Category: asia

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Babies and Bathwater

I was recently in Hong Kong for the excellent 21st Century Learning conference, where I had the very great pleasure of running some hands-on workshops in Google stuff, and also giving the closing keynote. As I mention at  the start of this talk, it was quite intimidating to think that I could say anything worth hearing after an amazing couple of days of learning from so many other amazing educators. (Having people like Stephen Heppell and Gary Stager in the audience didn’t make it any less intimidating either)

I actually didn’t even realise these talks were being recorded so when I spotted this on Twitter today it came as a bit of a surprise. For what it’s worth, here is a video of my talk, called Babies and Bathwater.

http://youtu.be/d127FRlxVuY

I go to quite a few conferences, and I’m always a little surprised at how few of them bother to video the presentations. Given the amount of time and energy that conference organisers put into running these events, you’d think they would be better at capturing things for later reuse. Good on you Paul, Justin and Graeme for making sure that you do it right at 21clHK.

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Reflections on China, Part 2

During the Learning 2.012 event, a number of the Learning 2 Leaders had the opportunity to present a short mini keynote on a topic of their choice. I thought it was a good arrangement, being able to hear a little bit from a number of people, instead of just one long talk from one person. In the previous Learning 2 event I attended, there were no keynotes at all, what with the conference focus being on the participants, rather than “speakers”.  This year, we brought back the keynote idea, but in this new format, and I thought it worked really well.  We got to hear from 10 different people, with very different styles and perspectives, and I really enjoyed it.

I somehow ended up being the first person to speak on the opening night of the conference. I decided to recycle a short presentation that I had actually shared before with the staff at Yokohama International School, but I thought the message was still relevant to this group.

Here is my talk…

There were lots of other great short talks from other L2Leaders and they are all being posted on the Learning2 YouTube channel at http://www.youtube.com/user/learning2asia.  I won’t repost them all here but it’s definitely worth checking them all out!

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Creating Creativity

Dear Internet,

I could use some of your help if you have a moment.

I’ve been fortunate to have been asked to present an extended workshop at the Learning 2.012 Conference in Beijing China in a few weeks. It’s very exciting. I presented at the Learning 2.010 conference in Shanghai two years ago and it was totally awesome, absolutely one of the best learning events I’ve been part of.

The session I’m running this year is called Creativity and Innovation in the Classroom. It’s a big topic that could really go in any number of directions, which is both exciting and scary at the same time (made even more scary by the possibility that we might not have any Internet access that week in China!)

Obviously I feel as though I have something to contribute on the topic or I wouldn’t have suggested it, but I would really love to tap into some of your collective wisdom. I’m a big believer in the wisdom of the crowd, and I’m hoping to pick your collective brains a little.  I’m well aware that all of you together are far smarter and more creative than I can ever be on my own…

Here’s the actual blurb that is listed on the Learning2 website…

Increasingly, the ability to be consistently creative and to think in innovative ways is what distinguishes great companies, great products and great individuals. As educators, what lessons can we learn from this? How can we apply the same principles of creativity and innovation to our classrooms in order to build engaging, interesting and challenging environments for ourselves and our students.

There are some learning outcomes listed there too, just to try and give me some focus. Really though, the cool thing about this particular conference is that it kind of evolves on the fly, and the participants are just as responsible – actually moreso – than the presenters in fleshing out the content of the sessions.

So here is my request…

If you were coming to this session, what sorts of things do you think should be part of it? What ideas, suggestions or activities would you suggest if you were participating in it? If you were running it? Do you have any great stories or ideas that would fit in with the theme? What do you do in YOUR classrooms to make them places of creativity and innovation?

I would really love to bring the wisdom of my network into these sessions. If you can offer your insights, and I really hope you can, please leave a suggestion in the comments below. You could also Tweet, email, Facebook or Google+ me, but to be honest, having all your ideas in the comment thread below would be really convenient.

Thanks! You guys are awesome…