Multi-faceted Refractions

In what seems to be the fastest three weeks that I can remember, the K12 Online Conference is nearly complete. There are only four presentations left to be posted and then When Night Falls begins. Then the conversation continues, but outside the narrow window of the conference.

The challenge remains on how we as individuals are going to sustain the momentum and continue the conversations, sharing our experiences, successes, and identifying our obstacles.

For me, it has been a great experience. I am gathering my reflections both on creating my presentation and on helping to organize When Night Falls. I have learned much from the process.

On the eve of the release of my presentation for the K12 Online Conference, I want to take a moment to diverge from the norm to share a very personal reflection.

It was 20 years ago today, on a glorious autumn afternoon,  much like the one we are experiencing today, that my wife and I joined the holy bonds of matrimony. She has stuck by me through thick and thin, better and worse, and has been supportive of my delving into these new aspects of my life, even though she doesn’t quite understand everything.

I am fortunate to have met her and to have spent the past 20 years making a life together.

Using my new “toy”, no now being enlightened by Liz Kolb, my new tool, I have created a podcast recapping my thoughts after participating in the first 48 hours of the K12 Online Conference.

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Over the past two days, I attended a Diversity Workshop given by Dr. Steven Bertances. Our Head of School, Tom Doar, has made arrangements for all of the faculty and staff, from th maintenance team to classroom teachers attend these two day workshops. I was fortunate to be one in the first group of teachers.

At the beginning of the workshop, I was skeptical. First, I had to be away from campus for two days and this in itself created additional work, making sure that my classes and obligations were covered while I was away. Secondly, the sight selected was downtown, which means that I would have to go during the rush hour commute. The easiest way, the highway, is under a new major reconstruction project, so I would have to navigate using surface streets. Thirdly, I was the parent on duty, so am responsible for getting the kids to school. They had to be at school 30 minutes earlier than normal so that I could navigate the traffic, which adds a different dimension of stress in the morning.

The bright spot, I was able to download the first four podcasts from the K12 Online Conference, so I was prepared to learn while fighting traffic.

The workshop was not what I expected. The content was significantly more interesting than I thought it was going to be and I especially liked the expectation that we were not going to just talk about how we are different, but rather what we can do about it to change education keeping the school’s mission in tact. A delightful and refreshing approach to dealing with the problems.

My three take aways from the conference were:

1. That the conditions why we needed to discuss this from a diversity perspective are no different than the conditions that I have been hearing from a technology perspective: 1. Globalization 2. Cultural Shifts 3. Demographic Changes. I am coming to the realization that these conditions are universal and that schools need to use the different lens to view the problems.
2. That in order to be more diverse, we need to team individuals from different backgrounds and perspectives together to work on authentic, meaningful assignments which will give opportunities to the team members for personal advancement. Again, this is no different than what many of us have been trying to create for technology collaborations. The similarities shocked me. One obstacle is how we assess these success of these projects and how we reconcile this with the need to provide students with the ability to learn how to take tests and write papers so that they can get to the next part of the journey, college, which still uses ACT, SAT, and college essays as a primary method to determine who will be granted admittance to the university.
3. As a student advisor, with the changing demographic and types of students that we may be admitting, we need to put into place support systems so that they can transition successfully into the culture of our school. We need to mentor and guide the new students into the culture.

Part of my personal learning on the way home from the workshop was listening to the Liz Kolb’s use of cell phones. From this, I have created a GCast podcast of my reflections while traveling down for the second day, which you can listen to. It is a rough cut and unedited, but shares my enthusiasm for what I have learned.

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With all of the excitement which is being generated by David Warlick’s Pre-Conference Keynote and anticipation of the remaining 40 sessions over the next three weeks, it is difficult to imagine the end of the K12 Online Conference. When Night Falls, the closing event of the conference is looming on the horizon and we are seeking volunteers to make this event a fitting end to what promises to be an outstanding conference. When Night Falls, which will begin on October 27th at 0:00 GMT. (To see what time this begins in your time zone - World Time Conversion) As night falls across the planet, educators across the globe are encouraged to participate in this culminating event, This event will be a 24 hour opportunity for participants in the 2007 K12 Online conference to gather around a virtual water cooler or have a virtual shared coffee break, to reflect and connect with friends, both old and new, about their experiences at K12 Online 2007. The purpose of When Night Falls is twofold:

1. To give participants an opportunity to share reflections, to build networks and relationships and to make connections with each other. Some of the connections people make at K12 Online will grow into global collaborations for students and support networks for all of us as we continue to push the boundaries of teaching and learning in the 21st century.
2. To get feedback on this year’s conference as we begin to plan for next year.

Since When Night Falls is going to run for 24 hours, we’re looking for people who are willing to volunteer to be moderators for this event. For me personally, many of individuals who I got to meet during last year’s When Night Falls I now count amongst my friends. They have provided me opportunities to grow and learn both professionally and personally. And from this group, I have been introduced to an even larger pool of people who now fall within my friendship group. I now feel that I can travel nearly anywhere throughout the world and know that I can connect and share with these great people. In brief, we are asking each moderator to:

• host and moderate an Elluminate session for 1-2 hours — if you don’t know how to do that, we’ll teach you!
• record some information on a wiki, over the course of their show, solicited from the participants, to help us create an even better experience next year. Ask people to share their:
  • bouquets (what we did well)
  • brickbats (what we didn’t do well)
  • suggestions for next year
• write a 200 word or less summary on the wiki of what the discussion was about during your segment.
• record the session. If you don’t know how to do that, we’ll teach you!
• encourage everyone to register their participation by entering their location and blog address on the Conference Attendr Map if they haven’t already.

To register, you can visit the When Night Falls Wiki and fill in the pertinent information. We look forward to your participation. Don’t know how to use Elluminate? Tutorials will be available and practice rooms will be available during the last week of the conference.