I’m home and happy. I was lucky enough to catch earlier flights out of both Denver and Dallas (suffering through a middle seat in the back of the plane from DFW to RDU) and was thrilled to get back in time to watch a movie with Brenda before bed.

I know that I am usually blogging throughout the conference, but this year there seemed to be no time reflecting, much less writing. In fact, on Monday it was 9:00PM before I had time to eat, and that was only because I was so starved that I left TEDxDenverED early.  But I did take notes using concept mapping software on my iPad, and many of them I tweeted out just after the sessions.  I am hoping that the next few blog posts will include some of my reflections from the conference, feeding off of those notes.

The first event of the conference was EduBloggerCon, masterfully organized again by Steve Hargadon.  We started off with people writing down unconference topics and then signing their names to the ones that were most interesting.  The conversations with the most votes, were worked into a schedule, which was posted on the event wiki.

One of the conversations that I attended to was “Technology Literacy.”  It was a useful conversation with a lot of complementary viewpoints.  Here are some of the statements that I jotted down with my comments in grayed italics:

• There’s doing technology, evaluating technology, and tech knowledge.  All three are part of being tech literate.
• Our students do not know how to use technology to learn.  I’m not sure I wholly ?agree with this one.  They do not know how to use technology to be schooled.  But they do, I think, know how to use their information environment to learn.  That’s not to say that they do it well and don’t need our guidance.  They certainly need that.  But it’s a distinction that I think is worth making.
• We need to be teaching computer application, not computer applications.  This is something that I’ve written about before (What Difference Might One “S” Make?).  The distinction is learning how to apply ICT rather than learning discrete computer applications.
• Two barriers to implementation of technology literacy development are lack of time and the fact that many teachers are not independent learners themselves.
• There was talk about learning by tinkering, and that most of us, in the group, agreed that we developed our technology skills by tinkering.  The problem is that the nature of tinkering is not very “schooly.”
• Sylvia Martinez observed that nearly all conversations about technology literacy seem to automatically evolve into conversations about education reform.

I also attended to one of the conversations about iPads, entitled, “What Ipads/tablets are going to change education?.” I think that would have been an excellent conversation. But, instead, we witnessed a back and forth on why the iPad might be an important learning tool and why it wouldn’t. I got the impression that much of the push back came from IT folks, and that at least some of their objections were based on misinformation.

I must admit that the jury’s still out for me, though after a few weeks of using my iPad, I’m increasing intrigued by its prospects in the classroom.

It was an interesting and useful conversation sharing ideas that need to be shared. But, on the whole, I think that it’s a premature conversation. The iPad is new, it’s an infant, and what we’ll be doing with it five years from now, one year from now, three months from now depends more on a community of application developers than it does on Apple. I would hate to see us, though, try to push applications into classroom relevance, just so that we can integrate the iPad, the way that we often do with handhelds and other technologies.

One observation that I thought was extremely interesting was someone’s suggestion that when China can come up with an alternative device, the iPed, two months after iPad is introduced, running on Android OS, we have to wonder how Apple, with its constrained App Store, is going to keep up with the innovations of it’s competition.  I’ll have more to say about that later…

A final conversation that I participated in was called “Interrogating the Concept of ‘PLN’.”  This was a challenge to the term, “Personal Learning Network.”  The argument seemed to be that being able to connect to people and information sources that help us do our jobs has been around for a long time, and that we should be explaining exactly what this is about, rather than referring to a term like “Personal Learning Network.”

I don’t think that the conversation got us anywhere, except that it forced us to think hard about what we are doing and how we are talking about it.  I honestly do not think that the challengers got any traction with the term’s defenders.  For instance, several folks said that they would never start explaining networked professional learning with the term PLN.  We start with an explanation and demonstration of some of the practices.  That’s what teachers do!

I asked on several occasions, “What would give the term credibility?” and did not get an answer.  but I think that there is something bigger going on here which I mentioned to a few people in passing.  The suggestion didn’t seem to resonate, so I’m going to hold onto it for the time being.

All-in-all it was a great EduBloggerCon, perhaps the best yet.  The conversations were fruitful, even when there were few conclusions.  They pushed us to think and express, and there was not nearly as much complaint about the barriers that we’ve listened to in the past.  I think that, as a concept, the EduBloggerCon, or at least the community that this one draws, is maturing.

Possible follow-ups: My reflections on presenters such as Elliott Soloway, Gary Stager, Kathy Schrock, Doug Johnson, Jean-François Rischard, my whirlwind tour of the exhibit hall and ISTE as Disneyland for teachers.

I just found an education blogger to add to my personal learning network. Yong Zhao was the opening keynote speaker for the Wisconsin School Leadership Academy this week, a conference that I will be closing tomorrow. I checked out the conference site just before boarding the plane in Burlington, VT and then linked over to his site and blog, saving a number of his most recent entries to Instapaper for read during the flight.

The bad news is that I’m completely changing my closing address. I’d be pretty much delivering the same message with a different accent and without his academic authority. The good news is finding a new teacher.

Even though we have spoken at the same conference on several occasions, I’ve only seen him present once. He was clear in his presentation, compelling, and very good at something that only a few keynoters do well, turning his message into a story — complete with surprise ending. But his blog hammers through to some of the fundamental reasons why the Obama Administration’s approach to education reform is wrong and why our current Secretary of Education should be replaced.

One of the pieces that caught my eye was A Pretense of Science and Objectivity: Data and Race to the Top, where he does not criticize data, but our worship of it’s collection and use as what’s going to save education in America.

I’ve written about data-god on several occasions and agree with Yong that good data can be a good thing. But the government’s monotheistic approach devalues the rich and telling data that is exchanged during typical learning conversations that happen in the classroom everyday and effectively hobbles the teacher’s role in working these data exchanges with wisdom, passion, creativity, and confidence. This is the greatest loss and most costly to our children — the loss of our confidence.

I’ll leave the rest to you, and look forward to reading more from Yong Zhao.

- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Location:Access Rd,Chicago,United States

A Learning Commons ((Lower Columbia College. “Learning Commons.” Flickr. 19 Feb 2009. Web. 19 Jan 2010. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/lowercolumbiacollege/3293381635/>.))

On the 14th, I wrote a blog post (Applying PLN — a Continuing Question for Me), questioning some of my own assumptions about expecting educators to embrace learning practices — cultivating personal learning networks.  I wrote about my feeling stumped by administrators in Colorado last week, wishing that I had the answers to their questions about promoting more relevant learning in their classrooms. In truth, like most of the rest of the session, some excellent ideas came out of the conversation that erupted, after it was revealed that I had no easy answer.  The thrust of the discussion was the culture of the school, and the expectations that the culture places on its members.

So, what does that culture look like?  What do we see in the school and classroom where learning lifestyle pops to mind?  I think that we see is conversation — and not just conversations between teachers and students.  There is a much broader conversation that permiates the entire building and beyond, about new learning and about learning new things.  It is a school that says, out loud,

“We go beyond the basics.”

“Standards are the starting place for what’s exciting here, not the end goal.”

“This is where learners of all ages are not just memeorizing facts and mastering skills — but working with new knowledge, constructing new knowledge, and impacting others through their work.

Here are just a few suggestions for administrators for promoting these conversations:

1. Hire learners. Ask prospective employees, “Tell me about something that you have learned lately.” “How did you learn it?” “What are you seeking to learn more about right now?”
2. Open your faculty meetings with something that you’ve just learned – and how you learned it.  It does not have to be about school, instruction, education managements, or the latest theories of learning.
3. Make frequent mention of your Twitter stream, RSS reader, specific bloggers you read.  Again, this should not be limited to job specific topics.
4. Share links to specific TED talks or other mini-lectures by interesting and smart people, then share and ask for reactions during faculty meetings, in the halls, or during casual conversations with employees and parents just before the PTO meeting.
5. Include in the daily announcements, something new and interesting (Did you know that a California power utility has just gotten permission to start buying electricity from outer space?).
6. Ask students in the halls what they’ve just learned. Ask them what their teachers have just learned.
7. Ask teachers and other staff to write reports on their latest vacation, sharing what they learned – and publish them for public consumption.
8. Ask teachers to devote one of their classroom bulletin boards to what they are learning, related or unrelated to the classroom.
9. Include short articles in the schools newsletter and/or web site about research being conducted by the teachers – again, related or unrelated to the classroom.
10. Learn what the parents of your students are passionately learning about, and ask them to report (text, video, Skype conversation, or in person to be recorded).
    —————————————- added later ————————————–
11. Find ways to be playful at your school — and perhaps feel less grown-up. (see Do Grown-ups Learning?)

I’m pretty sure that, at this point, the learning had already started happening

I had a great couple of days, last week with folks in Loveland, Colorado, starting off with a wonderfully stimulating dinner conversation with some of the district’s (Thompson School District) tech coaches.  I wrote about it here.  The next day (Saturday) started off with a keynote for area educators involved in a district initiative and other invited members of the local ed community — great to meet Jim Folkestad, from Colorado State University.

The keynote seemed well received and was followed by some closing remarks by the districts superintendent, Ron Cabrera.  All was well until I spent forty-five minutes of casual conversation time with some of the districts administrators.  First of all, being a conversational session, I tried to extract answers from the audience, going for conversation rather than Q&A — and  it always makes me uncomfortable, not being the source of all answers.  I admit it.

Then someone asked, how to get teachers on board with transforming their learning environments — and all eyes were on me.  I launched into my position that although formal professional development opportunities are important — we will not be able to just workshop teachers into the 21st century.  Then I touched on personal learning networks, trying not to give away too much, since that was the presentation I would be doing after lunch.  I started to run through a process that I have suggested in previous blog entries, of starting with about four or five teachers, and introducing them, at-ready points, to a progression of Web 2.0 tools, starting with asking them to start blogging about their daily experiences.

Heads started shaking, almost immediately.  Now these administrators were there because they chose to spend there Saturday with other educators exploring technology.  So they were not looking for excuses — which is often the case.  They saw real barriers to what I was suggesting, which was particularly disconcerting, since I’m just started that chapter in my current book project on PLNs.  They rattled off a string of challenges facing their teachers, foremost being Colorado’s high stakes tests.

It’s  forced me to table my writing for a few days and think through how to promote personal learning in your education community.   I’m actually wondering if it might it be unrealistic to be expecting all teachers to take on the role of “Master Learner.”  There’s just too much of the instructional industrial complex that’s standing in the way.   It’s one of many reasons why high stakes tests are actually harmful to our children and their opportunities.

Mainly, I am telling this story because of a link to a recent Alfie Kahn article, to be published soon in Education Week, Debunking the Case for National Standards.  He does a much better job than I of making the case.

Also, contributing to my current mood is Chris Lehmann’s wonderful keynote address at the ‘09 NYSCATE conference.  One of the big takeaways from Lehmann’s words was this paraphrasing:

While our students can do so much more as active learners than ever before, we are measuring their learning in the oldest and most limiting ways possible.

Another one that resonated with me was his comments about project-based learning, a concept that nearly everyone agrees with and subscribes to.  But he said that if a teacher is applying projects to meet standards and improve or maintain test scores, then it isn’t project-based learning.

It’s doing projects along the way.  …The work that students are doing is the most important thing, not the answers they can put on the test.

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Four Crystal Balls, by Valdemar Horwat ((Horwat, Waldemar. “Four Crystal Balls.” Flickr. 28 Mar 2009. Web. 27 Dec 2009. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/naturalturn/3393185440/>.))

Obviously, this started out being a list of predictions about 2010 and beyond. But, after working on it for about a week, I concluded that the questions we are asking, as we move toward the future are much more interesting. ..and, of course, the biggest and most interesting question for 2010 is, “What are we going to call it, two-thousand and ten or twenty-ten?” Anybody? Anybody?

Let’s get down to brass tacks, and getting down to brass tacks is actually a great way to begin. It’s not a very old expression, as expressions go — first used in an 1863 issue of The Tri-Weekly Telegraph, a Texas newspaper. The line said,

When you come down to ‘brass tacks’ – if we may be allowed the expression – everybody is governed by selfishness. ((Martin, Gary. “Get Down to Brass Tacks.” The Phrase Finder. Web. 23 Dec 2009. <http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/get-down-to-brass-tacks.html>.))

..and this, more than anything else, is what drives the future.  What we are able to imagine and invent is easy.  It’s limitless.  We can go in any direction we want.  The “want” is the question.  What will help us answer our questions, solve our problems, or accomplish our goals — as we perceive them or as we are persuaded to perceive them.  Will this new 3Gs iPhone help me do my job?  Will increasing my taxes bring down greenhouse gases, feed and house the poor, and provide a more relevant education for our children?

So, perhaps the best way to predict the future is to explore our questions/problems.

• This first one really isn’t want-based.  But it’s one that nagging at us all.  What is Apple going to unveil at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, on anuary 26? ((Gelles, David. “Exclusive: Apple to host event in January.” Financial Times 23 Dec 2009: n. pag. Web. 28 Dec 2009. <http://blogs.ft.com/techblog/2009/12/exclusive-apple-to-host-event-in-january/>.)) My prevailing question is, “Will the built-in features of Apple’s alleged Tablet make it a (the) ideal learning technology? ..or will Apple have to contrive instructional applications as they (and others) have done in the past for their new ‘game changers’?”
• This is a big one for me. Does learning performance, as measured by annual test scores, accurately and appropriately predict success in a future that is characterized by change? I’m looking for research to be done that correlates the level of life success in adults to their success as students.
• Even if we conclude that high stakes testing is harmful to our children, no tipping point in the greater education conversation is going to kill it. An alternative is necessary, and I wonder what kind of killer app might emerge that makes electronic portfolio assessment (or other procedure) simply look too perfect to resist. Is there some new digital tool on the horizon or, might there be something that’s already out there, but has not yet reached a critical mass, that is going to change the game?  What’s the next big thing?  What will be the buzz at ISTE 2010? (see this conversation David Jakes started on Posterous)
• Are we (teachers) going to become digital users or subscribers?  For decades we have been comfortable using packaged instructional content (textbooks, etc.) to help students learn, and this was probably necessary in closed learning environments.  But with astoundingly abundant information, might we become our own packers. I’m curious about the emergence of video search. Hulu, the web-based TV service, now allows viewers to search the closed caption text of qualifying movies and TV shows. ((Wei, Eugene. “Search Captions on Hulu.” Hulu Blog. Hulu, Hulu LLC.. Web. 28 Dec 2009. <http://blog.hulu.com/2009/12/21/search-captions-on-hulu/>.)) It’s a bit quirky, but another step toward making a universe of digital content more accessible and workable by teachers and learners. Will we take advantage of all this abundance of content, or continue to limit ourselves to the comfort of subscribing and prescribing?
• What’s to come of social networking? Will we, as a larger defining education community, come to accept social learning techniques and integrate them, or will we continue to fear and block these opportunities?
• Will the current economic bottom-drop curtail the proliferation of 1:1 learner to computer environments, or might it cause an acceleration? There are two other prevailing questions that nag at me,
  1. What technologies constitutes a true ubiquitous personal digital learning tool?
  2. How will ubiquitous personal digital learning tools affect the learning cultures of schools, classrooms, and our larger learning environments?
• A huge question-mark resides over the future of textbooks. I continue to wonder if we might discover that going digital could be a cheaper way to help students learn than continuing down the road of pulp-wood based learning resources? ..and “Will somebody (textbook industry or open source community) create a new “textbook” platform that truly harnesses the qualities of digital networked learning?  Kindle is not the answer!
• Where does my job as a teacher stop? I think that much of the network conversation, that will continue to take place out there, will be about this question.
  1. Just how much influence might I have, as a teacher, on the learning that my students are engaged in outside of my classroom and outside of the school’s bell schedule?
  2. How might emerging ICTs enable more interesting and potent learning experiences beyond the confines of traditional schooling?
  3. How responsible am I to pursue these opportunities or do I continue to follow the traditional role of teacher and leave tech and the networks to the “natives?”

OK, so I do have some predictions after all for 2010

• Personal Learning Networks (PLN) will not get easier to explain.
• We will see some form of augmented reality in the exhibit hall at ISTE 2010, so watch where you point your 3G iPhone.
• Increased acceptance of social networking applications will continue, as security concerns are addressed and as we come to realize the benefits for conversational learning and learning management.
• High stakes testing will die, and it will die quickly and embarrassingly.  But this will happen only after there is a compelling alternative.
• The next big “cool” thing will be augmented reality.  But, although it will enable some interesting and useful instructional opportunities, like so many big “cool” things before it, AR will not live up to its hype.
• Mobile and cloud computing will continue to rise in popularity and application, but not as fast as we wish.  They are both limited by infrastructure and penetration.

That’s it for now.  I may revisit this blog post in the next minutes or months.

Happy New Year!

A bridge is a sticky connector only if people need to get to the other side (( Leszczynski, Janusz. “Alexandria Bridge.” Janusz L’s Photostream. 28 Aug 2009. Flickr, Web. 23 Nov 2009. <http://www.flickr.com/photos/januszbc/3865004558/>. ))

It appears to have started with a Facebook status update from Science Leadership Academy Principal, Chris Lehmann.

When having audience is no longer novel, simply having one is no longer motivating.  We still must help kids have something powerful to say.

Saskatchewan educator, Dean Shareski, continues the point in a blog post, Why Audience Matters, followed by fellow Canadian (Snow Lake, Manitoba), Clarence Fisher in his post, Those Formerly Known as the Audience.  Finally, it all came to my attention, when Jeff Utecht tweeted a link to his installment on the conversation, Audience as Community.  I strongly recommend you read all three of these blog posts because, together, they cover a wide range of reasons why audience is important to student learners.

My immediate response to the whole issue was a mild disagreement with Chris’ initial post.  He may be right, and he’s certainly in a better position than me to see it first hand.  But I’ve had numerous Class Blogmeister teachers say that “classroom” as audience seems to be just about as motivating as arranging for people around the world read and respond. 

I suspect that the world-reach thrill of blogging might be novel and might wear off.   But it occurs to me that the true power of working within an audience, as opposed to performing in front of an audience (writing to the teacher, what you thing the teacher wants to read), is the power of conversation.  It’s knowing that somebody (even the guy in the next row) is reading what you are writing (not measuring it), and that the reader may respond to what you’ve written, pushing you to rethink and respond back.

It’s the potential of adding something valuable to somebody else’s thinking — the potential of becoming valuable.

I usually mention three qualities of personal learning networks when I do presentations on the subject — that PLNs are:

1. Personal — They’re shape and function is completely up to the the ongoing needs of the learner.
2. Both Spontaneous and Directed — Some learning experiences can result from careful cultivation of the network, and some simply happen because you are connected.
3. Connective — The network of people and sources are held together not by wires, routers, and HTML links.  It is a network of ideas.

It’s this last one, connectiveness, that I think may be pertinent to this conversation.  There has to be something between the network nodes besides the concept of audience.  There has to be something sticky there, something that helps, something that offers value, an intrinsic reason for the conversation.  If you are connecting your class to another class in Scotland, then there needs to be something in the perspective or experience of those Scottish students that helps your students accomplish their goals, and it must be a goal that is more than academic or schoolie.  It has to be a goal your students identify with — that they want to accomplish.

This network of ideas is one of my favorite aspects of personal learning networks.  The people I am connected to are not part of my network because we look the same, speak the same native language, follow the same religous doctrine, or share identical cultural traits.  We connect through our ideas, because what we do provokes us to share those ideas, and we all benefit.  Even the photo that I include at the top of this post comes from a temporary PLN connection with Janusz Leszczynski, simple because he (she) once took a picture of a bridge and labeled it bridge and I, months later, was looking for a picture of a bridge to symbolize connection.  The ideas were experienced at different times, but the ideas’ stickness lasted on.

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I crave routine.  For the past week and a half, I have started my morning with a bowl of Cream of Wheat (It’s better than grits) followed by a mile walk to the local Starbucks, a bag (above) over my shoulder.  Unpacked, I have my mobile office — Acer Netbook with Ubuntu waiting for login, a wireless mouse, and a mug of Cafè Americano.  I’m writing a new book about network professional development — how learning is like gardening ;-)

Tim Holt recently wrote an interesting entry (Do I Trust the System Enough) in his blog, Intended Consequences.  In it, Tim describes his plans to write a book for administrators about a particular type of professional development.  He is planning to follow my example of self-publishing the book, hopeful that “..enough people purchase it so that (he) can put (his) kids through college.”  My experience with self-publishing has been almost entirely positive and fruitful.  I’ll never make a living at it, and I’m still working on my son’s tuition, but writing for yourself is a true pleasure.

His central question, however, is an interesting one — a “test of faith.”

I talk a lot about collaborative work. I talk a lot about sharing. I talk a lot about using professional networks to enhance learning and your professional work. So here is a perfect example of something that I can put “out there” for my PLN to critique, add to, subtract from, tell me I am full of it, or give me a pat on the back. I want folks to work with me through the process, to share, to be part of the product. Everyone would get credit.

There are a number of notable examples of books written publicly on wikis or in similar environments.  I’m not absolutely sure, but it seems that one or more of Lawrence Lessig’s books were written publicly, as was Chris Anderson’s The Long Tail, through his blog.

But Tim is concerned.

..I just hesitate putting it out there because I keep thinking that it is going to be ripped-off before it is done and someone will take my idea and run with it.

I’ll say here that I have been working on a short (hopefully) book about networked professional development for a little over a week now, trying to take advantage of an almost three week stint with no traveling.  I explained a little more about the project in my comment on Tim’s blog.

But that asside, I also tell a story where several years ago someone (I do not recall who) sent me a package with a note asking if I was aware of this.  The note indicated the page number, in a paperback book enclosed in the packaging, for a chapter which was, word for word, an article I had written a few years earlier and published through a now defunct online journal.  I was furious and immediately shot off an e-mail to the publishers, who were in India.  There was never a reply to that e-mail. I quickly settled down, realizing that there was nothing I could do that would be worth the expense, and I forgot about the whole episode until now.

Things are different now, aren’t they? India is not nearly so far away.  I would probably have no more success with the publishers.  But today, I have a blog.  And many of the readers of my blog have their own blogs.  And we could fill the edu-blogosphere with our indignation about an instructional technology book that so blatantly plagiarizes the work of another.

I think that Tim has a valid concern.  He is talking about investing a lot of work into a project — A LOT OF WORK, and he has a right to be concerned about the property that will result.  But our community is so much more transparent today that if I were considering writing my book publicly, fear of theft probably wouldn’t stop me.

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Click the images to enlarge

Brenda pointed these out to me yesterday evening. They are in a wooded area of our backyard, at the base of a Maple tree. It’s been raining and yesterday was the most humid day I’ve seen this summer (75% — not at all high for most NC summers).

They are mushrooms of some variety, but I have never seen something like this before.

So you know what it is?

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Oficina de blogs + educação by Ana Carmen

After speaking to one of the most hospitable audiences of education leaders ever (Texas Association of School Boards), I spent most of yesterday in airports — and eating all manner of Mexican food.  Just left a note on the kitchen count, “No Breakfast for Me!”

I sure didn’t get far into catching up on e-mail before I came up with a question for the smarter part of me — my readers.  The quesiton is this,

What are the pre-requisites for learning to establish and maintain a personal learning network?  Of course, I’m talking about the digital/distant kind of PLN.  I’m going to start things off, but if anything occurs to you, please post it here as a comment.

• Computer savvy — practiced mouser; capable at opening, saving, and navigating files; accustomed with working multiple windows; able to connect to WiFi networks; and able to identify and even download and install software appropriate to a variety of file types.
• Internet Savvy — Browser literate; experienced Web navigator; able to keep and manage bookmarks; able to capture and save (download) text, images, audio, and video files (under most circumstances); Confident at signing up for online services.
• This is the most important — Willing to redefine your job as a teacher.  Willing to call yourself a master learner.

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Thinking Stick, Jeff Utecht, wrote a blog post today that really resonated with me.  Just back from the EARCOS Teacher’s Conference (ETC),  Utecht reflects on why he attended only two session, other than the four that he presented.

It’s the first conference that I’ve gone to where I truly did not “do” the conference. Other than my own four presentations I only went to two others….one if you don’t count Kim’s.

I’ve been trying to wrap my head around why I didn’t feel motivated to go to more sessions. I like learning so what was my problem?

Then it hit me…..I don’t like learning alone!

I don’t like Learning Alone! « The Thinking Stick

Teaching Sagittarian, Chrissy Hellyer, took this picture at Kim Cofino’s presentation.  You notice how many people are paying attention to the Projector.

I’ve had this same experience, though I am more likely to attribute it to fatigue.  But the thing is, if learning is the only reason we are going to conferences, well, then, who needs them.  I have been at home most of the day, sitting in my office and working.  Principally I have been preparing for tomorrow’s ISTE Eduverse talk show in Second Life.  As a result, I’ve been teaching myself how to build and install animations and gestures and to face the person I am talking to.  I also learned to install a captcha on the Education Podcast Network, to try to prevent spam from getting in.

Jeff says, “I don’t like learning alone.”  At no point did I feel that I was learning alone today.  At least, I was learning from blog posts and YouTube videos posted by people just like me.

I think that the loss of social interaction that results from unreliable Internet at conferences is a huge part of the issue.  But I also suspect that we are becoming accustomed to working within a greater brain — no longer limited by our own dendrits.  We have become accustomed to having quiet conversations within our networks, to asking questions and getting answers back from people we respect, and to contributing knowledge and insights to a larger community — and not just for the sake of helping others, but for the value-added that occurrs when it comes back.

<em>It’s like trying to learn with half your brain tied behind your back</em> — or a full three-quarters in my case.  I think that his extension to students is a valid one.

And then I started thinking about our students. Our students who spend there day not just in front of screens but connecting with people, learning in the moment and creating content.

They play together, learn together, work together, and grow together.  Then, in the classroom, we value the space between their desks more than their tendency to connect and the power of it.

I think that this is something that conferences need to understand and facilitate.  It’s no longer merely about sharing.  Today the conference has to be about growing the knowledge.

Added Later:  Kim Cofino made a particularly interesting contribution to this conversation here:

I love learning. I used to love professional conference too – mostly because they were a great place to learn. But, last weekend, at our regional teacher’s conference (ETC), I made a realization… (more here)