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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.”

via Ain’t It Cool News.

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That’s nearly 1/3 of my total photographic output since I bought my first digital camera back in 2001.

I was helped a lot by some big trips this year. I went to San Diego, London, Orlando, and San Francisco this year. I went to some great conferences as well. I also was all over the place in the greater Boston area. I also completed Project 365 for the second time.

I realized this year that what I try to do with my photography is document the things and people I love. Below find a gallery of the 12 photos that I think best represent that effort at documentation, followed by explanations for some.

Fittingly, my favorite photograph that I took this year is of the love of my life. Beth didn’t know that I was taking her picture looking at this gorgeous California sunset. Unfortunately for all of you, you can’t see how lovely she looked that day. Fortunately for me, her silhouette completely pops against the amazing colors over the Pacific.

We went to London for our friends’ wedding, and were fortunate to get to sit at the table with the bride and groom directly across from them. Since I’m allergic to flash, I tend to rely on my fastest lens (50mm 1.4) to power me through indoor shots. It leads to fun depth of field moments, like the groom here looking adoringly at his new bride. I’m so glad I focused on her almost as much as he did.

Whenever I’m in the city, I love to catch glimpses of people in their own little worlds. I don’t think this photo is necessarily my best in terms of technique or framing, but I kept coming back to it as a perfect, quiet moment in an otherwise busy city like Boston.

I can guarantee you that two years ago I couldn’t have pulled this shot off. I was drawn to this little scene of people watching fireworks and knew I had to capture the way the light worked.

Speaking of fireworks, I can’t get enough of them. This one’s my best from 2011, taken at Hampton Beach.

We don’t use our garage much, so this spider was able to build its amazingly intricate web. Lucky timing + lighting meant I could capture her perfectly one day sitting in the middle of it.

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It got me thinking about the nonverbal messages that we send in our day to day interactions with students and other teachers. What are the implicit perspectives you’re pushing out to the world?

I started thinking about this because of a couple of really nice sessions that I chose to go to, somebody pointing out ways that I modeled for others in my own presentation, and interacting with my colleagues during downtime.

At the first session I attended on Media Literacy in the Elementary School, Katya Vigil‘s modeling of thoughtful reflection on her own practice really impressed me. At so many of the sessions you go to at a conference, the person presenting their work feels a need to put on an air of authority. Everything is wonderful, and that’s why I’m here in front of you today! In contrast, the presenter actively discussed throughout the presentation what she liked or didn’t like about the units that she planned. She told us explicitly what she felt did not work, improvements that she would make the next time, and research that she still needed to do before deciding on other improvements. I don’t know about you, but I respect that a whole lot more than the person pushing their own perfection. I’m glad that she had a few minutes of commenting and questioning in the end so that I could tell her that I felt that way.

At the other session I attended (more on that in a moment), Suzy Brooks ran a fabulous, fast-paced session where she modeled the value of choice for people. Instead of body-slamming through a ton of topics in the order of her own choosing (like I did in my presentation, of course), she had a list up on the screen and encouraged people to call out the topic they wanted to hear about. It kept audience engagement high through the presentation, people heard what they wanted to hear about, and yet she still somehow hit almost every point that she wanted to. I’ve already assured Suzy through Twitter that I plan on stealing her format at some point.*

At my own sessions, I’m fortunate that I had Jeremy Angoff** there to point out my own modeling for me. With some technical issues popping up, during the presentation, he pointed out to me afterwards that I modeled how to handle that well. I did my best to make light of the situation, and to just keep on moving. If something didn’t display right, I’d do my best to describe what it should be.

Before my second session, a woman politely told me that she would be leaving it early, and assured me that I should not be offended. Jeremy was sitting right behind her, so I asked him if I, a person who runs unconferences in my free time, would be offended in the slightest by somebody leaving my session. In the funniest moment of the whole two days, he replied, “He invented leaving sessions. Wait! I didn’t mean it like that!”

Of course, I did skip a whole bunch of sessions. I took the time to gather my thoughts and have meaningful discussions with my colleagues. I know many people who left sessions multiple times to find something more useful to them. When a bunch of us realized one session had slim pickings for us, we decided to meet up together and run a mini-edcamp in the middle of the conference. We’ve had enough unconference experiences at this point that we just ended up modeling the most basic principles of it just by second nature.

So when you get back to school after reading this, think about those messages that you send out. It may be easier at first to observe others and think about the messages they send. Do they model collaboration or do they send the message that working together with you is a waste of their precious prep time? Do they value student voices, or do they insist on compliance at all times? Do they demonstrate that learning happens constantly by sharing their own learning, or do they represent themselves as the authority at all times? Is learning messy student-driven or perfection and teacher-driven? Look at these things, find the ones modeling the things you value, and try to pick up on ways you too can send those kinds of messages. It takes purposeful effort at first, but the more you practice the modeling, the less you have to think about it. At some point, if you keep acting like the teacher that values collaboration, student voice, and honest sharing, you actually become the teacher that implicitly and naturally demonstrates those values.

*I swear to God that my blog series on remix teaching is coming! When a big idea rattles around in my brain, it can take ages of me wrestling with it to form some sort of coherent thoughts. If you don’t believe me, talk to my wife sometime about how long it was obvious that we would get married before I actually proposed to her. Fortunately, I make up for it by acting rapidly once I know exactly what I’m going to do.

**Jeremy is also totally my hero for coming over during my presentation to troubleshoot a display issue so I didn’t have to bring my presentation to an extended dead stop while trying to figure it out myself.

1. This week I’ll be at MassCUE annual conference on both Wednesday and Thursday. On Thursday I’ll be presenting two sessions. The first session will be me flying solo doing An App a Minute, in which I try to share 50 iPad apps in 50 minutes. Think one man iPad smackdown. The second session will be a joint session with Greg Kulowiec on Do It Yourself PD, a topic on which I think I’m somewhat knowledgeable. If either of those sounds like your bag and you’ll learn something, I’ll be hanging out in Theater B Thursday afternoon.
2. I’m very excited to work with the Coalition of Essential Schools to run a half-day unconference at their annual Fall Forum. We will, of course, be following Edcamp format. It’s not an Edcamp proper, but it’s looking like the closest thing you’ll get in New England in the next few months. The unconference thing is great and all, and it might be nice to see me, but there’s some serious heavy hitters speaking at this thing, most notably Alfie Kohn and Deborah Meier.

Assuming I don’t crash and burn this week, I’ll probably throw in a conversation idea or two for EduCon while I’m at it.