I recently spent a wonderful four days in San Antonio, Texas at the UCEA Convention. One of the highlights of my trip was spending time with Miguel Guhlin. Miguel and I had lunch together – he was gracious enough to take off work, drive me to a local eatery, and then bring me back to the convention hotel – and then he surprised me by also attending the CASTLE symposium. For those of you who are interested, here is the web page I made for the convention.
Miguel has blogged his thoughts about the symposium. He also created a podcast of our discussion and then added some additional audio reflections about our session. I thoroughly enjoyed reading his blog post and listening to his reflections. It was fascinating to hear his take on a conversation that primarily involved professors and doctoral students (most of whom, of course, are K-12 educators). Although we did the usual academic symposium thing (a panel of professors talking to and with the audience), we also shook things up a bit. We actually showed two digital videos (gasp!) and used student response system software and "clickers" to facilitate audience interaction and spark conversation.
Karl Fisch, thank you for your Did You Know? presentation. Consuela Molina, thank you for your Digital Kids @ Analog Schools video. We used them both in our presentation and they were big hits. Ten years ago, would I ever have had access to these kind of wonderful resources? Nope. And that’s one of the wonderful things about this Internet era. I’m looking forward to seeing what emerges over the next decade.
You’re welcome, although I always feel kind of weird accepting “credit” for basically taking a bunch of other people’s thoughts and putting them to some catchy music. I think Consuela’s is much more original – and probably more immediately meaningful.
I’m looking forward to listening to Miguel’s podcast – hopefully this weekend sometime. My day job keeps getting in the way of my learning . . .
Scott, thank you for letting me sit in–and not participate–in the panel presentation. I enjoyed the experience and the conversations folks had.
There is an unwillingness, I’ve observed, in how we deal with unpleasant realities. In truth, in professional settings, there is a profound temptation to put a “positive spin” on events and how things progress…or not.
The pressure is on to be nice when the reality is perceived as not. However, the real issue is with the falsehood that is perpetrated, and the actions taken to protect it.
It is a troubling topic because we are each guilty of it. The panel presentation touched on these issues in as positive a manner as possible, but they lurked like waiting sharks. Dwelling on the sharks though can be a problem in itself…there’s too much beauty in the “education coral reef” to dwell on the deadliness of a mis-step.
If these conversations can’t be had in Ed Leadership programs, I’m concerned that they will not happen in K-12.
Just some pre-Thanksgiving ramblings…time to go read Quinn’s Deep Change again.
Thank you for asking the questions and graciously allowing me to listen in,
Miguel Guhlin
http://www.mguhlin.net