ProfessorTOSA Blog

I like to take some time to digest the contents of conferences prior to offering any global perspective on the event.  This year, as stated in the previous post, was a bit disappointing because of the turnout and overall conference offerings, but in many ways the trip was a great success.  Although I find it hard to recall at first, when I’m frustrated at something I deem lacking, but it’s most often these lessons that I learn the most from. This event was valuable because of it’s inability to be great and because of it’s success getting me to think about my judgments.

Years ago, when I first attended one of these conferences, I was amazed at the urgency I felt to integrate podcasts and blogs, and to connect on a global level, and promote 21st century skills, and improve authorship and…. well, you get the idea of the immense volume of content I was exposed to. I was astounded and I was intimidated.  In many ways, I was impressed with what I hadn’t known and the enthusiasm I gathered far outweighed any apprehension that formed.  I think I’m different from many other educators in this way – because I see this sort of potential for strife as a challenge, and that motivates me.

CLMS, in comparison, has failed only because it was very similar to the initial tech conference that had amazed me.  This conference had sessions on blogging and wikis and websites and Web 2.0 tools, and the sessions failed because of this redundancy.  They failed to introduce anything powerfully new or reintroduce familiar ideas in more developed examples.  Finally, I came to realize, that this conference seemed to fail because what I’m looking for aren’t tools to digitize teaching or tools to offer more options under the Web 2.0 umbrella, but rather, what I need are sessions on how to promote change.  I don’t need anymore tools for the tech hungry, I need examples of how to transition our educational systems into a more powerful system.  Right now my district is doing very well in small successful pockets, but in order to prepare for our children’s future, these pockets need to collaborate and our students need to be systematically considered.  Change needs to occur on a broader and more deliborate scale before I consider any new animation tool or interactive anything.

Most recently, I’ve been reading a few books, Remix, by Lawerence Lessig, and Transforming Schools with Technology, by Andrew A Zucker.  Both books are quite interesting, but what is most enjoyable about these books, and others like them, is they do not linger on tools and creative recipes for using tools, they discuss larger topics, introduce research to support their points, and they leave many conclusions up to you as the reader.  Now, I understand the difficulty of getting Zucker or Lessig to speak at some of these conferences, but why not extend the current Keynote speakers’ roles into conversations, or accept questions, or promote more large scale thinking among the general sessions.  Tough, I know – to change protocol.  I understand the impossibility here, but big ideas need grand follow through and I’m simply looking past the tools and asking the tech-converted to look with me.  Certainly I’m still into my work of training with tools and such, but my goals search the horizon daily and I see more clearly everyday that my work, as David Jakes suggests, isn’t to integrate technology, but rather to show how it’s integral and very much a part of our students’ lives and part of any career our students will strive to earn.  Isn’t it time we work together to address this, by, at a minimum adding another level to our professional development and making it more worthy of everyone’s time?