Writing is my artistic expression. My keyboard is my brush. Words are my medium. My blog is my canvas. And committing to writing daily makes me feel like an artist.
I’ve never been to a session at a conference that has taught me more and been more engaging than the ‘spaces in between’ the sessions.
Connecting with distant friends and colleagues; Engaging conversations about teaching, learning, and leading; Topical discussions and meetings over coffee and meals; And getting to know bright people who have similar jobs but unique life and work experience that open my eyes to things beyond what I tend to learn and in my scheduled blocks of conference time… these are the moments that make a conference a rich leaning experience… it’s the spaces in between.
One thing that I really enjoy doing is going to conferences. When I go, I learn so much… not just from the sessions, but from conversations that I have while at the conference. Here are three examples from SXSW EDU in Austin back in 2017:
A decade ago I’d chat with these guys, and other amazing educators regularly on Twitter, and when I’d get to a conference I’d meet them and it was like I was a distant friend that hadn’t seen them in a while… even if it was the first time we met. In fact, I’d meet educators face-to-face for the first time and we’d hug like long lost friends. This conference was only the second time meeting Jeff and we roomed together.
I’ve made some amazing connections through Twitter. It was rich online conversations which built up the social capital and made meeting face-to-face so special. However I’m barely on social media anymore. This blog gets auto-posted to my social accounts, but beyond that I do very little to engage socially with my digital friends.
I got an email from Barbara Bray inviting me to a Breakfast Social she hosts at ISTE, but I’m not going to New Orleans this year. This invite got me thinking about all my digital friends and how disconnected I am from them. Other than Kelly Christopherson and a few others who I connect with on Twitter around daily fitness, I really don’t engage in social media at all. There are so many educators that I used to ‘speak to’ on a daily or weekly basis who I just don’t connect with anymore.
I miss the camaraderie, the conversations, the learning, following links to educational blogs, and the fun banter that was around the early days of Twitter. But I don’t know if it’s just Twitter that changed or if it was me as well? I just hope that when I start heading back to conferences that I’ve built enough social capital that I’ll still feel the amazing connection I have felt in the past when I meet these awesome digital friends face-to-face.
Note how by adding value descriptors, by specifying the intention of the question, the question changes to one where students need to compare and contrast, to qualify, make judgements, and/or explain their answers. And more than that, students need to ask more questions to come to an answer.
To me, that’s the key to a problemizing a question… How can you change a question so that it provokes more questions? If you ask a question and either:
A) Google can answer it; or
B) You already know the answer students will come up with; or
C) All students come to the same conclusion…
Then you didn’t really pose a good problem. You didn’t promote critical thinking.
When your questions are problematized, students need to interact with the question in a more meaningful and engaged way.
While I’m looking forward to our Professional Development Day this coming Friday, I wouldn’t be being honest if I said that I wasn’t missing conferences. I’ll be attending from my laptop, alone in my office. I won’t be going to a large auditorium for a keynote, sitting next to friends, making lunch plans, geeking out in conversations with people I don’t usually get to see, making podcasts between sessions… there is a lot of appeal to engaging with connections beyond the sessions you go to at a conference.
For me, it usually includes meeting ‘digital friends’, people that I know from online/Twitter, whom I’ve never met before face-to-face or whom I have met, but less times than I can count on one hand. These connections invariably make the conference great for me. And not only do I get to meet these wonderful people, they tend to be people that like geeking out with me about what we’ve learned. If I go to a mediocre session, no problem, I can chat with someone who went to a better one. Go to a great session, and now I’ve got someone to share it with out loud, to help me solidify what I’ve learned.
But beyond the learning, there is the human connection. There is the opportunity to be with people I don’t get to see often but I enjoy their company. It’s about being with my tribe. I’ll enjoy the sessions on Friday, but I really look forward to a time in the future when I can once again go to a conference, pick up my swag, and connect with people that make the whole conference experience great!
In the past few weeks I’ve participated in Microsoft Teams and Zoom meetings with Jeff Borden and Dean Shareski. Both of them did a great job, but I look forward to doing face-to-face conferences again. Dean recently wrote, ‘The Future of Professional Learning Part 1‘,
“I do wonder if we’ll be more intentional about what constitutes and justifies a great face to face experience and what can be highly effective as a virtual option?”
This got be thinking about where we go with conferences post-pandemic? In response to a tweet about his post, I said, “I was tiring of regular conferences, now I miss them. I think they will evolve to be more engaging (why travel somewhere for a PowerPoint that could be on Zoom) and I also think we might see more (online) pre/post conference engagement and learning.”
To expand on this idea, I don’t see things like pre-presentations or assignments and tasks being given before a conference (read as ‘not homework’), but I do see opportunities for conversation, interaction with the presenter, and with other conference attendees. I see icebreakers and teasers. I see feedback to the presenter about what the attendees want. I see presenters providing clear learning intentions and a framework for their talk. I see presenters providing a personal introduction so that instead of the first 5-10 minutes of a 1 hour presentation slot being “This is who I am”, the presentation starts with an activity, engaging people with other people who have already connected online. I see interactive presentations that rely on participants being involved and engaged with the material.
Think about it. Why spend hundreds of dollars in flights, hotels, and food, to go to a room and get a PowerPoint and ‘talking head’ that could easily have been delivered to you at home? When I went to ISTE, my favourite memories are the blogger’s cafe, and meeting friends to do podcasts with (Shelly Sanchez Terrell and Kathleen McClaskey), and the people I went to ISTE with from my district. When I went to SXSW EDU, the people I went with and the podcasts that I did are the only things I remember (David Jakes, Jeff Richardson, and after the conference Miguel Guhlin). The future of conferences will need to be much more about creating experiences and making connections and less about presentations… this was already happening, but now that we have created digital experiences that will compete, the pull of conferences needs to be about enriching the experience and making it worth the effort to travel.
I’ve been invited to host a Round Table Breakout Session at the 10th Canadian EdTech Leadership Summit today, titled; “Harnessing the Power and Potential of Social Media to Build Learning Communities.” The invitation was born out of a Podcast I did with conference organizer Robert Martellacci @MindShareLearn, where we discussed my free ebook, Twitter EDU.
Exclusive Podcast with David Truss, Principal Coquitlam SD43, on his newly released book “Twitter EDU” https://t.co/8JH5B73lOo Thanks you for the interview Robert @mindsharelearn
What I’ll share below are resources to support the conversation, and hopefully this can also be a resource to come back to later, after the discussion.
For those interested in tweeting during the discussion, please use both of these hashtags: #CDNedtech19 and #TwitterEDU
Advice from Dave Sands @dhsands: (If you are playing along, follow the people I share tweets from!)
“The hardest part of Twitter is that it does not have a friendly entry point.”
What are the challenges of engaging on social media?
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Bill Ferriter @plugusin“My goal in social media spaces isn’t to “have a bigger audience.” My goal is to find people who challenge my practice.” (Link to tweet)
What are you looking for from your social media network?
“Geography used to confine and limit our networks, and now we can connect to people from around the world.”
What excites you about the possibilities of being a networked/connected learner?
“Think of Twitter as a river of information that streams by, not a pool of information that you collect.”
How do you manage the stream of information ‘coming at you’ in today’s digitally connected world?
