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My Educon Conversation

Posted on | January 28, 2010 | by David Warlick | 11 Comments
Category: education

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One of the best things about Educon is the nature of the sessions, called “Conversations.” It is unconference in practice, meaning that the session leader does not teach for learning, but, instead, his job is to generate conversations among the attendees from which everyone learns. It is not a hive mind at work, but a sharing and mixing of many ideas and perspectives, from which group and individual meaning can be found. It is beautiful!

Participant Grid

Group Grid

I have led numerous such unconference sessions, mostly to the delight of participants, who often write in their evaluations that these sessions were among the most rich in learning. I continue, though, to walk away feeling that I didn’t do my job, because I didn’t teach anything. It’s the school romantic in me. I’ll get over it.

I have felt, for some time, that the conversations I facilitate lack anchor points or magnetic positions around which to latch ideas. They are typically rich in backchanneling, which will certainly be the case at Educon, and there is great value in using each other for gaining traction. But I’ve felt for a while that something more firm was needed.

So, in addition to channeling ideas through Twitter, during my conversation, I will be asking participants to map their ideas along a bi-directional rubric (see “Participant Grid” on right), giving us all a ladder, on which to climb as we suggest ways of ramping up traditional classroom practices (all recently witnessed in existing classrooms) into learning experiences that take thinking to a higher level and make learning a more relevantly active engagement.

It will work like this:

  1. Participants will load a rubric onto their computers, with two scales, Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy going vertical, and Daggett’s Application Model along the horizontal.
  2. I will suggest a classroom learning experience that was recently witnessed in a classroom, asking participants to click the point on the grid at the point of intersection along each scale.
  3. A grid will be displayed (see “Group Grid” on right) that shows all of the participant’s clicks, indicating where individuals and the group think we are with the activity.
  4. Here, I will ask questions like, “Somebody thinks that this activity involves analysis. What is it about the activity that achieves this?” And, “How might we enrich this activity to include a measure of analysis and make it relevant in other subject areas?”

My goal is to use the tool to steer conversations about specific learning practices, drilling through the theory to describe exactly what teachers and learners are doing, and perhaps even suggest learning experience that no one in the group has yet imagined.

..Or it may not work at all. That’s the thing about conversations. They wouldn’t be interesting if they didn’t go in unpredictable directions.

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About the Author:  35 year educator, programmer, author, and public speaker. Read more from this author

Category: education
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Comments

11 Responses to “My Educon Conversation”

  1. robNo Gravatar
    January 29th, 2010 @ 2:32 pm

    David- where can I get a copy of these forms. Teriffic idea for admin “conversations” on walkthroughs

    [Reply]

  2. Bernie DodgeNo Gravatar
    January 29th, 2010 @ 3:12 pm

    Nice, David! I’ll be watching to see how this works out.

    [Reply]

  3. David WarlickNo Gravatar
    January 29th, 2010 @ 4:17 pm

    I’m curious about how it works out as well. I’ve tried it once before, and it did not work well for technical reasons. I’ve solved that now, but tomorrow will tell if something else crops up…

    [Reply]

  4. David WarlickNo Gravatar
    January 29th, 2010 @ 4:19 pm

    If this all works well, then I will likely open it up for a limited number of initial users. Check here on the blog for instructions…

    [Reply]

  5. Wendy FisherNo Gravatar
    January 30th, 2010 @ 10:07 pm

    I attended your session virtually today and although it was the first time I heard you present, you were not a stranger. The conversation on elluminate was asking where they could find your graphs as we could not see them on the video stream clearly.
    Thanks for a great sessio David. I left with my head spinning and wonderin how I can change things in my district. It seems I am working so hard but making any progress in getting others to “get it”. I’ll just keep reading and hopefully it will come to me.
    Thanks for a great session David!

    [Reply]

    David WarlickNo Gravatar reply on January 31st, 2010:

    Assuming that a “spinning” head is a good thing, it is quite gratifying that you saw value in the session. I always leave these things thinking about what I would have done differently.

    ConversationPLOT is in beta (or alpha) but I’m allowing 50 accounts right now. I don’t know if that’s filled up yet, but you can go to http://conversationplot.com/, click [Leader Login] and then click [New Account].

    [Reply]

  6. Educon . . . Professional Development in a Different Way. « EC&I 832
    February 3rd, 2010 @ 1:03 pm

    [...] Warlick, the presenter of this session wrote a post on Educon in which he reflected on his session.  One comment he made (during his presentation and on his [...]

  7. Activity Mapping | Educational Origami
    February 12th, 2010 @ 5:48 pm

    [...] Warlick posted in his 2c worth blog an interesting graph mapping Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy against Daggett’s Application [...]

  8. Bernadette WilsonNo Gravatar
    April 5th, 2010 @ 9:00 am

    I am curious about the classroom learning experience that was discussed. Is the Educon conversation archived?

    [Reply]

  9. 2¢ Worth » Continuing to Rethink Creativity
    May 5th, 2010 @ 6:54 am

    [...] These notions came from conversations I’d had with educators who were engaged in one of my IdeaPlotter activities. It also, almost certainly, comes from my preference to inventiveness, as a goal for our [...]

  10. Activity Mapping Tool | Committed Sardine Blog
    December 8th, 2012 @ 8:34 am

    [...] Warlick posted in his 2c worth blog an interesting graph mapping Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy against Daggett’s Application [...]

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Cultivating Your Personal Learning Network
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Redefining Literacy 2.0 (2008)
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Raw Materials for the Mind
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