I hope to return to this theme soon when I figure more out.

Posted via email from olco5′s posterous

Comment on Educational Insanity’s Blog post

This blog post is taken from a comment I wrote on Educational Insanity’s blog post, Reflections from NECC – Equity, Diversity, Social Justice. I thought is was important enough to repeat it here.

I really appreciate your honest assessment of NECC 2008. Although I cannot be there in person (my wife is ready to give birth any day now), I did want to show support for sessions that discuss issues of diversity, equity, and social justice. I’m not sure how to deal with the (perceived?) lack of racial diversity in the edublogosphere or at the Blogger’s Cafe, but I do think that we need to be reaching out. Do you know if Taking It Global (http://takingitglobal.org) is doing a session at NECC? Getting someone from that organization to come into the Blogging arena of NECC would go a long way to ushering in an air of social justice and diversity.

The other question I have is about the diversity of the conference in general. If there is a lack of diversity (or at least a lack of people talking about it), is that because the people that are attending are mostly getting their school districts to pay for it? If a school district cannot buy books (as is the case in the documentary that you just mentioned, which I hadn’t heard of because I don’t get HBO… Is there some other way I can see it?), how can they send teachers to a (fairly) pricey conference.

Talk about equity, the conference should have scholarships for districts that are looking to be forward thinking, but don’t have the funds. (Is this something that is possible.)

I would love to have a larger debate in the edubloggosphere about the issues of equity, diversity, and social justice, but I wonder how valuable it can be for a white folks (of which I am one) to debate the issues without getting some voices outside of the echo chamber to take part. Any ideas?

A New Image for New Students

My students are different. Not from yours, but from the ones that came before them. They are desperate to connect everything together: disciplines, ideas, home and school. They need a way of bridging the gaps that many adults artificially create. We must help them to connect. I don’t have any five point plans in this podcast, but I do have a good example from a student about tormenting substitute teachers. Have a listen.

I am looking for a new image to help explain this phenomenon of connection as a reaction to the increasingly splintered world that they experience. If you have any grand ideas about this, please drop me a line at benjamin.wilkoff@dcsdk12.org.

• 00:00:00: Today’s Students vs. Yesterday’s Students
  The Horizon Report

• 00:03:28: Connected Learning?
  Nicholas Negroponte’s Necc 2006 Keynote

• 00:05:13: Seeing a Splintered World
  Moose’s Blog Post about Substitute Teachers

• 00:08:43: The Metaphor for Connection
• 00:11:32: Asking for Help and Wrap-Up
  My Blog