One notion that stuck with me this morning from Valerie Hannon, a keynote speaker at the BCSSA Fall Conference, was that education requires disruptive innovation in order to prevent an “institutional bypass.” In another post I will share some of the key points from Valerie and other speakers today, but I want to focus on the conference going on behind the conference and how many of us have bypassed the traditional structure, through disruptive innovation to make meaning at the event.
As I write this post at the end of the first day of the BCSSA Fall Conference, ninety-three different people have tagged posts on Twitter #bcssa10 and tagged close to 1,000 tweets. At different points today the conference has been a trending topic both in Vancouver and across Canada. There were more people using Twitter to talk about the future of teaching and learning than to discuss the Canucks or the weather.
I believe one year ago at this conference there were three people sharing information on Twitter. The ninety-three tweeters today included participants in the room, and those who engaged in the conference from many sites around the province and beyond.
In addition to the dialogue on Twitter, there was a second back-channel conversation happening on TodaysMeet (a great tool for in-class online conversations – no account required). Several dozen more people used this tool to extend the presentations.
While the conference has looked very similar to the conferences I have become accustomed to since I first attended this event about a decade ago, I think we have found a way, using Valerie Hannon’s notion, to bypass the traditional conference structure. The presentations were largely stand-and-deliver lectures, but those of us who learn by engaging with others had an amazingly rich un-conference experience.
Thinking about the change in just one year with how we engage in professional learning, I wonder what these type of events will look like over the next few years.
Some other wins with the un-conferencing:
- We have exposed dozens of educators in a variety of roles to the power of Twitter as a professional tool
- We have been able to share our learning with colleagues in our districts who were not able to join us
- We have collaboratively compiled notes to use after the conference
- We have modelled cross-role and cross-district learning
We often talk about the need to “go where the kids are”. Our efforts in engaging in social media to support our learning, is part of this journey.
cultureofyes.ca 
I was reading up and thinking about this conference, wishing that I could be there. The tweets and blogs about the conference have provided a lot of information about the speakers, ideas, conversations and questions. I keep thinking about how much I missed by not having signed up for Twitter before. It is great that even if I cannot attend some of the conferences that I would like to, I can at least be a fly on the wall thanks to my many colleagues who share snippets of what they are hearing and synthesizing their thoughts through their blogs.
Thanks for pushing the envelope and modeling encouraging us to become global thinkers.
Thanks Remi for the comment. I find my network to push my thinking and also reassure me that on days when there is strong push-back I am not alone in my belief that we need to change the game.
I found that those commenting from outside the conference added to my thinking.
I, too, have enjoyed following the tweets. Lots of great information presented by the conference presenters (as summarized through the tweets). Not sure if their delivery model fits the personal learning models that they speak off. 😉
I hear lots about personal learning models but what does it look like for us in BC? How will it be supported? What resources will be given to teachers? And will students be “tested” on it even though they might not consider it part of their personal learning.
I know that many teachers (myself included) embrace and practice personal learning with our students but is the 98% of the educational partners ready for this “transformational” change?
I think Riverside has a number of great personalized learning practices. The challenge is that it does not come in a box like a new curriculum. I hope personalized learning will be supported by given the system increased freedom to be flexible (that sounds vague but I think there are some things that could enable us to be more “personalized.”
I saw this, courtesy of Jordan Tinney, on Twitter – it looks like an interesting view of personalized learning: http://www.p21.org/images/stories/otherdocs/p21up_MILE_Guide_Chart.pdf
Part of me wanted to be physically present for this conversation but the backchannel was actually pretty good and I felt like I was getting the good parts from a variety of people. Good job by the amateur reporters in the crowd 🙂
It is ironic for adults to continue to talk about new ways but use old ways to do it. Sounds like a lot of talking to the audience, a little bit of table chatter time, etc. I wonder what a real personalized conference would look like?
On the topic of personalized learning… there are lots of case stories, models, some working examples perhaps, but what concrete action will BC take? Will the “rules” be flexed to allow innovation for assessment, un-schedules, and un-bells? Will teachers be supported and be willing to step aside from the stand and deliver model more? When will universities provide a learning experience for pre-service teachers using the new methodologies and teach them how to teach differently, assess differently, share control, be a guide and learning coach, etc.?
It’s really important that we all get implementation to work well…
Keep on tweetin’!
I want to echo what Remi posted. I feel like I have lost a great deal of time not being connected to Twitter, not having a blog, not posting to other blogs, not using Google Docs and Forms, or Delicious or all of the things that are very part of my every day. And it is funny, all that I needed was a little nudge in the right direction (and it came from Will Richardson and also through what I had heard that you were doing, Chris (through TC). I now feel that I have seen the light, and as nerdy as it sounds, I have never been more excited about learning and about being an educator.
I wish I were at the BCSSA Conference, but in a way I feel that I am a part of it because I am following the feed on Twitter. This never would have been possible for me before, and now I feel as though the possibilities are endless.
Great post Chris. Keep us up to speed on the conference!
Thanks Cale. Connecting to your thinking and your blog has been great. I shared your blog post about collaborative time with all our secondary school administrators. I feel like we are at a tipping point with technology among educational leaders in BC.
The number of leaders blogging and tweeting this fall has taken off and I am much smarter for it. Participating this year at the BCSSA Conference it was interesting to think what it will be like in the future with social media – and how about other big events like BCPVPA sessions (gentle nudge!)
Add in the connection that parents made via Twitter, too. Not sure how many of us tweeting are parents? Glad to be part of the conversation.
(And, I shared some of the tweets with workplace learning pros via #lrnchat, too.)
It would have been great to have had the presentations posted ahead of time in something like voicethread and invited people to contribute questions/observations (your “flip” comment) and spent the session delving into some of those “what ifs”. Do scenario planning, six thinking hats, during the actual conference etc to ground things and work on the implementation (agreed totally with Brian, there). And it would start to answer some of those questions that others have posed here. Will the future be a prescriptive version of personalized learning? What will it look like? Etc, etc.
Thanks for all your tweets today Chris.
Holly
Thanks Holly for your comment. I love the parent piece in this all. It is one of the reasons why I tweet and blog. I want to engage parents in a real way in what is going on, and take away some of the mystery of concepts like “Pro-D”. I have a growing number of parents following my blog – it was cute, one asked “Do you mind if I follow your blog?”. Social media is a great way to bring different groups together under one digital tent.
Makes me really think of how powerful a backchannel could be for students… and also how powerful it could be for them to read, reflect and connect with other students across the district, across the country, and across the world!
It’s not just about the fact that we need to “go where the kids are”, it’s also about taking kids where they have the potential to go… outside the walls of the classroom and into learning circles and learning conversations that new tools can offer them.
I think it’s time for us to bypass not just the traditional conference structure, but also the traditional classroom structures too… How do we encourage this in a way that this is occurring not as an exception, but as a general rule?
It can’t be that hard. I have been told that the Superintendents Association would be the last group to engage in social media (I actually never believed this – it is based on stereotypes – the group is an amazingly innovative group of educational leaders) and we fundamentally changed the way the conference works by using social media.
I think one way we get there is model, model, model. Every conference, every PD session in our districts should model the tools we want to use in our classrooms. We need to continue to stretch with how we learn if we are going to change how our students learn.
I really enjoyed the conference via twitter. My tweetdeck was chirping both days. I was going off onto links people were providing, asking questions of the attendees and I also linked and emailed certain links out to staff for their thoughts.
All in all, I felt linked in to the supposed changes coming in our education system. The problem was, regardless of the medium of delivery and the incredible collaboration that the tweeting community, I didn’t see anyone with policy power really call for concrete changes in our current system.
The good news is that the conversation has begun at a more conrete level… Will there be the opportunity to implement some wide-reaching changes… i.e. can we change the way we report out to parents and students… can we change the role of the teacher…. can we dramatically change the calendar and daily schedule of school? Doesn’t look like we are ready for these kinds of changes yet….
While I agree with you Dave – I also think a key message was to get on with it – that is what I heard, and that is what we are going to do. There are definitely things that could happen at other levels that might make personalized learning easier – but there are absolutely things we can do in our communities – whether as full districts or as schools – or as individual teachers.
I guess I don’t want to spend my career talking about what could be, should be or hopefully will be.
As one person on our West Van team said to me at the end of the conference – It is go time!
Yes, time to leave a mechanistic model of education, leave behind the values of efficiency and control and look at new tools that promote dialogue, inquiry, collaboration, constructivist learning. Dedicated educators who guide and collaborate with students in a dynamic triangle with information, systems, the environment essential.
Maybe it’s time for a new vision of education that looks like many concentric circles instead of a series of straight lines.
Great thinkers/educators like Maria Montessori, Paulo Friere and J. Krishnamurti have been talking about the “right kind of education” for years. We need to stop talking and start making it happen-real change. Let’s draw on the collective wisdom of the past and the present to create the future.
Chris- your leadership and encouragement to innovate is a real beginning for reform
[…] with extending these conversations, using technology to engage more people. I have also written, here and here, two posts on backchanneling during the recent BCSSA Fall […]