*ooh! Mystery!

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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.

Question in my email inbox about PD following the Edcamp model: What if people just goof off?

My response:

The goofing off question occurs most frequently when people are thinking about bringing Edcamp-style PD to their own districts. My colleagues on the Edcamp Foundation presented at ASCD last weekend and got that question there, too. It’s kind of a cute question, really, and is frequently asked in such a way that implies it’s something we hadn’t thought about before.

I would pretty much guarantee that anybody who’s going to goof off during professional development that follows the Edcamp format is also going to goof off during traditional professional development opportunities. We’ve all seen them. They’re most likely sitting in the back of the room, making snide remarks to their neighbors, paying as little attention as possible to what’s actually going on. If we’re lucky, they’re not paying attention because they’re doing something work-related like grading.

At the same time, though, traditional sit and git PD isn’t just losing the people who would never pay attention. It’s losing whole swathes of teachers that care and actively want to improve. Unfortunately, the way it’s presented also frequently forces those teachers to check out, because the material is being presented in the most mind-numbing fashion possible.

Our professional development should both implicitly and explicitly model the educational experiences we want our students to have. If we say we should differentiate instruction for our students and provide them with a wide variety of educational opportunities, why aren’t we doing the same for our teachers? I for one am sick and tired of professional development aimed at the lowest common denominator. My previous district in Pennsylvania gave laptops to all of the teachers and then had mandatory laptop training. It’s a good thing I left the district before I had to go through that, because I would have flipped out.

Even after a decade in education, I know I still have a lot of room to grow as a teacher. The unfortunate reality, though, is that most of the state- or district-provided professional development has been woefully inadequate at actually helping me to improve my practice. I know better than most what I need to work on and the things I need to learn about. I don’t think it’s too much to demand opportunities for the kind of professional development that will actually lead to that.

So to circle back to the original question: If you’re really worried that, given the opportunity to choose their own learning opportunities, teachers will actively choose to goof off or leave the building, I’m really worried about the lack of trust you have in your teachers and the professional climate of your school or district. Trust your professional educators to act like professionals, and treat them as such.

• The Edcamp wiki recently passed 500 members! That’s a lot of collaboration!
• We’re now on pace to pass 100 total events held by the time we get to Edcamp Philly. Again, that’s 100 events in two years.

• Edcamp’s moving to Asia! Thanks to the tireless efforts of Jennifer Chan, Edcamp Hong Kong happens next month! Hong Kong is a great city, and I’m sure it will be a fabulous event.

• This weekend I’m traveling to Philadelphia, birthplace of the movement, to attend the first-ever subject-specific event, Edcamp Social Studies.
• At the exact same time as I’m Edcamping it up with the #sschat crew, my fellow Edcamp Foundation Board members Kristen Swanson, Chrissi Miles, and Ann Leaness will be presenting at the gigantic ASCD conference in a session called “Edcamp-Style Professional Development Engages and Empowers Teachers,” which ASCD itself has highlighted in their press materials as a “hot topic.”

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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!

I don’t think I really talked about this on the blog but somehow I find myself in the position now being the Chairman of the Board of the Edcamp Foundation. The foundation exists in order to provide some sort of national organization to help all the local groups with some knowledge and funding. We’ve already secured our first donor to the foundation, Evernote. I’m honored by the trust placed in me by my fellow directors and I will do my best to further our efforts for more participatory professional development for teachers around the country and world.

With all that in mind, I’d like to offer some advice to people organizing their own Edcamps. You should of course consult some of the obvious sources like the wiki, Mary BethHertz’s blog series, Chris McGee’s ridiculously detailed checklist, and the Simple K12 guide put together by some excellent local organizers. But there’s stuff you only learn by talking with people or putting on some events yourself that might be helpful, so here it is.

Inclusivity
Have you seen Shelley Krause’s page on the wiki about inclusivity? I think it’s simultaneously the most important and most ignored page on the entire wiki. You should really read it.

I’ve recently been in email contact with a parent who attended a recent Edcamp and had a very dissatisfactory experience. While I would be the first to argue that Edcamps are not necessarily for everybody, this is a person that I know and trust and, I think, has the right sort of mindset for an event like this. Edcamp should be for anybody who has a strong interest in education, not just teachers. Are you doing everything you can to make everybody feel welcome? At an Edcamp all voices should be valued equally, which is one of the reasons that I argue most strongly against having keynotes.

Set expectations
In your advertising, leading up to the event, and the morning of the event you really must do your best to set expectations for your Edcamp. One part of that is certainly that people really have to know what they’re getting into. At the same time, people may think they know what they’re getting into, but they don’t really. In your kickoff, there are certain things you must explain to the people in attendance. First, they need to know how to build the schedule. A good schedule should see some negotiations, as people try and make sure the sessions are going to work for them, and also as they realize that some sessions are going to work better together and should be combined. You will need to help them with this. Second, they need to know what a good session should look like. A session should be almost all conversation or hands-on activities. Symptoms of a bad session include:

• Lots of lecturing
• PowerPoint with lots of bullet points
• Conversation between two or three people when there’s a room filled with lots of others

There’s a reason that we like to call people who are attending a Edcamps participants. They should be participating in the sessions they’re attending.
Finally, they need to know and understand the rule of 2 feet. If a session isn’t meeting their needs, they need to leave. If a session has the symptoms of a bad session, they need to leave. You should also have some sort of open space where people who haven’t found a suitable session can meet with each other. If my experience is any indication, they won’t have any difficulty finding something to talk about. They may want to alternatively use the space for some quiet reflection time. As an introvert, that’s something I know that I highly value.

Sessions
There are a few perennial sessions which are always very popular at an Edcamp.

• Introduction to Twitter. Chances are you found out about Edcamp because of Twitter, but you have invited some friends who has not been used it yet. If these people like Edcamp, they will probably like Twitter too. Encourage somebody knowledgeable in the ways of networking to run a session talking about what the value of Twitter and showing the basics of how to use it.
• Things That Suck. I’ve described this session in plenty of detail in the past, and all you really need to know is that lots of people attend the session and they will leave saying that they really enjoyed it. It’s a great way to get some conversation started. They’ll probably want to continue them outside of the session.
• The Smackdown. I don’t care what it is you’re sharing. It can be apps, Web 2.0 tools, or lesson ideas. Whatever it is people really enjoy sharing lots and lots of ideas very quickly in a large group. This is generally a great way to end your day.

My final piece of wisdom is this: Edcamps are educational events not technology events. We need to start encouraging people to talk about more than just pieces of technology in different tools that they’re using. As soon as we pigeonhole ourselves like that we make it much more difficult to invite other people into the conversation. Technology is a piece of what we do in education, but I really sure hope that it’s not all that we do. My favorite sessions I’ve attended have had little to nothing to do with technology. As teachers, students, and parents, we have huge questions of policy, content, and pedagogy ahead of us. We may be a small community, but we should be starting grand debates and discussions about these things. Then we should invite more people in to the discussion. It’s our duty to light the way ahead, because it seems like lots of people these days want to drag us in in 1 million different directions, many of which will hurt our students, teachers, and communities. And that sucks.

Light the way.

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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.”