ISTE in less than 140 Characters*
It's been a big few weeks. I'm currently writing this while flying in an Air Canada Boeing 777, seat 40J, somewhere just south of the equator and slightly west of the International Date Line, chasing the sun around the globe on my way back to Sydney.
I've been in Canada for much of the last few weeks, visiting our Canadian family and friends, something I wish I could do more often. But for three days I managed to slip away down to Philadelphia PA for my first ISTE conference. If you know me, or read this blog at all, you may know that I tend to get around to a few conferences in various places, but the ISTE Conference (and prior to that, a NECC) has eluded me so far. For whatever reasons, I haven't been able to get to this event so when the opportunity came up this year I jumped at it. And I'm glad I was able to… it is an amazing event.
In thinking about ISTE 2011 to decide what to blog about it, there are a few notable things to mention, but for me, one really stands out as the highlight.
First, there was the sheer size of it. With (I’m told) 20,000 delegates this year, the scale of ISTE is unlike anything I've seen before. Pennsylvania Convention Centre was simply enormous and easily housed the hundreds of exhibitors, vendors, workshops, presentations, displays, poster sessions, and of course, the thousands and thousands of attendees. I don't know exactly how big the PACC actually is, but it's huge.
Secondly, the number of presentations taking place at any one time was mind boggling. There was so much choice, so many options, it was hard to know where to be. I only attended a few actual presentations, but the quality of the presenters and the information was very good. Whether your interest was in learning about the various edtech tools, in hearing about new pedagogical approaches, or finding out about new ideas for what works in today's classrooms, there was something for everyone. Some sessions were huge, like the keynotes with 6000+ people, to presentations with a few hundred, to classroom-sized workshops, to poster session conversations; the choice available through the organized sessions was astounding.
There were also the fun events too. The Google Party held at the Philadelphia Academy of Natural Sciences, held among the dinosaur bones and the fluttering butterflies, was great fun, and being invited to the invitation only Google Certified Teacher cocktail party beforehand was pretty special. The Edtech Karaoke Party the next night (#etk11), where we all had a few drinks and got up and sang, was one of those events I'm sure I'll remember for a very long time.
But the thing that really made the ISTE event most valuable for me was the opportunity to meet and mix in person with the people in my PLN. It was, as someone observed, like having your RSS reader come to life. I was constantly bumping into people I knew, whose blogs I read, who appear daily in my Twitter stream, whose YouTube videos I've watched. Some I'd met before, but most I had only ever known online.
As you've probably experienced yourself, the best parts of most conferences are the serendipitous conversations, bumping into people in the corridor, having a chance to chat face to face. For me, ISTE was all about the people I met.
After the conference was over, I jotted down a list of all the people I’d had a conversation with over the previous three days, and the size of the list surprised me. In no particular order (other than that dictated by my slowly deteriorating memory!) here is a list of all the characters I met, chatted with, or had a meaningful conversation with over the three days I was at ISTE…
The (less than) 140 Characters
Paul R Wood @prwood
Mike Gras @mikegras
David Warlick @dwarlick
David Jakes @djakes
Sharon Peters @speters
Amanda Marrinan @marragem
Roger Pryor @pryorcommitment
Wes Fryer @wfryer
Jason Arruza @jarruza
Vinnie Vrotny @vvrotny
Martin Levins @levins
Angela Maiers @angelamaiers
Kevin Honeycutt @kevinhoneycutt
Carl Anderson @anderscj
Holly Hammonds @libraryquest
Linda Swanner @lswanner1
Melanie Burford @mwburford
Lisa Neilsen @InnovativeEdu
Dvora Geller @teachdig
Mark Wagner @markwagner
Nancye Blair @engagingEDU
Lisa Thumann @lthumann
Wendy Gorton @wendygorton
Cathy Brophy @brophycat
Paula White @paulawhite
Erin Barrett @erinbarrett
Charlene Chausis @cchausis
Cheri Toledo @cheritoledo
Karen Fasimpaur @kfasimpaur
David Wees @davidwees
Leigh Zeitz @zeitz
Brian C Smith @briancsmith
Roland Gesthuizen @rgesthuizen
Marg Lloyd @?
Tony Brandenberg @tbrandenburg
JamieLynn Griffith @jgriffith2
Steve Hargadon@stevehargadon
Beth Still @BethStill
Christopher Craft @crafty184
Maria Knee @mariaknee
Molly Schroeder @followmolly
Dean Shareski @shareski
Julie Lindsay @julielindsay
Lisa Parisi @lisaparisi
Diana Laufenberg @dlaufenberg
Ellen Sheerin @esheerin
Chris Walsh @chriswalsh
Adrian Camm @adrian_camm
Tom Petra @RealWorldMath
Pete Moran @pjmctm2010
Brian Crosby @bcrosby
Maurice Cummins @mauricecummins
Jennifer Garcia @mrsjgarcia
Ginger Lewman @GingerTPLC
Alice Barr @alicebarr
Susan van Gelder @susanvg
Dean Muntz @?
Diane Main @dowbiggin
Benjamin Grey @bengrey
Kim Sivick @ksivick
Becky Crawford @Becstr9
Scott McLeod @mcleod
Bethany Smith @bethanyvsmith
Sam Gliksman @SamGliksman
Rob Griffith @rgriffithjr
Gail Lovely @glovely
Henry Theile @htheile
Chris Lehmann @chrislehmann
Bud Hunt @budtheteacher
Gary Stager @stager
Jim Marshall (Promethean)
Frank Augustino (Luidia)
Jason Orbaugh (Smart Tech)
Johann Zimmern (Adobe)
Adam Frey (Wikispaces)
Anita L'Enfant @anita_lenfant
Paul Fuller @paulfuller75
Linda Dickerson @?
Kyle Pace @kylepace
Michelle Baldwin @michellek107
Steve Dembo @teach42
Robin Ellis @robinellis
Dorothy Burt @dorothyjburt
George Couros @gcouros
Liz B Davis @lizbdavis
Kelly Dumont @kdumont
Kristina Peters @mrskmpeters
Alfred Thompson @alfredtwo
Bernie Dodge @berniedodge
Pamela Livingstone @plivings
Jason and Dawn (from Wisconsin, not sure of last names, met them on the train back to PHL airport)
That's nearly 100 people and nearly 100 great conversations. (*I was aiming for 140... there were actually about 120 people on my original list but thanks to the lack of an undelete feature in Pages on the iPad, I lost a bunch names that I now just can't recall! Grr! My apologies if I left you off the list!)
I think it just goes to show that the real power of an event like ISTE is in the people you meet and the conversations you have. That's where the real connections are made and strengthened. Between the catch-ups with people I already knew quite well - like some of this year's significant Aussie contingent - through to the folk I have previously met in the past, to the many who I have only ever known through our online connections, meeting in person and having the chance to connect and share and talk was what made ISTE truly priceless for me.
Thanks for being part of my network! See you in San Diego next year?
PS: If I have missed your name, or was unable to include your Twitter contact, please let me know so I can include it.
*PPS: Apologies (or thanks) to @lasic for the idea of the name for this post
Popularity: 30% [?]
Looking for Indonesian Partners
This post is a bit of a call for assistance from any schools in Indonesia. If you could assist we would really appreciate it.
Our year 5 classes are just embarking on a thematic unit of work on Indonesia. The students are doing research into life in Indonesia, learning about the culture, food, transport, religion and so on. It's being done as part of their HSIE strand. By the way, HSIE stands for Human Society and it's Environment, for those outside NSW... Oh, and NSW means New South Wales, for those outside Australia. See the joys of writing for a global audience?
And that's the point really. Getting kids to think outside their own backyard, and realising that when they use certain words or abbreviations that they don't always translate across borders and timezones. Knowing that other people are asleep when you're awake, and that words and phrases you take for granted can be complete mysteries to people outside your own culture is, I think, a really important mindset to develop. It's one of the reasons I'd love to see more and more projects include a global, collaborative element.
If we're going to learn about Indonesia - a country that is one of Australia's closest neighbours and yet so very culturally different - I'm really keen to connect our students with other students who actually live there. I know it can be tricky to arrange global collaborations, especially where language can be a barrier and these sorts of "soft learning" projects are not always valued by others as much as they are by me. So I'm trying to come up with something that is relatively "low impact" to potential Indonesian partners. I'm looking for something whereby we can encourage them to be involved, while at the same time not becoming onerous and overcommitted. It's got to be something where the partner schools can contribute at a level they feel comfortable with.
To that end, here's what I'd like to suggest (or rather, request)...
I'm going to get our three classes of Year 5 students to work in teams to build three websites about Indonesia, one per class. Our students will be put into pairs and each pair will work on creating a section on the website about one aspect of Indonesian life. We will be using Google Sites to build it.
Ideally what I'd like is to establish a handful of Indonesian schools to act as "consultants" to us as we build these websites. We'd invite comments and feedback about the pages we make, perhaps letting us know if we were somehow missing the point on something, getting our facts wrong, or just not quite understanding the spirit or nuances of the Indonesian culture. It would be pretty cool if one of our students who might be learning about, say, Indonesian food, could, instead of just finding an image using Google Images, be sent a photo from an Indonesian buddy showing what they had for dinner last night. That sort of thing would be just perfect!
I've already managed to enlist one such partner teacher in Endang Palupi, an ESL teacher at a school district in Pekalongan. We have arranged a series of Skype calls between her students (who are keen to practice and extend their use of English) and our students (who are keen to meet Indonesian students and learn more about life there.) On that level, it's win-win. Endang's students will also try to provide us with feedback and some level of consultation as we build our websites.
In an effort to not place too much expectation on any single teacher or school, I'm also looking for a few other Indonesian partners who might be willing to contribute to this project. I'd like to think that it will be a two way street, and that they will benefit from working with us as much as we hope to benefit from working with them. Like I said, it's just a nice easy project that would be based around getting some "consulting" and advice from them as we build our websites. This consulting can be simple and easy (maybe just take a look at our websites occasionally and drop us some feedback on how we're doing), or become more involved (Skype calls, travel buddies, co-collaboration on the sites, etc) It's really up to the other school as to how much and what they'd like to contribute.
So, Indonesian schools, how about about it... can you help me out? We've just started working on this project and we'd expect it t run for the next 7-8 weeks. We'd love to get you involved!
If you can help us, or know someone who can, please leave me a note in the comments below.
Popularity: 17% [?]
GTA is Go
A few weeks ago I posted my application video for the Sydney Google Teacher Academy. According to their schedule, I wasn't expecting to hear anything back about it until late next week, so I was very excited yesterday when I checked my email and found this waiting for me...
You have been selected to participate in the Google Teacher Academy - Sydney. After reviewing your application, we believe that you have the experience and passion necessary to positively impact education in your region, and we are excited to have you join us on Wednesday 20 April 2011 at the Google office in Sydney.
Woohoo! I'm aware that it's a pretty hotly contested thing to get into, so I'm feeling very fortunate to have been accepted. Of course, as well as spending time at Google 's fantastic new Sydney offices and getting hands-on and in-depth with all the cool tools that Google offers for education, the other best part is in the networking and the conversations that I know will take place over the very full day and a half. Just from seeing mentions on Twitter, it appears that a number of other people I know will be there, like @jessmcculloch, @adrian_camm, @davein2it and @TarNZC, so it'll be awesome!
I know there's others who got in, although I don't know who they are. If you're also going to GTA Sydney, drop a note in the comments below. It'd be fun to know who's going.
Popularity: 12% [?]
DaVinci in your Classroom
At the 2010 ULearn conference I was asked to participate in a Pecha Kucha event. A Pecha Kucha is a way of giving a presentation with 20 supporting slides, where each slide is automatically timed to show for only 20 seconds. This leads to a presentation of exactly 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Despite being one of the shortest presentations I've given, this was certainly one of the hardest to put together, just in terms of working out the timing and figuring out what to say in those 20 blocks of 20 seconds. It sounds easy, but it certainly took a while to get it together.
Here is the summary of what the talk was about…
"As a gifted polymath, Leonardo da Vinci stands out as the prototypical lifelong learner. Curious, inventive, creative... All the things we would love our students to be. But how well would da Vinci have survived in today’s typical classroom? If Leonardo was a student in a school today would he have achieved to the same degree?"
And here are the words that went with each slide… as you can see, there are 20 paragraphs, each one goes with the 20 slides...
Leonardo Da Vinci. Artist. Inventor. Scientist. Architect. Sculptor. Engineer. Astronomer. One of the great geniuses of history. My question to you is this… if Da Vinci were alive today, would he have survived in your classroom? And more importantly, would he have thrived in your classroom?
Leonardo grew up in the 1400s, a time of great change, where society was being dramatically reshaped by disruptive new technologies like the printing press. Today, we also live in a time of great change, where society is being dramatically reshaped by disruptive new technologies like the web.
I don’t know what sort of student Leonardo would have been. If he was like most people of his day, he probably never actually went to school, but HAD he been a student, based on everything we know about him, he would probably have been clever, eager to learn and extremely curious.
I suspect that Leonardo would have been one of those students that constantly asked “why?”, who constantly wanted to know more, who constantly thought outside the box. I suspect he would have been smarter than most of his peers, and probably smarter than most of his teachers.
Of course, if Leonardo was in school today there’s little doubt it would be a school that proudly proclaimed on its website that they were about catering to individual needs, developing “life long learners” and giving each students a genuine “love of learning”. After all, isn’t that what ALL schools say they are about?
The reality is that most schools are bound by the straightjacket of a timetable, and still constricted by disjointed curriculums imposed upon them by “the powers that be”. We still put up with curriculums where subjects are isolated from each other and delivered in small chunks of mandated hours.
In Leonardo’s case, I imagine that his teachers would not quite have known what to do with him. He would have been the weird kid that wrote back-to-front just for fun, daydreamed about building impossible flying machines or worked on mathematical problems that weren’t in the textbook.
He would have doodled endlessly, all over his school books, no doubt being told that if he didn’t stop defacing them with that ridiculous scribbling he would have to pay the cost of replacing them. Those sketches of the human body made directly from his own observations? They’d be of little use because those things would not be on the test.
And yet, despite the fact that Leonardo might have been a bit of a misfit in school, he serves as an incredible example of what it means to be truly educated. On one hand a gifted artist, on the other an extraordinary scientist, he demonstrated an unusual capacity to perceive the world with both sides of his brain.
For some reason, we tend to think in terms of “the arts” and “the sciences” with an implied belief that, if you’re good at one, you’re probably not good at the other. And we tend to have a unspoken hierarchy where the “real” subjects like maths, science and english are more important than the “soft” subjects like art, dance and drama.
I don’t think Leonardo would have seen it this way. The same mind and hands that created “The Last Supper”, with all it’s emotional depth and religious symbolism, were equally engaged with creating detailed scientific observations of birds in flights in order to invent machines to help man do the same.
The term polymath is used to describe a person who possesses expertise across a significant number of subject areas. History is full of famous polymaths from Aristotle to Benjamin Franklin to Isaac Asimov, although Leonardo may have been the most exemplary polymath of all.
When you look at the achievements of such bold thinkers, and what they bring to humanity, you’d think we’d be trying to figure out how to nurture this kind of outlook. Yet, you have to wonder whether our current system of schooling does anything to actually encourage this kind of thinking.
We compartmentalize learning into discrete blocks called subjects, prescribe them a minimum number of required hours, divide the days into chunks of time called periods, and focus on passing the test at the end. It would appear we’re doing all we can to suppress polymath-like thinking rather than encourage it.
Even as adults, we seem surprised when we discover that our tax accountant plays saxophone in a jazz band; that the captain of the football team enjoys opera, or a woman who illustrates children’s books has a law degree. We’ve created a culture where having diversity in our interests and abilities is seen as the exception rather than the rule.
I wonder if, as Leonardo observed the physics of how light reflected across his subject’s face, he was giving much thought to whether he was “doing science” versus “doing art”? I wonder if dividing our understanding of the world into discrete chunks help us understand it, or whether it actually limits the way we understand it?
Perhaps Leonardo’s greatest asset was his unquenchable curiosity and his desire to know more about the world, regardless of how it was categorised. And perhaps our biggest problem in schools today is the difficulty we seem to have in maintaining a broad perspective, because as much as we say we want to develop independent free thinkers, we continue to reward compliant rule followers.
I can’t help but wonder if Leonardo had the “advantage” of attending school as we know it, whether he would have grown into this brilliant Renaissance Man he was? Would the experience of school have nurtured his curious spirit, or would it have squashed him into a polite conformist that simply did well on standardised tests
Not every child will be a brilliant polymath like Leonardo da Vinci, but every child deserves a chance to aspire to it. Despite the fact that most educational systems say they aim to develop a love of learning in every student, the fact is that “school”, as a generalized concept, may not actually be the best environment to nurture individual brilliance.
So I ask you again… how would Leonardo da Vinci have survived in your classroom? And although we may never know for certain, I hope you think about what you can do, with the students you teach right now in 2010, to help them discover their inner da Vinci.
PS: I've scheduled this post to go live during the actual PK event. I'll add a video to it afterwards that contains the audio/visuals of the talk
Popularity: 7% [?]
Totally Unorganised
I think I can safely say I've just been to one of the best conferences I've ever attended. It was well run, well organised and I believe provided content that was highly relevant to all the participants. The irony is that the day before it all started, it was completely unorganised and had virtually no content planned at all. I'm talking about the Learning 2.010 Conference held last week at Concordia International School in Shanghai, China.
I think it's really important to draw a clear distinction between being unorganised and being disorganised. Disorganised is when things are a complete mess, no one has any idea of what's happening, people are not getting their needs met and it leads to frustration for everyone involved. This conference was definitely not disorganised.
Unorganised, on the other hand, implies a understanding that learning is messy and that when we need to learn something we learn it best if we can learn it just-in-time, not just-in-case. When you put together a conference about learning, being unorganised means recognising that you can't meet someones needs until you know what those needs are. Being unorganised means that you don't assume that you know what's best for people, but rather, you ask them what they need. Being unorganised implies flexibility, adaptability, and a willingness to listen to what people really want, at the point when they want it.
It also implies a huge risk, since you are inviting people to attend (and prepay for) an event that essentially does not yet exist. It would be far easier, far safer, far less risky, to run a conference the way they are traditionally organised... Bring in some smart people to speak, get them to stand on the stage and impart their wisdom to the assembled masses, and perhaps preplan some added workshops on what you think people need. That's the accepted way to run a conference, the safe way, the "normal" way, the organised way... doing it any other way is a risk and a challenge to the status quo, and potentially a threat to people's expectations.
However, those with the goal of shifting and reshaping education know inherently that this traditional model of conference planning flies in the face of what we proclaim learning is truly about. It's ironic (and hypocritical) that conferences about contemporary learning should remain modeled on a structure that so blatantly contradicts the way we keep saying that learning should work in the 21st century.
The organisers of Learning 2.010 accepted this risk and, from what I could see, it paid off handsomely. The event was run on the basis of having two quite different component parts... the first was based on a cohort (team) of learners that gathered around a key idea and worked together to explore that idea in depth over the two days, and the second component was an unconference that ran 90 minute workshops in whatever content emerged from the participants.
The cohorts were led by a team of international educators who were hand picked by the Learning 2.010 organisers (or should that be unorganisers?) and I felt extremely honoured to have been included in this group. These are some of the smartest, most forward thinking, contemporary educators I've ever had the pleasure to work with, many of whom I already felt I knew well from their blogs and online presence. There were many that I've wanted to meet in person for a very long time and others I hadn't previously known of, but it quickly became pretty clear that this was an extraordinary group of talented educators.
As one of the invited cohort facilitators, I arrived into Shanghai the day before the conference started so I could be part of a brainstorming and planning session with the other facilitators about what and how we might make the cohort component of the conference best happen. Although we did have general themes to guide us, the exact structure of how we'd run the sessions, what resources we'd include, how we'd manage our cohort groups, etc, was all fluid... essentially, we had four 90 minute sessions over the 2 days and we could do whatever we wanted in them. Most themes had two cohorts, each with its own facilitator, that could be run independently from each other, or could be combined together, or some combination of these.
I was lucky enough to be teamed up with Melinda Alford, a teacher at Concordia (the host school) on the topic of Creating a Culture of Learning and Creativity. Originally from Atlanta, Georgia, but having now worked in Shanghai for the past six years, I'd not met Melinda before... in fact she was one of those teachers that wasn't even on my PLN radar. But after working with her for a few days I have to say she is one of the most talented natural teachers I've ever met and it was a real joy to be able to work with her. It's so nice when you get to work with someone who is really on the same wavelength. who shares so many of the same ideals about learning and education and is so easy to work with.
As we started to plan how our cohorts would operate, we decided not to run in two groups, but rather to combine them into one. Our general plan was to facilitate a guided conversation about the ideas of creativity and curiosity in learning, follow it up with some ideas and examples and strategies for developing creative opportunities for students, and then allow our group to organically break up into small teams based on interest and need, and produce something to share with the whole group in the final session. The "something" was open-ended, but was basically a resource, an activity, a plan, something, that could be put to use the next week in their classroom. We wanted to challenge the thinking of our cohort, but be practical and get them to actually create something they could use. We were also very focused on the idea of creating a learning environment for our cohort participants that modeled the type of learning that we were expecting them to create for their students... open ended, flexible, learned centered, challenging, hard fun. Our plan was to facilitate, not lecture. Share, not teach. Encourage, not demand.
We spent part of that first planning day tossing ideas around and creating some visual prompts. One of my big beliefs about the notion of creativity is that it should come from both sides of your brain. We were both very keen to encourage the idea that creativity is not something that just applies to "the arts", not something that you only find in strange "arty" types who dress in strange clothes, not something that is applied to problems occasionally in a superficial way... we wanted to get the idea across that creativity is a critical thinking skill that applies to all disciplines, in all sorts of ways, all of the time. Melinda and I both had backgrounds in the creative arts as well as science and engineering, so we found it easy to weave this into our planning. To make the point, at the social event held the evening before the conference officially started, we got up on stage to promote our cohort sessions, me dressed in Elmo pyjama pants and a set of large donkey ears, and Melinda in a giant chicken outfit. At least we got noticed!
So, in a 24 hour period, we went from having a cohort session with no structure, no content and no ideas, to having a session which was highly personalised, based on meeting the needs of the participants and built on the strengths of the facilitators. I might write more about the cohort sessions later, but I felt like it was a great success.
The other component of the conference was the unconference. Again, the problem with traditional conferences is that you sometimes don't learn what you'd really like to learn, and it treats the "presenters" and the "audience" as two groups. If you believe that learners and teachers can have a much flatter relationship that that, the unconference model makes a lot of sense. At the first social event of the conference, participants were encouraged to write on a large sheet of paper a topic that they'd like to learn about. Equally, they were also encouraged to write down a topic they'd like to share about. These pieces of paper were then sticky-tacked to the wall and people could add a vote to the ones they were interested in the most. The ones that had enough votes then ran in the next unconference session time.
So, for example, I offered to run a session on teaching kids to think using Scratch, since I've been doing a lot of work on this back at school. So, I offered the topic, volunteered to be a presenter for it, people selected it, and it ran successfully. Conversely, someone else added a request for a session about Photoshop. They were not willing or able to run it themselves, but they were very interested in learning about it. Because I'm a bit of a Photoshop guy, I was happy to add my name to that as the presenter, and the session went ahead.
This is really the spirit of an unconference. It's about flexibly and dynamically connecting learners together to learn about the things that interest them. You can't plan that sort of thing in advance because you have no advance idea of what those interests will be. An unconference only works if you place your trust in the wisdom of the crowds, if you believe that none of us is as good as "all of us". If you believe that someone in the crowd will have the expertise to share with others, and the humility to accept that that expertise can come from anywhere, then learners become teachers and teachers become learners and our learning environment becomes flatter and less hierarchical. It goes from being about teacher and student, moving away from being about "us and them" to just being about "us". And this is so much more reflective of the way true learning actually works.
Of course, you can see why this is risky. If participants turn up as empty vessels waiting to be filled, who see professional development as something that is done "to them" by someone else, then this is all destined to fail miserably. What I like about the unconference model is not just that it's a far superior way to learn - because it is - but that it works on the underlying assumption that people are inherently good. It's based on the fundamental ideals of sharing and teamwork, and the belief that most people are just as eager to give as to take.
It assumes the best from people, and that's always a better environment to work in.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Asian Growth
Nǐ hǎo! I'm currently in Shanghai, China for the Learning 2.010 conference, and that's pretty exciting for a number of reasons.
Firstly, mainland China is somewhere I've always wanted to go. In particular, Shanghai is fascinating because of its almost incomprehensible growth. Intellectually, I know that China is a fast rising star, rapidly moving from a developing nation to a developed nation. We've all heard the statistics about the size and growth of China, of how Chinese is destined to become the most used language on the Internet, of how China has more honours students than the US has students, and so on. Seriously though, no matter how many times I see the "Did You Know" videos that tell me how fast China is growing, nothing can quite prepare you for the endless ocean of concrete and skyscrapers that simply didn't exist a mere 15 years ago.
Perhaps more than any statistic, this is where China's growth really hit home for me... I got picked up by Michael Weber at Pudong airport and we got a cab back to the hotel... thankfully, I'm still alive to tell the story of it. The cab driver was clearly not an experienced driver at all, struggling with the gears and clutch in this beaten up, manual VW taxi she was driving. She had no idea where to take us, and ended up stopping in the middle of the freeway (I'm not exaggerating, quite literally in the middle of a five lane freeway!) to punch the address into the GPS. Once she got underway, the trip was a scary series of swerving lane changes, a mix of very slow and very fast driving, and lots and lots of horn tooting. The notion of staying in one lane, using her indicators, observing a speed limit, etc, was clearly not part of the plan. But what struck me most as I glanced across at Michael, who must have been able to tell what I was thinking, was when he said "you have to remember that most people here in Shanghai had never driven a car until 5 years ago." 5 years. When he put it like that, and you then see the number of cars on the road, the freeway infrastructure and so on, and you realise that all of this growth has happened in the last 5 or 10 years... well, it's hard to comprehend.
Then yesterday I was on the 100th floor observation deck of the Shanghai World Financial Centre. As I stood there, standing on the second tallest building in the world, looking down on the Jin Mao Tower - the fifth tallest building in the world - just next door, and the miles and miles and miles of skyscrapers you can see (well, you could see, if not for the smog) in all directions, it was awe inspiring view. Just seeing this sight is incredible enough, but knowing that this has all been built in less than the lifetime of my two teenage kids is just, well, mind snappingly incomprehensible. I'm glad I got here to see it for myself, because the growth here in Asia is difficult to comprehend unless you actually see it.
The second reason I'm excited to be here is to be one of the cohort facilitators for the Learning 2.010 Conference. It's a conference that I've heard so much about of the last few years, and that I've followed on Twitter each year with great envy. It's going to be a great conference for a few reasons, but mainly because it's focused on trying to deliver a conference experience that breaks the mold of what we've come to expect from conferences. It uses a very learner-centric model to make the participants active learners rather than just delegates who turn up to listen to people talk at them. Philosophically, it's the right idea because although we talk a lot about 21st century learning, so many education conferences are still run in "delivery mode" where the presenter talks and the audience listens. That's ironic for an education conference in particular, because the people doing the talking are usually telling the people listening that schools needs to shift away from being places where teachers talk and students listen.
At Learning 2.010, the goal of the conference is to make the participants active in the learning process. Although the conference does have a few strands or themes to get started with, the actual content of the event will be directed by the needs and wants of the people who attend. It's run very much in an unconference mode, and even the themed cohort workshops are loosely structured so that they can provide the flexibility to adapt to the needs of the participants on the fly. The event is being held at Concordia International School in Pudong, a pretty impressive school in its own right, and I'm teamed up with Melinda Alford, one of the middle school teachers from Concordia, to cofacilitate the cohort called "Fostering a Culture of Learning and Creativity". As cohort leaders, we're going in with lots of ideas and plenty of experience, but with absolutely no idea where it will end up. It's risky, a little scary, and it's harder to do, but I believe that it's absolutely the right way to approach it. Education conferences have to start modeling the sort of learning and risk taking that we keep saying we are all about. Kudos to the Learning 2.010 organisers for having the balls to run it this way.
The third reason I'm so excited to be here in Shanghai is the people. My PLN came to life in a whole new way yesterday as I got to meet in person an amazing group of educators that I've only ever known online. I was sitting in a planning session yesterday, sharing the conversations with people like Kim Cofino, Darren Kuropatwa, Wes Fryer, Alec Couros, Jeff Utecht, Julie Lindsay, Tim Lauer, Liz Davis, Steve Hargadon... and it was a bit of an out-of-body experience really. I know that our rock stars are not like your rock stars, but I think we were all as excited as each other to finally be meeting in real life. I also got to meet a whole lot of other people that I really didn't know as well, who are equally amazing educators, and who will now become part of my growing PLN.
We all had dinner together last night in the Jin Mao Tower, then drinks afterward at Cloud 9, apparently the highest bar in the world. Who knew?
I'm really looking forward to the next few days!
Popularity: 3% [?]
No Such Thing As A Free Lunch
I recently wrote about the Apple ITSC events that I was lucky enough to have been a part of. They're all over now, and after having participated at ITSCs on the Gold Coast, Adelaide, Perth and Melbourne (as well as the one in my home town of Sydney) I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed being involved in them. One of the best aspects of the way ITSC was run this year was the way they leveraged the unconference concept and tried to break away from the traditional "sit and git" model of learning at conferences. The unconference model is a good model for learning because it attempts to meet people's needs for knowledge, allowing those with expertise to share it and those with questions to ask them. The lack of rigid structure is what makes it work along with the fact that you learn more when you get actively involved in learning about things that are directly relevant to you.
If you ever want to run an unconference, there is plenty of advice online about how you might do it, but when it's all boiled down, the "rules" for an unconference could be summarised as...
- The people who come are the best people who could have come.
- Whatever happens is the only thing that could have happened.
- It starts when it starts.
- It's over when it's over.
- The Law of Two Feet ("If you are not learning or contributing to a talk or presentation or discussion it is your responsibility to find somewhere where you can contribute or learn").
My first real unconference experience happened in Christchurch NZ last year at the ULearn event. It was organised - or rather, unorganised - by a small group of volunteers, and it's notable feature was the lack of any rigid structure. A few tables were set up, people joined in conversations taking place at the tables and then just moved around the room whenever they felt they wanted to move on. We had some really great conversations about all manner of things that really made a difference to what I took away from the main conference.
MCloser to home, my partner Linda was recently part of an international team of people who planned an unconference event for the IABC World Conference held recently in Toronto, Canada. So I've seen first hand just what's involved in planned a great unconference event. While there is definitely a lot of planning involved, on the actual day it works best if there is a great deal of flexibility in how people interact with the event. People give what they can give, and they take what they can take. That's the spirit of an unconference.
Which brings me to the main point of this post. I spent most of today at MoodleCamp Sydney, an unconference-style event for people interested in the open source learning management system called Moodle. It was organised by Sydney Moodler Jason Hando, a guy I've known online for quite a few years, although we only met in person recently for the first time. I got an email from Jason inviting me to the MoodleCamp event and I signed up right away, with an intention to not only attend but to contribute something from my own school's journey with Moodle over the last few years. Jason also emailed me a few days before the event and asked for some extra assistance with the design and creation of some certificates of attendance for the participants, as well as asking if I'd help out with facilitating one of the rooms on the day. Naturally, wanting to be helpful, I agreed to both.
So today, I turned up at the Sydney Distance Education High School at Wolloomooloo to join my fellow Moodlers to learn lots of cool stuff about Moodle. For a variety of reasons the event didn't really hit the mark for me, partly because the organisation of it was not particularly like an unconference, but mostly because of a very public falling out with Jason Hando over an issue in which I thought he was being particularly obnoxious and belligerent, and which escalated into a very ugly situation for everyone.
The first concern was with the way the event was organised. And ok, maybe I'm being picky, but for an event that was constantly being promoted (positively) as "unorganised", "unofficial", "ad-hoc", etc, right through to the way participants were being referred to as "unparticipants", when push came to shove it was just as traditional as a normal conference event. I'm sure Jason had put a lot of time and effort into making the event happen, including providing a rather good looking lunch (I never ate any of it, so I don't know how it tasted, but it looked good). The venue as very nice, and the potential was there for it to be a really good event. However, as the day unfolded it turned out to be not so much an unconference, but rather just a series of short traditional presentations, mostly given in a fairly transmissive mode from speaker to audience.
The day was split into 20 minute sessions, and while I understood the reasoning for this, I didn't think it was really in the spirit of the way an unconference is meant to work... it was simply too structured. Just as I found myself engaging with ideas that were raised, it was time to move on to the next session. Most of the speakers (including myself) were just trying to get through all they wanted to say in their 20 minute slot, so there wasn't nearly enough time for questions, conversations and actual sharing. I felt that just as things got interesting, the "bell would go" and it was time to move to the next lesson. On the flipside, some sessions would drag on past the point at which I was finding them useful, but we kept going anyway because our 20 minutes wasn't up yet... so much for the Law of Two Feet. For an event that was constantly promoted as being somewhat counter-cultural, it was surprisingly traditional. Even the layout of the room was surprisingly traditional... the main part of the room was set up with rows of chairs facing the front, where "the front" was a stage with a lectern on it, a projector screen and plenty of PowerPoint/Keynote slides full of bulleted text. The two breakout rooms were also set up with rows of chairs facing the front, with a screen and a place for "the teacher" to talk to "the students". The best parts of the day were the breaks between sessions where the conversation flowed freely and people were sharing ideas and showing each other things on their laptops... but in an unconference, this is what the sessions are supposed to feel like, not just the breaks between the sessions.
The other big issue I had with the day (and which possibly coloured my entire experience of the event) was the very public dressing-down I got from Jason Hando over an issue that he and I did not see eye to eye on. It's a long story and I don't want to embarrass the other person involved, but the belligerence and unreasonableness from Jason was completely over the top. Another participant arrived at the event - someone I know quite well and whom I consider a friend - and apparently Jason took exception to both his presence at the event and what he planned to present. This person is extremely active and well known in the Moodle community, and has a reputation for being generous with both his time and his considerable expertise. To contribute to the event, as well as running a very valuable session, he wanted to donate some Moodle books as prizes and also to host a quick Skype call to a surprise guest Moodler. I'm sure that both of these things would have been exceptionally well received by everyone at the event.
Instead of welcoming this person and valuing the great contribution they might be able to make to MoodleCamp, Jason saw this person as a threat and told them to leave and that he was not welcome. When I found out what happened I tried to act as a voice of reason to settle the disagreement, and I managed to get both parties in the other room to try and sort out what should have been a minor misunderstanding. Instead, I got a hostile, antagonistic diatribe from Jason about why this person's motives (which I KNOW were pure) were unacceptable to him. Jason was upset that this person had not contacted him in advance to advise that there would be free books and a Skype call taking place. I explained that I disagreed, that the whole point of an unconference was to be spontaneous, and that no one should have to "clear things" with the organisers if they were obviously in the interests of all participants. Jason expressed concern that this other person would somehow try to commercialise "his" event and he took exception to the fact that this person wore a shirt with a Moodle logo on it... he somehow saw this as a indication that someone from Moodle was "checking up" on him. (For the record, the shirt was one that any active member of the Moodle community is entitled to wear). When I disagreed with Jason's view, he started ranting about how I was "in bed with" this other person and that I was clearly part of the problem. The illogical nature of Jason's reasoning got more and more surreal, and the conversation got more and more heated. When we were finally joined by Jason's offsider Danielle, who also spouted the same unreasonable nonsense as Jason, I threw my hands up and exclaimed in absolute frustration "You've got to be fucking kidding!" Jason and Danielle both immediately switched the focus of the issue to the use of the word "fuck" and started carrying on about how offended they were because I swore at them. Just to be clear, I didn't swear AT them, I swore NEAR them. Danielle went off her head about it, and her and Jason started telling me I wasn't welcome and that I had to leave.
To say I was pissed off is a massive understatement. I was pissed off at the ludicrous argument that Jason proposed as to why giving away books or wearing a shirt with a particular logo on it was inappropriate at an unconference. I was pissed off that he had such unfounded, unreasonable suspicions about the motives of one of the most generous people I know. I was pissed off that he was acting like a completely spoiled child who wanted to take an "it's my unconference and I'll do whatever I want" attitude to it. And I was pissed off that he was taking the democratic, free speech ideals of the unconference concept and micromanaging and filtering it in a way that would make even Steve Jobs cringe.
So, having been asked to leave, I left. But as I walked back to the car, I thought to myself "Hang on, I came here to learn. I'm not going to let some upstart with a bad attitude ruin that". So I went back into the room and sat down. By this point, Jason was standing on the stage, welcoming people and thanking everyone who helped make the day happen. He then had the audacity to list me as one of his helpers (which, until that point, I was) then he paused, pointed a finger at me from the stage and said "Didn't I just tell you to leave?"
"Yeah, but I came back."
"I want you to leave. You're not welcome." Then he addressed the entire audience who were present and relayed his distorted version of what happened in the back room. Not the whole story mind you, just the fact that I said "fuck". In fact, according to Jason I said it 5 or 6 times, which is actually untrue. He also said that I directed the swearing at Danielle, which was also untrue.
So he then asked me, publicly from the stage, to leave. I said no. He said he would not continue talking until I left and he walked away from the microphone. I said I was staying. Long pause. I then suggested that he stop carrying on like a belligerent child and move on, but he refused. It was embarrassing. Not for me. For him. His puerile behaviour made him look like a complete jackass, but I was certainly not impressed with the very public airing of our dirty laundry. To have a disagreement with someone is one thing. To have it escalate into an argument is unfortunate, but we could have dealt with it. But to air that argument in public, in front of a room full of people, giving only his side of the story, and to make it seem like the core of the issue was because I used a "bad word" is quite another thing. In the end, I made it clear that I had no intention of leaving, and he eventually continued, but only after demanding a public apology for what he saw as the issue. He was embarrassingly immature in front of the whole room of people.
Let's be clear. The issue was not the swear word. The real issue was Jason's totally unreasonable attitude towards a conference participant who he clearly had a longstanding beef with. The real issue was the fact that, even when he dragged me in as an "adjudicator", when he didn't get the agreement from me that he wanted, he turned nasty about it. The real issue was that he acted like this was "his" event, and not the participants' event. The real issue was the "right of veto" nonsense he tried to pull when he felt that someone else might pick up some consultancy work as a result of the day (something which is very clearly in competition with his own business goals) The real issue was the massive dummy spit he had when people didn't share his views, to the point where he felt he could order them to leave. Jason's business is doing Moodle consultancy and there's no doubt in my mind that MoodleCamp was a way of expanding his own customer base. Reading between the lines, the thought of someone else coming along who might be seen as having more expertise, and therefore being a threat to his business, was too much for him and he snapped.
For the record, I approached Danielle afterwards and offered my apology if I caused her offence, and pointed out that my frustration was not directed at her. I also, despite the fact that I really didn't feel much like making any contributions at all after that, still presented a session since that's part of the reason I came in the first place. And as for the "free lunch", maybe it's just cutting off my nose to spite my face, but there was no way I was going to take anything from someone who feels it's ok to publicly embarrass me like that.
I don't normally take my disagreements public but since that's what Jason decided to do from the stage, I'm not going to take it lying down. As another delegate confided to me later, "I can't believe what an idiot he was to do that. Of all the people to do that to, he should know better than to do it to you." Publicly embarrassing a blogger? Bad idea.
The comments are open. I'm quite happy to get an apology from Jason. Otherwise, bring it on baby, because I'm filthy dirty about the way I was treated.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Reshaping Conferences
<understatement>I've been to a lot of conferences lately.</understatement>
The Champion Schools Conference in Wellington. ACEC in Mebourne. ITSC on the Gold Coast, then Adelaide, Sydney and Perth. They've all been very good and I've gotten something from all of them. They've all had slightly different angles and focuses, but it's pretty clear that any worthwhile education-based conference these days tends to have the same consistent underlying message, one that most active members of the edtech community would have heard many times before... The world is changing, technology is helping drive that change, and schools need to move with that change if they are to remain relevant. That's it in a nutshell. Of course, there are many much deeper conversations we need to keep having about the how, why, what, when and where of enabling these changes, and we need to keep pushing the message out to those teachers still unaware that these fundamental changes are shifting the ground beneath them.
I have a friend who used to work in the newsroom of a major television station. He once explained to me how, when a really big story broke, the newsroom's job would be to tell that story over and over for the next few hours or even days. There would be the initial newsbreak, but then it would get spot coverage each hour, followed by continuous newsbreaks, a piece in the nightly news and then again in the late news, and so on. I once asked my friend why they saturated the media so much with news stories like that, and questioned whether it was overkill to keep reporting the story ad nauseum, to which his reply was "In a newsroom, we know that when we are thoroughly sick of hearing about a particular story, the general public is only just starting to understand what it's all about."
So, as much as I might keep hearing the same fundamental messages being relayed over and over at most of these conferences, it's still true that there are lots of regular classroom teachers for whom many of these ideas are quite a revelation. The impact that digital technologies are having on our students, the need for a shift in the way we approach the design of learning tasks, the imperative for offering students choices and options as a means of maintaining engagement, and the general idea of teaching less so students can learn more... these are still totally new ideas for many educators.
While conferences might try to promote these ideas through the lens of educational technologies, the true importance of them is firmly rooted in pedagogy, not technology. While we talk a lot about how digital technologies are a useful tool for "21st century learning", technology just happens to be a powerful enabler for these new pedagogical approaches. It may appear that we edtech types are constantly promoting the use of technology just because we happen to like technology, but it runs deeper than that. We promote the importance of technology because, if you have been embedding technology into your teaching for any length of time now, you've seen first hand just how effectively it can start to shift the way your classroom operates. You know it can increase engagement, raise the quality of the work, make the learning more authentic, more on-demand, because you've seen it. And while you might value the role of technology in enabling all these things, you also realise that it's not really about the technology, but rather the learning.
One of the great frustrations for those of us "in the echo chamber" of edtech is that, while we can see the value that technology brings to our work with kids in classrooms, we sometimes appear to just be enthusiastic about technology for the sake of it. We implore our colleagues to try blogging with their students, or to give wikis a go, or consider allowing that boring essay task to be submitted as a podcast. And so often our enthusiasm for the power of these tools is all too easily perceived as technological zealotry, and the promotion of technology as a solution to every problem.
So, back to these conferences, and their intended purpose of shifting the participants understanding of 21st century education. It's been really interesting to see the lights come on with many of the participants. It's really gratifying to hear teachers say things like "I've never even considered many of these ideas before, but I'm going to take them back to classroom and give them a serious go". For at least some of the people I've been meeting at these conferences over the last few months, they left excited about the possibilities and felt inspired to learn more and to apply their newly discovered ideas back in the classroom.
One of the ironies of most conferences is that they are so often based on the idea of having someone stand on the stage or at the front of a workshop and simply talk at the participants... ironic because that's usually the very model of teaching that the speakers are saying we shouldn't be perpetuating. (For the record, I stand accused... as someone who has delivered some of these talks, I'm as guilty as the next person) In slight defense of this sage-on-the-stage model though, in some circumstances it's still the most efficient way to share ideas with a large group. It's just ironic that we still design conferences to help us learn what a 21st century classroom should look like by doing exactly the opposite.
It's not all like that though. One of the standout conferences I've attended is the Innovative Technology in Schools Conference run by Apple. While it still has some elements of people standing in front of the whole group and talking at them, it also has a significant "unconference" component, where teachers work in small organic groups on passion projects that deeply engage them as learners. It's been great to see a conference attempt to model itself on the principles of open discussion; of offering choices, options and highly personalised learning pathways; of forming groups based on the interests of the participants; of giving the necessary time to allow participants to create and change. And of course, of enabling all of this with the rich use of technology. In short, of treating the conference participants as actual 21st century learners rather than just attendees. The ITSC event stands out to me because it tries to actually BE the way it claims education should be, and in doing so it offers the participants a chance to actually "walk the walk", rather than just "talk the talk". Quite a few participants remarked to me that the penny finally dropped about the way education could be different because of the way the ITSC conference itself modeled how that change might actually look.
There was also a real focus on the creation of an appropriate learning space for participants. Rather than the typical conference situation of having rows of chairs all facing the front, ITSC had a range of flexible seating and working arrangements, with lots of round tables, leather couches and beanbags. It had large plasma TV screens around the room where groups could gather and share. It had powerboards on every table, reliable open wifi, and a wiki server for participants to create collaborative digital workspaces on demand. These are the sorts of things that we know 21st century classrooms should look like, and can really help create an environment where the learning really hums along.
Importantly, participants were also asked to actually make something during this conference that they could both share with the group and also take away with them. Even more importantly, they chose what they made based on their unique interests and what would be useful to them. They chose who they teamed up and worked with. They decided what they needed to learn to complete their task and they learned it on the fly. They used technology in authentic ways to enable the process. It was genuine 21st century learning in action, and it was quite a powerful conference experience.
There are lessons in the ITSC events for all conference organisers.
Popularity: 5% [?]
Stager takes the Stage
The main keynote on the Friday of ACEC 2010 was Gary Stager, a man who has a reputation for calling a spade a "bloody shovel". He did a morning keynote, as well as a "soapbox" session in the main hall where he held court and treated anyone who would listen to the world according to Stager.
I'm not totally sure what to make of Gary Stager. I heard him speak for the first time at ULearn last year and I was pretty impressed by what he had to say. That probably shouldn't sound so surprising since the guy has a long history of working with schools to do some pretty innovative and constructivist things. He was a consultant at MLC Melbourne, Australia's (and the world's) first 1-1 laptop school. He was a student and personal friend of Professor Seymour Papert, in my opinion one of the world's most influential educational thinkers. And he has some really forceful opinions about what works and what doesn't work in education. I admire his intensity and his conviction.
This intensity and conviction can sometime comes across with a high and mighty arrogance though, and his talks can sometimes feel like being bludgeoned with a blunt axe. There is often a sense of sensationalism in the things he says, and there is rarely any gray between his black and white viewpoints. He seems to have a handful of things he feels really passionate about and is like a dog with a bone in promulgating them, often to the exclusion of everything else.
On the one hand, it's a good thing because it is confronting and makes you think about the issues. Although his arrogant approach tends to piss people off a bit, sometimes people need a bit of pissing off to force them into getting off the fence and taking a side. A keynote speaker probably should be a bit confronting and prod people with ideas that force them to think and evaluate things that perhaps they haven't thought much about. In that sense, he does a great job.
On the other hand, some of his sweeping black and white statements can be very dismissive, even outright rude. If something is not part of Gary's world view, he tends to sweep it aside and treat it with absolute contempt. At ACEC especially, he was very vocal about any idea that didn't fit with his version of how education should work. It gets a little tedious after a while, and you end up feeling gloom, doom and a sense of hopelessness about, well, almost everything. Name a topic outside of Lego or programming, and it's likely that Gary will dissect it and strip it to pieces, telling you why it's rubbish and is counterproductive to education. It really is a bit wearing after a while. I came away from his keynote feeling like nothing we are doing at school is any good at all (which is nonsense of course).
I like many of the things Stager has to say, and I think he has some powerful insights. I totally agree that there are many things about school that need to be rethought and reinvented. He's right about a lot of things, but he also seems pretty narrow minded about a whole lot of others. He spins a good conspiracy theory, and clearly hates certain technologies, especially IWBs. But he also chooses examples that highlight the poorest possible uses of these technologies and then holds those up as some sort of "best practice" to be critical of. Sure, it's easy to be critical of something being used poorly, but that doesn't mean that the thing itself is bad, just that the given example is one of it being used badly. One could probably find poor examples of 1-1 laptop usage, poor examples of students working with programming and so on.
I could cite an example of almost any technology being used poorly and an equal number of examples of it being used really well. Like Gary, I also see the enormous value of learning with constructivist tools like Lego, the value of students learning to program, the value of students learning about computing science. But I also believe that there is room for a wide range of technologies for learning. There is no one single answer, no single technology for helping kids learn.
There is always room for a bit of open-mindedness in education.
---
PS: I just noticed that @Steve-Collis has posted the UStream video of Gary's keynote, so here it is if you'd like to take a peek. Thanks Steve for recording it, and thanks Gary for allowing it to be recorded.
Popularity: 8% [?]
The ACEC Conversation Starts Here
In a bizarre and unexpected turn of events, I had a call from the good folk from ACEC a couple of days ago asking if I'd be interested in presenting something at the Friday keynote session. Apparently there was a spot available and someone suggested my name. That was great news for me, since I really wanted to go to ACEC... not only does it sound like it will be an awesome conference, but there are so many people from my online world who will be there that I want to meet up with in person. Naturally, I said yes.
The hard part is that I was told I can talk about whatever I like. That's dangerous enough, but further complicated by the fact that I've been busy lately presenting some stuff for several other conferences and I don't really want to just reuse the same stuff. I realise that I'd be talking to a totally different group of people so it's not the overlap that's the problem, but I'd just rather come up with something specifically for ACEC.
My problem is that I'm such a dilettante and I tend to dabble around in so many different educational ICT-related things, that I have no real idea about what I might focus on. And of course, Friday is the last day of what will doubtless be a pretty full-on conference schedule, so the chances of me saying anything intelligent about anything that hasn't already been talked about by people way smarter and more eloquent that me is pretty slim.
I asked Tony Brandenburg from ACEC what he thought might make a good topic, or what gaps might exist in the program that perhaps hadn't been covered. His view was that although the conference has plenty of great stuff from lots of great people, much of that was from overseas visitors so it would be good to have a bit more of the Australian perspective. "Just give us a brain dump of whatever is on your mind", he said.
So, feeling a little daunted by the idea of it all, but really keen to have the opportunity to add something worthwhile to the ACEC conversation, I'm asking for some suggestions. If you read this blog at all, you know that I rave on about all sorts of stuff here. If you were going to hear someone speak on the last day of the ACEC conference, what sort of things would grab your interest? If you could drop any thoughts you have into the comments below, that would be greatly appreciated. I like the idea of a presentation for ACEC growing out of a conversation that starts here on the blog several weeks prior. To engage in some conversation here, which can then evolve into a presentation there, which can then be followed up with more conversation afterwards, seems to be a much more interesting way to do it.
I'm keen to hear what you've got to say... don't be shy.
Popularity: 3% [?]
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