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Register today for the Massachusetts Teachers Association Unconference. It’s part of the annual Summer Conference in Williamstown. Full issue of MTA Today here.

Tomorrow starts a busy conference/unconference season for me. Here’s where I plan on going in the next few months, in case you’d like to join me for some awesomeness:

• New England 1:1 Summit – March 10, Burlington, MA. I’m leading a discussion with my partner in crime Laura D’Elia on the what 1:1 programs should look like in the Elementary environment. I’m not speaking from experience or expertise on this at all, just have lots of ideas, would love to get feedback and suggestions and other ideas here.
• Edcamp Social Studies – March 24, Philadelphia, PA. I’m excited about this, the first subject-specific Edcamp. The #sschat people are kind of intense, and I love them for it. I’m looking forward to the trip down with Tracy Sockalosky and Greg Kulowiec just as much if not more.
• Edcamp Maine – March 31, Portland, ME. Maine is a powerhouse filled with some great educators! It’s nice to see Edcamp spreading to other states in New England.
• Edcamp Vermont – April 14, Burlington, VT. Speaking of spreading to other states in New England, I’ve had very little interactions with people from Vermont, but they let Larry Fliegelman convince them that they should run an Edcamp, so I’m sure we’ll get along just fine.
• Tech Forum Boston – April 27, Burlington, MA. I’ll be co-running a Mobile Apps Smackdown, and trying to look dignified while doing it.
• Edcamp Boston – April 28, Cambridge, MA. Co-organizing this. Less than 90 tickets left! Register while you still can! Microsoft’s space is amazing! Meet awesome Boston-area educators! Do it!
• Upper Valley Edcamp – May 2, Lebanon, NH. Another New England Edcamp! This is a maybe, since it’s on a weekday after school and is a couple of hours away.
• Dialogue 21 – May 5, West Hartford, MA. This is another maybe for me right now, since at some point I do need to rest, but Marialice Curran is running this, so I’m sure it will be awesome. Totally free, just like an Edcamp! Great opportunity for Connecticut, Western Massachusetts, and Eastern New York State educators.
• Edcamp Philly – May 19, Philadelphia, PA. The third annual Edcamp Philly, the event that kicked off this whole Edcamp thing two years ago. Be there!

Unsurprisingly, I had yet another amazing time at EduCon. It was so good to meet with old friends again and make some new ones. More than anything else the thing that continues to impress me about EduCon is how there’s a real sense of community amongst the 500 educators there. Especially when you consider that these people have come from all over the country or the world to be there it’s something really special that I think other conferences still have a hard time matching.

Of course, the other really impressive thing about EduCon is the quality of conversations available. Every single one I went to this year was at a minimum good and many of them were indeed great. Of all the ones that I attended,I have to say that my absolute favorite one which I had the most fun with was the HackJam. It’s something that I want to steal for myself. Don’t be surprised to see me running one at an Edcamp near you in the future.

Needless to say, I was completely blown away by the attendance at the session that I ran, “What Should Every Citizen Know?” The conversation itself was rich, and to my mind, satisfying. It pleased me to see people really wrestling with ideas that I presented, and struggling to distill the things they felt most important for students to know upon graduation from high school. I didn’t expect the group to come to any kind of consensus because I really think that there is no answer to this which will satisfy anybody let alone everybody. I myself am of two minds when it comes to this. As I stated at the beginning of my conversation, I really do believe that there is value in the liberal arts for everybody. On the other hand, I question how much of it will be of value to people in the lives that they choose to lead in society today. Needless to say, one of the reasons that I chose to run this conversation because it’s something that I’ve been struggling with myself for the past couple years.

I greatly appreciate all the people who came to the session as they had much better things to go to and people to learn from than myself. Here’s the amazing Google Doc they created with tons of great ideas about the things we value for our students today. I’m humbled and honored to have spent an hour and a half in conversation with a great group of people. Thanks for making my first EduCon conversation a success.

PS: This is the first post that I’ve written on my iPhone using Siri.  Highlights include “educon” coming out as something obscene in reference to male genitalia, and “HackJam” coming out as “half chicken.”

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This week I have a metric crapload* of classes coming to the computer lab to do an online assessment for the Symphony Math program. On the scale of online assessments I’ve seen over the past 14 months since I started as a Technology Specialist, I award it the highest praise yet: it’s quick. It takes about 20 minutes.

Before the students started in the assessment, their teacher gave some of the standard boilerplate about trying their best to show off what they really know. She told them to take their time answering each question to make sure they got it right.

Diligent students being diligent students, they did.

Here’s the interesting part, though: at one point in the assessment, students receive the instructions to answer the following questions as quick as you can.

This, of course, provides a fascinating bit of cognitive dissonance to watch play out. Fully 1/4 of the class raised their hand when they got to that point to clarify the teacher’s expectations of them.

Is it wrong that this really worries me?

*as opposed to an imperial crapload, naturally

Teachers don’t trust research, and understandably so. There’s a lot of shoddy research that supports fads. Experienced teachers remember that “this year’s method” directly contradicts the approach from three years ago. So they’d rather go it alone. Newer teachers pick up on the skepticism about research from the veterans.

Unlike medical research, teacher research rarely examines possible side effects, and whether they are short-term aggravations or can be expected to persist.

via Studying Teacher Moves : Education Next.

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The demand for technology in classrooms has given rise to a slick and fast-growing sales force. Makers of computers and other gear vigorously court educators as they vie for billions of dollars in school financing. Sometimes inviting criticism of their zealous marketing, they pitch via e-mail, make cold calls, arrange luncheons and hold community meetings.

via Silicon Valley Wows Educators, and Woos Them – NYtimes.com.

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