07.11.08
A Week After NECC
Well its been a week since I got back from NECC. Last night was the first night I fell asleep before 1 a.m., so I guess I’m officially “recovered”. I promised/wanted to reflect on my experiences at NECC and now that I have had some time to think about it all, here it is:
First: I feel like an Academy Award recipient but I can’t help but acknowledge the Pennsylvania Bureau of Career & Technical Education. They, along with the “Tech Prep” people at Harrisburg Community College, had the foresight to see that a conference like NECC could actually be beneficial to a teacher in a vocational-technical school. Thanks to Joanna Stoms at that college for pitching not only to reimburse my conference and hotel, but to also convince the Department of Education to pay for airfare, excepting their rule of “no out of state conferences”.
Highlights of NECC: I must admit, Saturday’s EduBloggerCon was everything I expected. Props to Adam from Wikispaces to upgrading the EBC wiki to “Super” status. Having a dynamic schedule that was voted on by way of PollEverywhere was way too cool. I know some people didn’t like the format – not enough time. If you were in the “Web 2.0 In Teacher Education” session, you found out that you could break the rules, go into a “work” session, and extend the talk time a bit. Sure, we could have spent the whole conference talking about the role of Web 2.0 in preservice teacher education. By the way, you probably DIDN’T attend that session because you were in the Web 2.0 Smackdown. Boo. You missed a great session facilitated by David Warlick – who only asked questions and didn’t steer the conversation, instead allowing all of the attendees to debate and discuss just what new teachers should apply in their classrooms. Thank you David, for that. I’ve listened to you speak and frankly you do a much better job questioning people’s beliefs than to try to change them via lecture. I know its tough to do that in a room of 1000.
I think the most significant thing about EduBloggerCon was the fact that EVERYONE felt that someone’s opinion, comments, and ideas were valid. They are. But sometimes a classroom teacher like myself feels like he has nothing to add to the conversation. EBC reminded me that I DO have a lot to add.
As far as the general sessions at NECC were concerned, I felt like I was chasing something that just wasn’t meant to be. Either I got into a session where I heard rhetoric that I’d heard before (granted many people need to hear it), or I walked into a session that was overfull, and the San Antonio Fire Department had dictated no standing audience members. Sorry Cliff, I really wanted to see the manipulatives session that you and one of your colleagues were teaching.
So time and again I ended up at the Blogger Cafe – partially because I had a poisoned IP address at the convention center (there were 253 addresses that were not getting off the local network). But partially because there were people there I had never met. Christine Southard, a Special Education teacher from Long Island, was fascinating to talk to. I’d “virtually” met her cooperative teacher in a inclusive classroom (Lisa Parisi) but Christine was interesting to talk to. First of all, she drives 80 minutes ONE WAY to work – across two bridges (she spends $10 a day just on bridge tolls). Now that’s a dedicated teacher. I also talked to several people from other state ISTE affiliates. All in all, the “meeting and talking” was much more rewarding than sitting and listening to presentations.
That’s not to say that some of the sessions weren’t really neat. I attended a session titled “The Walls Came Down” about how professional development has transported itself from programmed to “just in time”. I knew several of the people on the panel, had heard from nearly everyone else, but had not seen the neat things they are doing until then. I logged back into Second Life for the first time in over a year as a result of that session.
Steve Dembo posted a discussion that he and I had about “meeting people that you didn’t already know”. I’ve posted my reply to his post here:
Steve:I think part of my “I want to meet different people” mantra came out of David Jakes’ post after EduCon2.0 in Philadelphia titled “Tragedy of the Commons” where he noted that many of the attendees spent time in the school’s library talking with people they’ve met digitally but not
personally – when they could (should?) have been spending time talking to the students and teachers at that school. I’ll be honest, I felt like I was interrupting the teachers and students, but I relished the opportunity to talk with the students and teachers – maybe because I’m still just a “lowly teacher” and I really wanted to hear from the mouths of babes what worked and what didn’t.So I started NECC off seeking out people that I had little contact with – I didn’t care if they were FB’s or even whether other people regarded them with respect or contempt. I was looking for ways to improve my craft, to see how other people are doing things that I didn’t already know about. I met people often without asking their names, because what they had to say was valid and interesting. I helped a very nice woman with her laptop. I talked with someone from the
University of Oregon about how we can effectively measure technology use in the classroom. I talked with other state affiliate members about how to foster educational leadership in our state (Pennsylvania).And you know what, as I’ve posted in my blog, the conversations were again so much more valid than the presentations I saw. And of the few “official” NECC presentations I did attend, the ones that included input from the audience were more genuine and interesting than ones where I was spoken to.
I think that sums my thoughts up rather well. And with that, I look forward to meeting everyone again next year. My conference reimbursement for NECC 2009 has already been approved.
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