21st Century Learning

My Experience at NECC

I decided to capture my NECC experience journal style so I can archive the experience for later.

This year at NECC was very different than any conference experience I have ever had. I worked very hard and had little time to really relax. However, the value added to my own professional learning was immense.

I arrived on Friday evening and spent my time connecting on Skype with several folks that had also arrived early. Cheri Toledo and I introduced ourselves and chatted via Skype for a bit. We found we both shared a love for bikes and both owned a tandem.

Then came Saturday morning and the EdubloggerCon. Wow.

Walking in that room and making an instant connection to Steve Hargadon who I had been collaborating with online for over a year, being greeted by David Warlick and meeting for the first time David Jakes, and then realizing I needed to thank John Pederson for his post in 2005 that made me realize that blogging was worth the effort and being able to walk over to him and do just that. How exciting to be able to debate with Will Richardson live and meeting folks that I had chatted with via Skype for over a year, people who helped me teach my preservice teachers: Vinnie Vrotny, Chris Craft, Anne Davis, Vicki Davis, Mark Wagner and Jeff Utecht. Mark had also presented via Elluminate to my Alabama teachers and Jeff has made many guest appearances at my various keynotes as I travel. I met Chris Lehman, Marcy Hull, Diane Hammond, Kevin Jarrett, Christopher D. Sessums, Steve Dembo, Julie Lindsay, Dana Huff, Jim Gates, Kurt Paccio Brian Crosby, Cheryl Oakes, Mario Asselin, Kevin HoneyCutt, Doug Johnson, Bill Fitzgerald, Glenn Moses (who rocked), Toby Sanders, Joyce Valenza, Kathy Shields, Tom Woodward, Jennifer Wagner, Gwen Solomon and Brian Grenier- many of these folks I knew from the Web and meeting them f2f was like we had known each other for years. I know there are folks I have overlooked but you get the idea. It was intense.

The day was organized in a semi-unconference format. My first session was with Will and Chris on Getting Our Blogs in a Row. Then I attended David's session on the School of the Future where David Jakes and I discovered we had many like minded ideas, then lunch where I sat with Kevin, Diane, Anne, and Christopher.

After lunch I facilitated my session on virtual learning communities and then attended Chris Lehman's session School 2.0. After that we all walked and spent sometime getting to know each other better at a place that is known for it's burgers (recommended by David Jakes), then I was off to celebrate my friend John Norton's birthday and meet his family.

Sunday began with the highlight of my NECC experience, breakfast with Jeff Utecht (a brilliant mind) and later we were joined by David Jakes. David and I solved the problems of the world for a couple hours and then I retreated to my room to catch up on some work. Around 5pm some of my Alabama friends, Aimee Smith, April Chamberlain, Shawn Nutting, and Felicia Myers called and asked if I wanted to meet them at the Aquarium for the NECC reception. At 7pm I was standing in line with about 1000 other people and was joined by Wendy and Tess Richardson (Will's family). It was great fun to explore the aquarium with three children in tow (Felicia's two joined us)! You can see the pics Tess took here. After the aquarium we all went out to eat at the CNN building and laughed and laughed.

Monday I began with a few minutes in Will's standing room only session and then I hung out at the SchoolNet booth interviewing folks about School 2.0 (got to interview Jen Wagner and Kathy Shields) until noon. Then I got online for a K12Online meeting and after the meeting met John Norton and Wes Fryer for lunch. John and I later watched a school that was part of the Alabama the work present their winning project at ThinkQuest booth where I finally got to talk with Cheryl Oakes and spent some time talking to others about our work in Alabama. On to an afternoon meeting with Will and finished up the day by stopping by the Blogger's cafe just in time to introduce John Norton to all the edubloggers and get my pic taken for the blogger in a bag series by John Pederson.

David Jakes invited me to the TechLearning social where I connected with folks I hadn't seen since the Classroom Connect days- like Dr. Shelia Gersh and people I had always admired like Susan Brooks-Young.I also spent some time getting to know Vinnie, Chris Craft, and Mark Wagner a little better, but the highlight of the event was meeting Terry Freedman. Terry is a gentleman in every description of the word, I regret that just as we were starting to talk he was swept away to dinner. Just as well because I had to rush to my next meeting.

It was delightful reconnecting with my friend Mark Schlager (Tapped In) and his SRI team for dinner at the Ritz Carlton. It was a business dinner but great fun all the same. Mark walked me back to my hotel and our conversation left me wide awake in thought as I returned to my room. What a day.

Tuesday
I awoke at 5am and began editing and uploading my podcasts from the SchoolNet gig the day before. I had access issue after access issue. I got over to the Open Source area at 10am to meet Rick Weinberg, a Technology Specialist in New York to discuss the specifics of an upcoming workshop. Then a meeting with Wendy Richardson and Steve Hargadon to flesh out the homeless technology project we are working on. Back to uploading and editing the School 2.0 interviews who without the help of Aimee Smith and Felicia Myers would not have happened and finished just in time to rush to my plane and fly back home.

It was without a doubt the most busy, but productive time I have ever had at a conference.

Tennyson the poet says we are a part of all we have ever met- then if that is true I am such a better person having attended NECC. I can't wait until next year.

Exuberant Discovery

Thinking of my experience at NECC and how the most precious moments were those spent in creative, spontanious interaction with edubloggers...

Kohn (2004) explains it like this- when we are engaged and motivated and feel minimal stress, information flows freely through the affective filter in the amygdala and we achieve higher levels of cognition, make connections, and experience “aha” moments. Such learning comes not from quiet classrooms and directed lectures, but from classrooms with an atmosphere of exuberant discovery.

The Bloggers' Cafe is just such a place of exuberant discovery. Now-- taking what we have recently experienced, how do we create similar oasis for our students? How do we turn our classrooms into places of exuberant discover?

(above photo: edubloggercon07)

Via Mary Tedrow from the TLN community...
Ed Leadership online article titled "The Neuroscience of Joyful Education" by Judy Willis.

......In their zeal to raise test scores, too many policymakers wrongly assume that students who are laughing, interacting in groups, or being creative with art, music, or dance are not doing real academic work. The result is that some teachers feel pressure to preside over more sedate classrooms with students on the same page in the same book, sitting in straight rows, facing straight ahead.

Supporting Good Teaching Practices with Neuroscience

The truth is that when we scrub joy and comfort from the classroom, we distance our students from effective information processing and long-term memory storage. Instead of taking pleasure from learning, students become bored, anxious, and anything but engaged. They ultimately learn to feel bad about school and lose the joy they once felt.

My own experience as a neurologist and classroom teacher has shown me the benefits of joy in the classroom. Neuroimaging studies and measurement of brain chemical transmitters reveal that students' comfort level can influence information transmission and storage in the brain (Thanos et al., 1999). When students are engaged and motivated and feel minimal stress, information flows freely through the affective filter in the amygdala and they achieve higher levels of cognition, make connections, and experience “aha” moments. Such learning comes not from quiet classrooms and directed lectures, but from classrooms with an atmosphere of exuberant discovery (Kohn, 2004).

The Gift of Doing...

For the past two days, I have given myself the gift of giving into the experience rather than using part of my hours to record the experience: a precious gift indeed. I will catch up and share all I am seeing and feeling here at NECC, probably tonight.

The Quick and Skinny
Being in the room with so many like minded educators was incredible. I am forever changed by the edubloggercon meet-up. I fell deeply in like with many of the bloggers I have read and respected for so long. I met Anne Davis, Bonnie Bracey, Helen Barrett and Diane Hammond!!! I also got to know Marcie Hull, Laura Deisly, Vinnie Vrotny, John Pederson, Chris  Lehman, Joyce V., Mark Wagner, Steve Hargadon and Chris Craft just to name a few. 

Highlights- Spending quality time with Jeff Utecht, Will Richardson, Wendy Richardson, Tess Richardson, David Jakes, April Chamberlain, Aimee Smith, Shawn Nutting, John Norton, Felicia Myers, Felicia's family,  Janice Norton, and John and Janice's family.

The chance to have deep philosophical conversations with Will and David is something I will forever count as precious. Meeting Will's wife has changed my life. I will be a better person for having known her- No kidding.

Ok-- so I promise to post pics and details tonight. Right now though, I have to get to a meeting and over to the SchoolNet booth where I will be handing out Teacher 2.0 t-shirts and interviewing folks on how they would define Teacher 2.0. Later I am meeting with Wes Fryer, then Will, then a SchoolNet event, then dinner with SRI buddies, and finally back to you-- to try and capture it all here.