The NECC lovefest to all things 2.0 reflection

Home from NECC in DC. Great to be gone; great to be home. Going to try to summarize a few thoughts about this year's giant lovefest to all things that go beep two-point-oh.

• I can't say that I took away any real exciting ideas or products or strategies from this year's event. Might have been my choice of sessions, might be the low time on the innovation cycle, or maybe I just wasn't paying enough attention. Talked to several others who felt the same way. Google Apps for Education was the biggest product buzz going by far. Cloud-computing the buzz word.
• If someone had presented about one more fabulous Web 2.0 or iPod tool that would make my life easier, I was going to snap and slap him. Yes, I voluntarily attended three more-or-less back-to-back sessions on gadgets, tools and such, so it is my fault. It did seem that many more people were aware of the tools being introduced as indicated by hand raising polls in session. "So how many of you are aware of Animoto." Half the room went, "Well, duh!" and the other half went, "Way cool!" Differentiated instruction for educators, anyone?
• Scott McLeod gave the best concurrent session of the conference, talking about disruptive technologies. I believe it was recorded and will try to post the link when made available. A current that seemed to run through the conference was the anticipation/dread of social learning/educational networking being a truly disruptive technology. Some frustrated educators trying to make systemic change in their schools are viewing something disruptive as their only hope.
• The vendor area was overwhelming and obnoxious and had an air of desperation. I was there for about an hour. There has to be a better way for commercial folks to get ISTE members excited and informed about their products and financially support the organization.
• When will ISTE move to a paperless conference? The conference program book now outweighs my laptop. It's so bloated that finding information is difficult. Oh, vendors - the first thing that gets dumped are those catalogs and flyers in the conference bag. (And I don't even look at all those mailed flyers prior to the conference either.) Let's save some trees here, people. Seemed like everyone brought a laptop - with a high percentage of them being netbooks.
• Lot's 'o librarians at NECC this year. We are a force thanks to the outstanding leadership of the SIGMS. Peggy, Debbie and Lisa - you are great! Chris Harris gets my vote for the most visionary speaker I heard. He promoted getting in touch with our inner "geeks" and learn how to imbed 2.0 tools like ZoHo's in our library webpages.
• NECC 09 was "twitter-ific" with microblogging going mainstream. As a presenter, it's a bit unnerving to think the rest of the world knows you stink even before you session ends.
• Once again, a humbling moment after my session when a young woman came up afterwards, "complimenting" me by saying that it was inspiring to see a man of my advanced years using a wiki. Good grief. Not quite as bad as being told a couple years ago that I was "lively" for a guy my age.
• The reception at the Library of Congress on Tuesday was very nice, although we were probably the rudest audience I'd ever experienced (and they cut off the flow of wine at 7:30). The LOC gets top billing for the most beautiful interior of any building in DC, perhaps the world.
• It was good to see reason and thoughtfulness trounce glibness and cheap shots in the Lemke/Stager debate about the need for physical schools on Tuesday morning. Buildings are tools and can be well used or poorly used, and we can all agree education - buildings, networks and approaches - all need to improve.
• As always, seeing and visiting with friends, old and new, are the best part of NECC. And thanks to everyone who came up to say hello and tell me something that I had done was helpful or appreciated. It's a little embarrassing, but I kind of like it.

Next year NECC will be in Denver. See ya, there.

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Modeling co-learning and other conference take-aways

At a conference in Pennsylvania this past week, I got the chance to meet ed tech leader Kristin Hokanson of ConnectedClassroom fame. She tweeted my keynote and workshops and helped me out a lot as I bumbled through my Second Life presentation/demo. I e-mailed Kirstin a note of appreciation for the kindness she showed during my visit, joking that I need to be more careful about what I say during my talks knowing (because of Twitter) that people are actually listening. And this was her reply:

I had to chuckle at your comment about being " more careful about what (you) say if (you) know people are listening" ...while I sometimes think that myself, I realize that the message that we are sharing is SO very important we NEED to keep sharing, and tweeting and RE-tweeting and hope that folks DO listen and that we can make a difference in helping kids to become more information literate. I live with those digital natives, I want them to be prepared for their future. I want public school to prepare them for life in the 21st century! AND I think teachers, administrators, and educational leaders who model co-learning is exactly what our kids need!

OK, so how do we clone Kristin - or at least her passion?

One of the biggest delights of doing workshops/presentations about SecondLife and Web2.0 tools is that I always seem to learn new stuff as the presenter. I commented a while ago about the increasing range of skills and knowledge one encounters in Web 2.0 workshops. And I realize that I've come to actually depend on the greater expertise on those attending to make the workshop richer for everyone, just feeling a little guilty about it.

Now I find that I am modeling being a co-learner. I like that.

In PA, I also got to hear Alan November give a keynote. He, along with Jamie McKenzie, was a primary influence on my thinking about educational technology when I was a little director growing up on the prairie. One of the suggestions that he made that I particularly liked was that teachers stop answering questions in class, and instead turn this task over to the students themselves. Talk about everyday practice in information literacy!

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On Friday, a number of students and teachers presented on what they had learned as a part of a year long information/technology literacy program called MILI sponsored by MetroNet. One high school girl's comments about how GoogleDocs "organized her life" and made working with her teacher and classmates more effective made me think we need to get rolling with Google Apps for Education in our district. I believe it WILL help kids. End of story.

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Here's good question that came up during one of my workshops...

One of the reasons often give for teachers not being more willing to infuse technology into their classrooms is that they are intimidated because the students are more proficient in its use. Yet we have many educators who expect their students to be better at what they teach than they will ever be, including music teachers and atheletic coaches.

Why do some teachers delight in students who lap them in knowledge and ability and others seem to fear it?

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Happy Monday. Getting excited to be going to NECC!

Guide to better conference sessions

The primary concern of most public speakers is, “what am I going to say?” But how you say what
you’re going to say, and what your body is doing while you are saying it, are just as important.

If you’re doubtful, consider the following statistic. Albert Mehrabian, Professor Emeritus of Psychology at UCLA, did a study stating that there are three elements to any face-to-face communication: words, tone of voice and body language, and we are influenced by these things as follows:

• 7% of our influence comes from the words we say
• 38% from our tonal quality while saying it
• 55% by what our body is doing while we’re saying it

from "Being a Gifted Speaker Isn't a Gift" by Frances Cole Jones (ChangeThis Newsletter)

Tom Hoffman at SVC Tuttle (fairly) recently posted a mini-rant about how most conference presentations "suck" and observes:

There are myriad reasons why, but the bottom line is that it doesn't take a little more effort to go from a meh presentation/conference to a great one. It takes three, four, five times as much effort -- that is assuming that you've got something interesting to say at all.

And over at The Thinking Stick, Jeff Utecht questions "the reason for f2f:"

There is a reason we like going to conferences, there is a reason why students like coming to school (and it’s not to be by oneself), there is a reason we want students in a class. What is that reason?

• What is the reason we gather face to face when content can be found 24/7/365?
• What is the reason when research can be done outside face to face time?
• What is the reason when reading/listening/gathering/analyzing content can be done outside of school?
• What are we doing with face to face time to maximize the learning potential for students?

After a month of conference going and lots o' F2F experience, both as a perp and as a victim, Tom's and Jeff's observations resonated with me. And yes, as Tom suggests, many conference presentations do "suck." But I'm not so sure it really does take five times as much effort to create a good session.

I've made suggestions about improving F2F workshops and improving panel discussions. Maybe it is time to take a whack at those ubiquitous 45-60 minute "concurrent" sessions. What separates the dismal from the delightful?

On a basic level, having a limited topic, sharing new information, resources and practices of practical value, or espousing a challenging POV combined with experiential or academic expertise may seem to be all that is necessary. Of course, preparation helps. I am always amazed by some presentation teams that seem to be working out speaking order and such as attendees file into the room. But these things seem to be basic  requirements for effective teaching and can be met through virtual learning experiences as well.

One thing that a conference session - or the conference environment itself - produces is superior peer-to-peer communication. As I remember, studies show that one has a better chance of learning through "lateral learning lines" established by visiting with fellow attendees than one does from the presenter. Yes, back channel communications are making inroads into online teaching, but I somehow find that running chat window more distracting than helpful. Most speakers establish a separate window for group interaction that enhances rather than detracts from the presentation.

But my observation is that the reason F2F is so powerful is simply that passion is easier to convey. A really good concurrent session does not need a smooth delivery, great PowerPoint slides or even radically new information. But it MUST have excitement and enthusiasm. The presenter has to convince me that she/he truly has something important to say. If that happens, I am engaged and learning. And inspiring such passion is awfully hard to do in impersonal media.

Maya Angelou once observed:

I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

The "feeling" bit comes through when human beings interact in person. Somehow electonics drain it away.

Hoping F2F is here for a very long time.

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