edJEWcon- A Visual Reflection of a New Kind of Conference

I am slowly coming down from an incredible high this past week.  I was part of a team (Andrea Hernandez, Jon Mitzmacher and myself), that envisioned, organized and ran an education LEARNING conference. This was a first  for me, since I have only been a participant an/or  a presenter at such conferences.

We were inspired by the educon conference, run by Chris Lehman, his faculty, students and parents at the Science Leadership Academy . We envisioned, not a technology conference, but a conference about teaching and learning.

A prerequisite for being able to connect, communicate, collaborate and create during the conference, our attendees would have to be equipped with tools that would act in a way that made technology as “invisible, ubiquitous and necessary as oxygen”(Chris Lehman). Each one of our attending school teams, received a toolkit, containing an iPad, an iTouch, a Flip camera and a paper and pencil.

The focus of the conference was NOT going to be the tools though, but how the tools could encourage and support:

• the CREATION of media and documentation of learning
• the PARTICIPATION of attendees during conversations NOT lectures
• the LONG TERM creation of a learning community

John Dewey said that “we do not learn from experience, but we learn from reflecting on experience”. REFLECTING on the learning experience during the conference and the SHARING of that reflection has been an INTEGRAL part of  our vision.

Andrea Hernandez, already shared her first reflection post-edJEWcon describing our first steps of making edJEWcon  a reality. She pointed out that while there was an extraordinary amount of work from all the people involved, it was the attendees, presenters and students who brought the theory behind our vision of learning and teaching to life.

Jon Mitzmacher in his reflection  explains and elaborates on his feelings of being ” equal parts “proud parent”, “exhausted midwife”, “exhilarated student”, and “inspired principal” after the physical edJEWcon conference had concluded.

Mike Fisher, another key player in making edJEWcon all and more than it could have been, takes on the aspect of student involvement during edJEWcon as the topic of his post on ASCD Edge titled “Strategic and Capable“. He addresses the school’s Middle Schoolers directly by pointing out although they did not know it…” this was an assessment, one that happened in the moment but allowed you to prove your skills. You gave a performance, a recital of your capabilities…and you SHINED!”

More and more reflective posts from our school teams and partners are pouring in on their own professional blogs as well as on their edJEWcon school blogs, we created specifically for that purpose. Take a look at Shira Leibowitz’s posts A Day With Angela Maiers, Comfort With Discomfort, and The Purpose of Ed Tech, as well as Akevy Greenblatt’s post, or the Gray’s Academy of Jewish Education’s blog to share just a few.

Now it is my turn

• to be reflective
• to be transparent
• to add my reflection to theirs
• to weave a web of reflections and multiple perspectives
• to connect my learning to others
• to continue a conversation that started face to face
• to allow others, who were not able to be at edJEWcon physically, to learn with and from our experiences and thoughts.

I am a very visual learner, so I used my cell phone to sporadically take images during edJEWcon in an attempt to facilitate my post conference reflection on the experience. I will let the images guide my train of thought and hopefully they will also make the experience for the reader come alive. It can serve also as just another example of transmedia learning and storytelling.

21 school teams and 14 partners were registered to attend edJEWcon 5772.0. We knew that each team was bringing members who were at various comfort levels with the tools they were about to receive and the platforms we were about to ask them to explore, play and use over the span of three days. We needed to bring in speakers like Heidi Hayes Jacobs, Angela Maiers and Mike Fisher, who would be able to:

• share a vision
• tell a story
• inspire participants to WANT to grow and learn
• make connections between the shift in the real world to the realities in the educational world
• address how professional development for educators MUST change in order to allow change in the classroom to happen
• talk about the moral imperative of sharing among educators
• practice what they preached
• show that they are approachable and willing to connect with their audience
• lead a conversation, not just lecture

After receiving their toolkit, we ushered our teams to a location where they could unpack, set up and connect their devices with the help and support of a tech team if necessary. We had prepared a suggested app list to guide them as they were setting up an iTunes account and make choices about their first few apps.

Among the apps listed, was an edJEWcon conference app (created with Yapp.us) , which allowed attendees to receive updates, browse the schedule with room assignments and conversation descriptions, click on links we were pushing out, images, and Twitter feeds (@edjewcon & #edjewcon).

Tool set up went smooth and participants  were getting to know each other or reconnecting over lunch before heading to the first keynote. The conference had begun…

edJEWcon Keynote

View more presentations from Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano

Mike Fisher, explained it well in his post Strategic and Capable, how MJGDS Middle School students worked behind the scene at the keynotes. They became the teachers, as Heidi Hayes Jacobs asked them to disperse, find an adult among the audience, sit with them and coach them in using their tool (iPad, laptop, iTouch)  to participate in a backchannel.

Backchanneling was nothing new to these students. Over the years, they have experienced using a backchannel  for academic purposes on a regular basis. (ex. movie watching, learning styles & collaboration, assessment of learning, Skype conferencing)

Image used with permission from Talie Zaifert

The concept of a shift in roles and defining who is a learner and who is a teacher was beautifully illustrated throughout the conference. As attendees AND presenters called upon our students to show, coach and participate as valued members of a conversation. In my mind it became clearer that any conference about education MUST include our students.

One of the main take aways, we wanted attendees to leave edJEWcon with, was an acute awareness of learning as being social, collaborative, connected and participatory.

We are not alone in our learning journey but can, should and must rely on a learning network to filter, contribute and add perspective.

Attendees were reminded throughout the conference to document their learning. Many took notes in  (paper) journals we provided in their toolkits. Several were spotted using word processors on their laptops to take notes. Some used  Google Docs to amplify by collaboratively taking notes and sharing them with colleagues.

Many brought their own iPads or used the iPad that was given to each team as part of the tool kit.

It was thrilling to see a Twitter newbie to discover the connected note taking capabilities of Twitter, by using not only summarizing their own thoughts but using #hashtags and RT (re-tweets).

It was equally thrilling to see attendees using their tools  to go beyond text based note taking and documenting. Thousands of images were taken during edJEWcon, they were shared via Twitter, blogs and Flickr.

Image by Talie Zaifert

There was undoubtedly a buzz in the air…

A buzz…

• how “edJEWcon was nothing without the people. People who came. People who helped. People who shared and learned and tweeted and connected. People are the magic that breathe life into an idea”.- Andrea Hernandez
• and “a Burst of educational excitement”- Gray Academy
• of “magic happening”- Mike Fisher
• where “we together explored topics that matter, not technology, but rather relationship and community”- Shira Leibowitz
• of “an environment where everyone was willing to learn and  grow and move out of his or her comfort zone”.- Akevy Greenblatt
• of  being “uncomfortable, in brain pain, and petrified of what I don’t know.  And I couldn’t be more excited or invigorated about it”.- Julie Lambert
• of learning “this week that blogging and tweeting are the “new” forms of communication that expand our world – that make it global”- Valeri Mitrani
• where “All leadership is collaborative, co-creation. No one can create anything extraordinary without tapping into the brilliance, hard work and passion of others. There is no creation without people”.- Andrea Hernandez
• “Through Twitter, I have connected with incredible people with invaluable resources.  These people have many more followers and much better insight than I and they can now lend their collective voices to mine”. – Jessica Nathan
• to “get everyone excited about these new concepts and ideas we are beginning to embrace”.- Metro West Jewish Day School
• that “It is not necessarily about using technology in the classroom it is about transforming learning with the assistance of technology.”- Jessica Jundef

As Heidi Hayes Jabobs points out, we need to strategically upgrade the areas of school structures, assessment and curriculum content review. edJEWcon was just the BEGINNING. edJEWcon was a about making educators AWARE and planting a SEED with concrete ideas how one one school is pushing for change.

The buzz was high… now the real work begins of ACTING on the awareness and growing that seed. We set ourselves the goal of edJEWcon being a conference, where

• the CREATION of media and documentation of learning
• the PARTICIPATION of attendees during conversations NOT lectures

would be a PRIORITY! Mission accomplished!

Now we move onto the challenge of LONG TERM sustainability of the learning community platform that was started DURING edJEWcon.

I am asking myself questions such as:

• How do we sustain our own level of excitement?
• How do we continue (or start)  to share what we learned with others?
• How do you enact change in your own school?
• What are your next steps?
• How will you CONTINUE to participate?
• How do we COLLABORATIVELY create a platform that becomes a source of reflection, resources and documentation of CHANGE in Jewish Education?
• How do we translate the COMMITMENT of PARTICIPATION (not just attending) during the conference into becoming more than a LURKER in a virtual community platform.  (Wikipedia defines a lurker as: “In Internet culture, a lurker is a person who reads discussions on a message board, newsgroup, chatroom, file sharing, social networking site, listening to people in VOIP calls such as Skype and Ventrilo or other interactive system, but rarely or never participates actively.”)

My challenge to you is to reflect on these questions above…come up with your own questions…take the time to respond openly

• on your edJEWcon’s school blog
• in response to another blog post
• as comments on my Langwitches blog
• on your own professional learning blog
• in 140 characters or less on Twitter (including the #edjewcon hashtag)
• in a video
• as an audio post
• or any other way how you can express and share your thoughts

The important part is to get it out…in a digital form… to be able to connect it to others…to be part of a learning conversation that is CHANGING eduction.

Action Research- Quadblogging Trailer

If you are interested in following the blogs of the International Action Research teams on “Quality Writing through Blogging”, take a look at the following trailer and visit the classroom and student blogs to see for yourself the progress they are making, draw your own conclusions about blogging with students.
If so inclined, you can support our students by modeling quality commenting and reminding them that they do indeed have a global audience. Their writing matters!

Team USA- mjgds.org/classrooms/4thgrade/
Team Thailand- inside.isb.ac.th/rm204
Team Czech Republic- blogs.isp.cz/grade3v/
Team Switzerland- stuweb.iszl.ch/Stuweb2011/Grade4/4S/4S.htm

Perspectives and Talking at Cross Purposes

Perspective is defined as a mental view or outlook. Your perspective is influenced by so much and luckily is not set in stone. Your life experiences, your learning journey, the people you meet, culture, geographic location and the language you speak contribute to your current perspective.

My own perspective  was predetermined by world history as well as my family’s personal history. It has been molded since then by living on three continents, owning three languages and by traveling abroad.

Already a very visual person, as a child, my world view consisted in placing my family and friends on an imaginary map or globe as stick figures. My grandmother stood in Europe, in Germany, my uncle and aunt were sticking out from Singapore and later China, my godfather’s head was placed over Spain. My father usually popped his head out of an airplane flying from one continent to another.

I look at people and am reminded of the metaphor of an iceberg in relationship to culture. Only 10% of their cultural being is visible to me above the water surface. The way they dress, the way they speak, their food they eat, games they play, their literature, traditions and celebrations. 90% of who they are is below the surface: the concept of time, their relationship to death, their rules of conduct, personal space, tolerance of physical pain, roles in relationship to age, class, sex and kinship.

I sleep with my and my family’s passports right next to me. They are in a bag, ready to jump up and make a run for it, in case it were ever necessary. A silly custom? Weird? Why would anyone on earth be compelled to having to sleep with passports on the side?

In my family’s history (both sides of the family) having had to leave their lives on a moment’s notice. Both families, always thinking, that that could NEVER happen to them. They lived in a “civilized” country. They were safe… that it would never have to come to something that extreme…

So, packing up my bags, moving, starting fresh has been placed in my cradle and was practiced from an early age on. Traveling has also been part of my life and has further shaped my perspective. People and cultures that are so different than my own have taught me, if anything, to know that nothing is set in stone. Any “truth” you hold dear, opinion, conviction which is shared with everyone around you in your geographic location can make you an instant outsider when in another place.

Most people know about the term or have experienced the feeling of “homesickness”. Many are unaware, that there is an opposite to that term, called “Fernweh”. Translated from the German, it means “An ache for distant places”. The “condition” describes “A strong desire or craving to travel abroad”.

Coming back to perspective, a mental view or outlook…

A quote from Saint Augustine, a bishop from the 4th century, ” The world is a book, those who not travel, read only one page”. The  perspectives I have gained through traveling, leads me to believe that he was on to something. If you never go beyond the first page, how could you be aware of other points of view?

When I first arrived in the United States, I must say, that I was in culture shock. Nothing was like I had expected it. Not any of the movies, like Rocky, Flash Dance, Poltergeist, Porky’s or Terminator, was really helpful in preparing me for what living in the US was going to be like

The grocery store alone was intimidating with the endless variety of pizzas in the frozen food aisle. The choices overwhelmed me. I was used to picking up a oven fresh pizza and empanadas at the corner Italian Restaurant and now, I was supposed to choose from 20+ different frozen varieties?

Who do we consider poor? Who lives in a third world country? Who needs or deserves the help of other so called “developed countries”? What if the so called help is not wanted?

What if you were an ant? You lived with your ant family on an ant hill. You were born and raised on that hill? You grow up to work on the hill, alongside all the other ants.

The furthest you ever ventured from that hill was to go on an organized expedition with a selected few ant friends. What if suddenly a stranger ant arrives on your ant hill and tells you about places that you were unaware that they even existed?

Perspective is something funny…

HSBC, an international bank uses advertisement to bring awareness to their clients about the importance of “local knowledge” when doing business abroad. Local knowledge meaning the 90% of the iceberg below the water surface.

The same object… the same concept… the same experience… all being perceived differently by different people and cultures…

Ask yourself what do you consider a camping trip…a holiday or hell…. what about a cruise?

How do you define accomplishment in your life?

Let’s talk about friends.

Growing up I was told, that I will be able to count my true friends, friends of a life time, on one hand. When I use the word “friend”, this prediction still resonates deep inside me.  When I talk with my own daughters nowadays and we use the word friend, I need to be aware and have to remind myself of their perspective on that word “friend”. They have 800+ “Friends” on Facebook. We use the same word, but attach a different “mental view” to the word.

What does it mean to be educated? An important questions we need to pose ourselves as educators. Just last week, I had a meeting with the president’s office at our local (public) university. They had instituted the new policy of requiring ALL freshman to live on campus. I was seeking a waiver for my daughter, since we live 20 minutes away from campus.
The university’s reasoning behind the mandate, I was told, was research that showed a higher success rate of retaining freshman in college. I was arguing that we were well equipped to handle my daughter’s progress towards graduation from our home. I was then told point blank, that living on campus, she would receive a BETTER education.

At that point, I was well aware that we were talking at cross purposes. While I was equating education with academics, the was thinking of a typical “American College Experience”, which again conjured up different images in our respective minds.

Let’s look at the influence our perspectives has when we ask the question “Where and How do we Learn”?

Some might have mental images of classrooms with desks and chairs in a row with a chalkboard, whiteboard or smartboard,  a university lecture hall or a quiet library flimmer across you mind. Learning comes from books or experts who are willing to pass on their knowledge.  Others think of learning as a global network of physical and virtual connection. Learning that happens whenever and wherever. Learning doesn’t take place when you “go to a specific location” or “pass a certain test”.

Where do we go for information? Ask yourself that question, ask  a teenager… Will both of you have the same mental view? When we were growing up, there were not many choices. Ask you mother, ask your father, ask your teacher, ask your librarian, look it up in the encyclopedia. Those were your choices. Nowadays the options have multiplied. Do we keep the changes in perspective (or the lack of change in some) in mind when we speak to others?

How does a classroom look like? Again, think of the first image that comes to mind…maybe you even think of your own classroom at school. Then ask yourself,  is there a possibility that your image might look completely different that the person you are talking to? The danger to be talking at cross purposes is great. The awareness of perspectives is more important than ever, if we want to be working together to move education and learning forward.

Let’s look at the way we read. Think of READING…

• Does curling up with your favorite book in your lap or the sound of your morning newspaper come to mind?
• Are you experiencing the joy of having all the books you are currently reading simultaneously in one place, always with you?
• Is  the smell and feel of paper as you turning the pages part of your reading experience?
• Have you experienced the a new dimension as you are reading, annotating, connecting and sharing your thoughts and reaction with others who are reading the same book?

How do we write? When you think about the way you write…

• Do you think of paper and pen first?
• Do you think of handwritten letters, Thank you cards, scribbled notes, yellow notepad papers, composition books?
• Are you thinking of blogging, tweeting, texting, facebooking and emailing?

What does collaborating mean for you? Weekly grade level or subject area meetings? Allowing your students to work in pairs or small groups in the classroom or assigning a group project to be completed outside of classroom time? Does collaboration bring world wide  work to mind, that allows students to experience underlying points of view, have their work added to or remixed with material created by peers or experts? Does asynchronous collaboration come to mind when collaborators live in different geographic locations and are separated by timezones?

How do we communicate? As a family, who is dispersed over many countries and continents, communication between family members has always been an issue. My mental image is of one, when I had to take 2 buses, one train and walk for twenty minutes to a telephone center to ask an operator to place a phone call for me to my grandmother. I then had to wait for an hour to be connected to be able to speak to her for about 3 minutes, since every minute from Argentina to Germany was very expensive. Communication today is a local number stored on my cell phone to be able to call my mother in Argentina or to use a video call via Skype to show my little niece, who lives in Canada, how our garden in Florida looks like in the winter.

Are you aware of perspectives? Are you prepared to recognize moments of talking at cross purposes?

Share an anecdote of when you became aware of talking at cross purposes about education.