EduCon 2.1 is coming up in about three weeks, and with it, for me, comes an exciting (and downright scary) opportunity to facilitate a conversation that I’ve been having off and on for a very long time. Here’s the description of the session:
The Internet as a medium, or way of communicating, is dynamic, complex, exciting, amazingly diverse, and, in plenty of substantive ways, pretty much nothing new. We have made connections through printed texts and oral stories for generations, other media have filled the gaps between peoples and cultures. There is, to quote a rather old text, “nothing new under the sun.” And yet there’s something about the nature of the Internet, and how it functions, that helps to flesh out a vital component of the writing process that was never quite visible before. Call it connective writing, or hypertext, or what you will, but the almost tactile connections we can make between texts and folks online are dynamic and significant. There’s nothing new about making text to text connections, but there’s sure something powerful in the representation of those links as semi-tangible things.
As we move forward into the new read/write web, I think it’s of value to reconsider both the “reading” and “writing” sides of the equation. We’ll save the reading for another conversation. Come to a session where we will revel in, and experiment with, writing and the power of language, thought, diction and connection to create and discover the world and ourselves. We’ll use some very 1.0 methodologies and some very 2.0 basic tools to think about how we write, what we write, and what we do and don’t do when we write and when we ask students to write for school.
I’m really interested, through the conversation, to move back a step, at least as far as my own self and career and knowledge of teaching and learning is concerned, and to refocus myself and my work around why I got into technology work in the first place – namely, because I saw computers as excellent creation and publication tools – they were and are very good for composition of all shapes and sizes.
I dig writing, and all the interesting writing’s being done on computers these days (or at least it’s being published via computers – Moleskines are still full of really excellent stuff).
One sideline, and perhaps even tangential, conversation that I keep thinking about is the shift to mobile devices. I’m writing this post on an HP Mini 1000, a netbook with a decent keyboard. I didn’t get interested in ultra mobile computers or smart phones or the like until I saw that I could use them to thoughtfully communicate in my favorite mode – text. (My XO is another story – while I’ve learned to type pretty well on its little keyboard, I own that machine more out of a desire to better understand a philosophy of product development and learning than out of a desire to have a tiny laptop for me to use. Oh, and supporting what I believe to be a good cause didn’t hurt, either. You could also argue that the XO created the market for the device I’m typing on. But I digress.)
I’ve written blog posts and e-mails and tweets and lots of other types of messages, posts, and whatnots on all sorts of devices. Cell phones, computers, typewriters, word processors, etc. And I just can’t function as a digital writer without a full sized keyboard.
What I worry about, in our rush to take everyone and everything mobile (and I am very much interested in mobile technology myself, don’t get me wrong) is that we’ll end up with tools that won’t really do what we need them to do. The tools themselves, as always, have the potential to shape what we think about, how we thinking about it, and what we do with those thoughts.
When I think about school and learning, I think about writing. Our learning tools need to have easy and useful ways for putting words and ideas into them as well as getting those words and ideas back out. Right now, I think mobile tools are more about consumption than they are about creation. (Thanks to Chris Craft for the right tweet at the right time to help me figure out that phrasing.)
And that scares me. In our conversation, I hope we get to talk about this notion I have that I’m certain that much of what we’re trying to do with technology today is work that we, or our predecessors, were trying to do with their technology yesterday – teach writing well. We all should be helping students develop the ability to draft and revise and edit and be their own crap detectors and learn to think about whom they were writing to, and to tailor their compositions to that/those audience(s). That basic framework works for text, video, audio, still pictures, and any combination thereof.
I hope you join me in some time spent writing, thinking, and talking about how writing remains so essential to learning and how technology, specifically the read/write web, assists us in fulfilling the promises and opportunities of strong writing communities and might be altering our societal reading, writing, and thinking paradigms. (One question of many for me on that front – What does it mean when the text that you are reading not only suggests that you consult another source, but it can take you to that source? In real time?)
I’m looking very much forward to it. I hope you are, too.
(You are coming to EduCon, right? It’s not too late to register – and if you can’t be there in person, the plan is to stream all of the great content from the event – so you can still participate.)
Well, we did it earlier this year and most folks asked us to put on a 2009 edition, so we’re doing it again.
You are invited to attend the Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation Conference (2009 Edition).
What is Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation?
Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation is a one day conference/meetup for teachers, administrators, students, school board members, parents and anyone who is interested in education. It will be held on Saturday, February 21st, 2009, from 9:00 am until 3:00 pm at Heritage High School in Littleton, Colorado, USA (different location than last year – here’s a map). We assume most folks will be from Colorado, but everyone is welcome to attend, and we are working on some ideas for virtual participation.
Education is conversation. Conversation creates change.
The future of education does not exist in the isolated world of theory and abstract conference sessions. Instead, it exists in conversations. It exists in creating a robust learning network that is ever-expanding and
just-in-time. Learning 2.0 is not the beginning of this conversation. It is merely a stopping point, a time to talk about the visible difference that we all seek.
We read. We reflect. We write. We share. We learn.
Come join us for a day of conversation about learning and technology.You can learn much more about the conference on the
wiki, including information about
registering. Here are some highlights:
Tentative Schedule
We’re still working on the details so this will be updated before the conference. Also, this may expand if we have more folks register than we are anticipating.
Registration
You must register so that we know how many folks to expect and so that we can have enough lunches available. (Who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch?)
Cost
Free, baby. And lunch is included, thanks to the generous support of Littleton Public Schools and St. Vrain Valley Public Schools.
Wireless
BYOL (that would be Bring Your Own Laptop) – we’ll have wireless access to the Internet (filtered) – we may test our capacity to handle density of machines, but hopefully things will go swimmingly. If not, we have wired machines in various places you can access.
Questions for Students
We’re having a student panel discussion during lunch. Here’s your chance to submit some questions for them to consider.
Invite Others
We strongly encourage you to invite other folks from your school, district, neighborhood, or learning network to attend as well. It would be great if everyone could bring at least one person with them that is perhaps new to this conversation. Bring a student along, too. (Just remember to register.)
Questions?
Feel free to leave a comment on this post or on the FAQ page on the wiki.
Oh, also feel free to add this image to your blog, or download and print the flyer.
Buried in the comments of Barbara’s latest post (an excellent think-piece about different blogging styles) is a fine statement that sums up quite nicely why I ever bother to put fingers to keyboard or pen to paper:
I want to write better than I do: lean and lush, deep and real, sitting down with a bunch of frayed threads of clashing colors and see if I can weave them into something beyond myself.
Me, too, Barbara. Me, too.
UPDATE: In the comments below, Mike advocates for free versions of desktop software. I am completely in favor of those options for students and schools. I also like free and open source software for digital infrastructure. (Both the software packages I mention in the podcast are free and open source tools.) The “free” I’m talking about here is quite different. Forgive the poor title choice.
In today’s podcast, I talk a little bit about my reaction to a Twitter conversation from yesterday about free tools and why I’m not necessarily in favor of them, at least for what I believe are basic educational needs. We’ve got to support our schools and our classrooms and our educators and our students, but not on the backs and whims of third-party kindness. As always, I’m interested in your thoughts as I continue to develop my own.
Links I Mentioned
Steve‘s “luxury” tweet.
A smattering of some of the Twitter conversation. (These don’t do it justice, but will give you a bit of the flavor of the conversation.)
Vicki Davis’s posts on her Lively project/protest.
Direct Link to Audio
Karl gave me a very special gift this year, as well as a way for me to do the same for other folks. Lee explains:
Today, Karl Fisch posted a message on his blog inviting members of his PLN (Personal Learning Network) to join Team Shift Happens and contribute however much possible to Kiva. Kiva is different than other charities in that it is a micro-lending website. People, like you and I, can loan money ($25 and up) directly to individual entrepeneurs in the developing world.
On Karl’s suggestion, I’ve donated $25 to an entrepreneur and I also purchased two $25 gift certificates that I have emailed to two members of my PLN. I’m asking them to do the same as I did:
- Log in to Kiva.
- Join Team Shift Happens (click on Community and search keyword, “shift”)
- Choose the entrepreneur to whom they will loan the value of the gift certificate.
- Then consider doing the same thing I did – purchase two $25 gift certificates and email them to two members of their PLN with the same request to “pay it forward.”
- Make a $25 loan yourself, or
- Do what I did; make a $25 loan, then purchase two $25 gift certificates and email them to folks you know and ask them to do the same, and/or
I’ve been honored to pay it forward as I received one of Karl’s original certificates and have been sharing gift certificates with others. I also made an investment on my own, following in Karl’s footsteps. I learned a great deal as I made my way through Kiva’s site, learning more about the specifics of micro-finance and peering into another part of the world. It’s been a treat to continue the chain, and to make someone’s day by sending along a gift that I know will be a useful one.
I wonder if you might want to send such a gift, too.
Join Team Shift Happens. Make someone’s day – e-mail them a Kiva gift certificate, and ask them to keep paying it forward, to make someone else’s day, too. Lots of folks win. Better yet, as loans are repaid, this can be a gift that, literally, keeps on giving.
