There and Back Again: Educon 2.7 Part 3

It's always hard for me to write about my learning after Educon.  My mind has so many things swimming around it's hard for me to nail down just one idea to focus on.  So here are a few of the big take aways for me.

1. Raghava K.K., during the Friday Night Panel said, "Education is what is done to you, learning is what you do for yourself."  As educators we need to be learning in spite of system.  During "Rethinking the Purpose, process and Promise of Professional Learning" with David Jakes and Kristen Swanson, I had an A-ha moment.  "Professional development is what is done to us, Professional Learning is what we do for ourselves."  I seek out professional learning at Educon, EdCamps, IU offerings, and PETE&C.  All of these learning opportunities are not encouraged by my district or administrators, they are encouraged by a deep down innate need I have to be learning.  Professional Development can lead to learned helplessness where Professional Learning is sought personally and leads to professional growth.
2. We need to be working at changing the culture of learning for all stakeholders in our learning organization.  This takes time and patience.  Conversations need to take place in order to shift thinking and practice. 
3. Core Values need to be the crux for all decision making and culture shifting.  I see how SLA adhere to their Core Values: Inquiry, Research, Collaboration, Presentation and Reflection.  In the conversation about Distributed Leadership, Chris Lehmann addressed this idea, to always come back to the bigger picture and ask:
• Does this align with the Core Values?
  
• Does it serve children?
• Does it serve adults?
4. I really love all these beautiful conversations we have around innovation in education and working towards best practices in all we do in our schools.  Right now I am doing my best to start doing and move forward with ideas that have come out of those conversations. 

This whole idea of innovation and best practices in education is a journey.  There are mountaintop successes and failures in the valleys.  The failures teach me to go back and reframe.  The successes keep me moving forward. Educon is always a retreat to refresh, rejuvenate and reconnect. The journey continues...

Image: https://docs.google.com/a/soudertonsd.us/document/d/1BlDinWEXu9gH5ZzOux4ew9U-NzjAF4hZmiteN6OUwoI/edit?usp=sharing

There and Back Again: Educon 2.7 Part 2

Thoughts that evolved out of Educon:

I'm changing the name of my blog.  Mrs. Irvin's Tech Page is now Learning Spaces  Learning Journey, because it seriously is a journey!   I haven't decided if there is an end to this journey. It just keeps on going.

I decided to take the "Tech" out of the name just like I need to take the "tech" out of my goals.  I don't like my title as Technology Teacher.  I'm not teaching technology.  I'm teaching students and teachers to learn and think and use the technology as if it were a pencil, pen or paintbrush.

This whole idea had me thinking, "is this new?"  For years we in the tech world have been saying it's a tool not to be taught.  Just as we wouldn't think about teaching how to use a pencil or when to use a pencil or what type of pencil to use.

So why are we still discussing how to get tech integrated into our classrooms? I feel like we are squandering precious time talking about it.  What are we doing about it?

Here's what I've been doing:

• working with teachers who are interested and available to meet - There are some teachers who invite me into their planning time and classrooms. I happily accept those invitations.  There are some teachers who have told me they do not want me at their planning time, so I do not work with them.  It's quite simple.

• taking baby steps - starting with something small - Each time I work with a teacher, I encourage them to pick just one thing to try during our time together.  I don't want them feeling overwhelmed. We keep it simple.

• celebrating the successes no matter the size - a teacher uses google forms to collect information from students - YAY! A teacher instructs students to create tutorial videos about studying, upload them to their google drives and share with teacher and me - YAY!  No success is too small to share and celebrate

What are you doing to promote tech integration in classrooms?  What steps are you taking to help colleagues meet with success?

"Technology needs to be like oxygen - ubiquitous, necessary and invisible." - Chris Lehmann

There and Back Again: Educon 2.7, Part 1

Educon is by far my favorite learning weekend and here's why: the learning is all around us.  It doesn't just happen when we are in the seats of classroom in SLA, it happens wherever there are people gathered.

When I arrived at SLA on Friday, I spent some time eavesdropping in classrooms. As usual the students and teachers showed what SLA is all about, an inquiry-driven, project-based learning environment.  In the robotics class, students were problem solving as they attempted to make their robots play a tune of "Three Blind Mice."  Ms. Hull lead an intriguing discussion around the topic of privacy through reading cautionary tales...I did not write down the title, but if memory serves me well, it was LOL...OMG!  The students in both classrooms were engaged and invested in the conversations around the subject at hand.

Later in the day, I saw a tweet from @jrichardson30 (Jeff Richardson) about inviting attendees to meet up and go to historical Philadelphia.  I decided to go meet up with my Southern twitter friend and his colleagues, Susan and Wendy.  It ended up being the Philly area native (me) taking 7 people (3 from Alabama and 4 from Vermont) on a little walk around the historical hot spots.  I posted pictures of our time together.  

My husband's comment, "That's a weird technology conference". My response, "It's conversations where we learn.  Not locations. ;)"

That was a huge take away for me and it happened only 3 hours into Educon.  Learning spaces are all around when we engage in conversation.  I have been learning more in nontraditional settings than traditional.  I learn more when I am seeking it on my own, than when someone is pushing it on me.  My learning can be on the sidewalks of historic Philadelphia, the tables in a high school lunch room, within the walls of classrooms or anywhere I choose to begin the discussion.

The rest of Educon was amazing...of course, but that is for another post.

How are we encouraging learning to take place anywhere, anytime with our students and colleagues?