For instance.
Wesley Fryer, writing in TechLearning
Blog gives an example of a number of aspects of how future
conferences might take place:
How amazing it is to sit in my home in Oklahoma, USA, listening to a spring rain
shower and read about what other teachers around the world in New Zealand are
learning from Sheryl and other TUANZ presenters! We live in a flat world indeed.
As if that was not enough flat world learning, I exchanged a few instant messages
with educational digital storyteller and visionary-extrordinaire Marco Torres
tonight. Marco is teaching a series of workshops in Alaska right now, and just
finished a superb
4 minute video featuring teachers, students, and the principal of Eek school in
Eek, Alaska . That video (titled "Alaska 1:1") and many others are linked
from Marco's
.Mac "muves" page . It seems clear from the video that the students in Eek
have some visionary and passionate teachers who are leading them into 21st century
learning contexts. We need to learn from students, but we also need adult leaders
like those in Eek who are not afraid to lead both students and teachers when it
comes to technology. My skype videoconference call today with Michael
Kelly (who was at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville) drove the
reality of our FLAT WORLD home to me as well. Michael and I are co-teaching a
series of workshops in San Antonio next week for the SITE conference, and Skype
videoconferencing makes collaboration so personal it is easy to forget we're over
1000 miles apart. All of the above interactions and learning experiences were
essentially FREE for me today, since I have a laptop and access to the Internet.
Frankly, after reading about all that multitasking it's hard not to want to stand
up and salute. For me, just listening to the spring rain that Fryer mentions
at the beginning of his post would be enough for me to start wandering off-topic,
never to return. In one rather concise paragraph we read about almost every buzz-word
that can be jammed into a conference devoted to technology in education.
And perhaps it goes without saying that when teachers at conferences report about
the achievements of their classes we have to know how to read between the lines.
For some strange reason I can't seem to recall any reports of projects at conferences
that tell us that they were failures, or even only partial successes. If anyone
ever finds him or herself feeling down about the future of computers in education,
there's nothing like the reports on projects at conferences to create the impression
that all is well. At conferences, it seems, all teachers are good teachers, and
all students good learners.
Go to: Wifi to the aid of the wandering mind, or
Go to: On writing a column as though it were a physical
presence, or
Go to: The tedium of real time.