EduCon 2.1, Constructing Modern Knowledge, and Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation

If there’s one educational conference you attend this year, I think you should make it be EduCon 2.1. If I had a choice between FETC and EduCon, I’d pick EduCon. If I had a choice between NECC and EduCon, I’d pick EduCon. If I had a choice between any content-area conference and EduCon, I’d pick EduCon (it’s not a technology conference, it’s a learning conference). If I had a choice between all my students having laptops computers and going to EduCon, I’d choose . . . well, okay, I’d choose the laptops for all my students. But you get the picture.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to go to EduCon, which is why I want you to go if it’s at all possible (and then tell me all about it). If you live anywhere near Philadelphia, go. If you don’t live near, but your organization (or personal budget) funds things like this, go. I mean, just look at the scheduled conversations. Here’s the description from Chris Lehmann:

Registration is now open for EduCon 2.1, the second annual conference and conversation on education and innovation hosted by Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy in conjunction with The Franklin Institute. We will be convening January 23-25, 2009. During the conference, educators from around the world will descend upon Philly to teach, to think and to learn how to improve their own practices and inform the larger dialogue on education as well. Aaron Sorkin wrote, "Decisions are made by those who show up." It is time to show up.

EduCon is built on the Axioms:

1) Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all members

2) Our schools must be about co-creating -- together with our students -- the 21st Century Citizen

3) Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around.

4) Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and collaborate

5) Learning can -- and must -- be networked.

Visit the EduCon wiki to learn about the conversation schedule. Aside from the conversations, Friday night will feature a panel discussion where deep thinkers from various non-academic strata investigate the question, "What is the purpose of school?" While the need for a new educational course is clear, the path to that shift is not as obvious. Sunday's panel will highlight those divergent paths as educational leaders for varying pedagogies engage each other in an attempt to make the case for how we should approach our educational evolution.

EduCon will also feature a pre-conference event on January 22nd this year - Constructing Modern Math/Science Knowledge - with participants Dr. David Thornburg, Dr. Gary Stager and more.

The stage is set for an amazing conference. No vendors. No sponsors. Simply - ideas, inquiry and pedagogy.

Show up.

General conference registration is $150 and $100 for School District of Philadelphia employees and includes Friday admittance to SLA's partner museum The Franklin Institute and The National Constitution Center. Pre-Conference registration is $100.

If you have any questions, please contact Chris Lehmann.

Now, for those of you in Colorado (or close to Colorado) who cannot attend EduCon (or even if you can attend), please consider attending the 2009 edition of Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation (last year’s info soon to be updated with this year's info). This will be held on February 21st, 2009, at Heritage High School in Littleton, Colorado (different location than last year - mapquest), with details to follow in another post very soon.

Random Thoughts from the NCTE Convention

This will not be any kind of coherent post, just some miscellaneous thoughts from the annual NCTE Convention. (I know, I know, how will you tell the difference?)

Did You Know? Has Jumped the Shark
Gary Stager tweeted a week or so ago that Did You Know? had jumped the shark because his Mom sent him the link (and, the horror, she was proud that he knew me). Then a remix of it played twice on Sunrise, a popular morning show on Australian TV. But I think the culminating piece of evidence is this picture that Bud Hunt made me take.


At the opening celebration for the NCTE Convention, they had it playing in a continuous loop for 60 minutes. But they also had the sound turned down and a mariachi band playing – so picture Did You Know? with mariachi music and light appetizers. Too. Funny. Oh well, Henry Winkler’s done okay since then, hasn’t he?

Greg Mortenson
We went to listen to Greg Mortenson, author of Three Cups of Tea, speak, and we sat in the front row because Anne wants to try to get him to blog with her students about the book. Just before he’s about to begin I start to take a picture of him. But he sees me and immediately walks over, puts his arm around me, and hands the camera to Anne to take a picture of us. After that about fifty people came up to have their picture taken with him. I’m guessing he just knows that’s going to happen so picks somebody out to start the process, I just happened to catch his attention. It was a little awkward, since I wasn’t trying to get my picture taken with him, and I’m still not sure Anne has forgiven me (even though – for the record – it was completely and utterly not my fault).

For folks that liked Three Cups of Tea, you’ll be excited to learn that they’ll be releasing both a children's version and a young reader’s version in January, both of which should be more accessible to younger readers. You might also look at the Pennies for Peace program.

Anne and Kristin
I was part of two presentations at NCTE. Anne and I were the featured presentation on Saturday morning, but it was 8:00 am so sparsely attended. But on Friday Anne Smith and Kristin Leclaire presented and it was fabulous – I predict that NCTE will be inviting them back to do some great things very soon.


Technology
Let’s just say that for a conference that was titled “Shift Happens,”


the wireless access was, ummm, pretty “shifty”. I know it’s expensive, but when is it going to be a given that when anyone gets together for a conference learning, especially educators, wireless is a necessity, not an option? Bud Hunt has more thoughts on this, and so do his commenters.

In addition, every single session I was in, including both of the ones I was associated with, had technical issues with the projectors and/or the microphones. Some of that is to be expected with that many sessions, but 100% with problems? I don’t think so.

Miscellaneous Quotes From My Notes

If we really want students to succeed in the future, we have to allow them to work in a participatory and collaborative way.

They did all this work outside of school because our filters wouldn’t let them find these things.

We invited the superintendent, adminstration, etc. – not one of them took the invitation. That was disappointing.

Teachers will incorporate bits and pieces, but it was still the same basic curriculum – we needed to change the whole thing.

'They’re on a computer, that’s not English' – but they were doing more reading and writing than in their other English classes.

I didn’t feel like our department had a vision – so I changed schools. At my new school, there was a different way of talking about students, a different way of viewing students.

We believe kids can’t look critically at the world until they figure out who they are.

We should think of ourselves [teachers] as the Designer of the Learning Experience.

Every teacher will have to be tech savvy.

They don’t have to be where the information is.

Blogging is reading, with the intent to write. (Quoting Will Richardson).

WWSD: What Would Shakespeare Do?

No, don’t worry, this is not a reprise of that post. Anne Smith had her ninth graders complete a word trace from Acts 2 and 3 of Macbeth:

Through our study of acts 2-3 of Macbeth, the kids were put into groups looking at the use of one of the following words: blood, hand, man, night, sleep.

. . . I asked the kids this year to demonstrate their learning using any way BUT PPT . . .

I let my grad school buddies know of this, and Gary Stager our teacher, asked my students to think about the project this way: What Would Shakespeare Do?

After a few presentations today, we debriefed after each one discussing did their presentation merely distribute information or did they go above and beyond the expectations to really show WWSD? I asked the groups that gave a literal interpretation to spend some more time really pushing our understanding of Shakespeare's use of those words. Why those words? Who says them the most? Are there modern connections? What connections can you make between the uses of the words? and being creative with their interpretations. I am anxious to see them progress with their thinking.

The students came up with a variety of presentations including writing a sonnet of their own about Shakespeare's use of 'hand' and connecting it to a Good Charlotte song, creating a rap rendition about 'night' and connecting it to Mission Impossible, and creating a series of one man plays about his use of 'man'. Head on over, check out the examples, and leave them some constructive criticism.

I also think it's interesting to contemplate what various historical figures would do to communicate their ideas given today's tools, and challenge students (and teachers) to not only imagine that, but try their hand at creating it. What would Shakespeare do?

Macbeth, Music, Mathematics, and Teaching: Can a Good Teacher Teach Anything from Anything Else?

I recently posted about Anne Smith’s classes creating musical compositions to represent characters in Macbeth. I think you should take another look at the comments on Anne’s post, as the discussion has moved in several different directions since then.

After many comments discussing the process and merits of using music to think more deeply about a literary work, Gary Stager asked this question:

So, do you think one lesson from this experience might be that a good teacher can teach anything from anything else?

The students had some interesting thoughts about that. Some of those thoughts touched on the subject of mathematics, including this comment:

In math, there is one answer and one answer only.

That led me to ask a question about whether the students all agreed with that statement and asked them to think about a couple of "math" problems. Since then Gary chimed in briefly again about math, and Sylvia Martinez has stopped by a couple of times to add to the discussion, but the students have really done the bulk of the commenting.

I think it would be worth your time to read through the discussion (set aside some time, as there are currently 194 comments) and perhaps add a comment with your perspective on the various topics.

Macbeth: The Musical

Well, okay, maybe not a musical. But Anne Smith and her students are doing some creative interpretations:

I decided that rather than me creating the piece of music, it would be a great opportunity to connect music with literature. Gary gave me the suggestion of having the kids connect the piece of music to something they have written. Since we are reading William Shakespeare’s Macbeth in class, we had just completed two papers dealing with Macbeth and Lady Macbeth while watching three film versions (Royal Shakespeare Company -Ian McKellan, Dame Judy Dench, English Shakespeare Company- modern version, and Roman Polansky version) of the first act comparing what each director was trying to show through their interpretations.

My students were quite excited to begin the process of composing a piece of music to fit a character. In period 2, we started talking about Lady Macbeth and her personality. What would we want to show in the song? We decided that we would show her in three stages from act one. We would show her elation at seeing her husband return home, her decision to not let King Duncan leave the castle by killing him so that Macbeth would become king, and finally her anger at Macbeth with his ambivalence about killing the king. We had some students who are as musically inclined as I am and so they worked on the lyrics (a.k.a. quotes) to fit with the music as well as finding visuals to support. The other kids, worked on the song. Amazingly, they all worked so well together testing sounds, putting together measure after measure, playing the notes, time and again. They decided the instruments that would best describe Lady Macbeth (flute) and how her tone would change into a French horn through her change in personality. Then they picked the instruments that would best accompany the sounds of Lady Macbeth. A few different kids took turns running the computer with other kids shouting up their thoughts. It seemed like organized chaos. One thing I must add here is how much I learned by watching and participating with them. I learned all sorts of vocabulary words about music (crescendo, decrescendo, staccato) and how to semi-compose music (you really have to pay attention to the notes you select with each instrument). But mostly, what I am hoping period two took away from today, and what they learned, is that music is a part of literature. When talking with them about the song, they asked my opinion about a particular part. I said it needs to sound like murder. Tristan responded that murder is an A and C sharp. And then another student, John, responding that we need to put in the key of death which is apparently E flat? As my department members were listening into our conversation they were enthralled with what these kids were doing. They were connecting Lady Macbeth’s descent into evil with music. You can hear the three distinct parts which they had mapped out at the beginning of class. It was amazing that I had kids come in on their off-hours to finish the song - and better yet, these were all boys! Boys that were asking to continue the learning. One even asked me at the end if we could do this for every book we read. Tomorrow we are going to play it for the class, make changes, and add the lyrics and visuals.

There's plenty more to read, including period 5's approach,

What was really interesting about the different approaches between my period 2 and period 5 is that it reflected how they have approached learning challenges in the class so far. Period 2 approached it collaboratively all working together, where period 5 broke into groups of music creators and lyrics composers.

examples of what they've created so far, a Picasa web album with pictures of them working,

and Anne will upload the final versions for each period once they're finished.

So, what have your students created today?

Friedman, Pink and Stager - Oh My!

At the risk of giving Gary a heart attack, here's an interview of Thomas Friedman by Daniel Pink. It's part of the February issue of The School Administrator, which appears to have several articles relevant to our discussion of A Whole New Mind. I would suggest our students read both the interview and some of the other articles with Gary's criticisms in mind. (For those of you who haven't been following our AWNM project, you may want to read through the comments on this post and this post to see some of Gary's thought-provoking questions for our students - and their responses.)

Embedded below is the 2005 commencement speech by Steve Jobs at Stanford that is referenced in the Pink/Friedman interview. You can also read the text of the speech. He tells "three stories from [his] life" - perhaps one of the reasons Mr. Pink likes it.

20 To Watch

Well, since Scott outed me, I suppose I should link to the NSBA’s “20 to Watch.”

This is certainly a nice honor, but like the article in the paper the other day, it feels a little strange. Since most of what I do is simply write about what other folks are doing, either in my building or elsewhere, I’m not sure I’m real comfortable being the one singled out. So, if you’re a teacher in my school, or if you’re someone who I’ve written about previously, consider yourself “one of many to watch.”

And congrats to the other folks on the list, especially Scott and Gary Stager, the two other folks that I "know."

Update 10-24-07: NSBA has added podcasts for a few folks. They interviewed us over the phone and then edited them way down. Here's mine (or direct mp3 file 3 minutes, 2.75 MB) - not as bad as I feared.