Not a Good Way to Start the Day

IMG_1351.JPGThe picture to the right is the Internet on a bad day.  No worries.  The engineer is on his or her way up to reconnect it.  No need to get upset.  It’s not like I have a presentation to prepare for, because today I’m just learning — at the Educon 2.0

I’ve seen bits and pieces of the conference already, as at least a majority of the sessions are being Ustreamed by students of the Science Leadership Academy, the sponsors of this event.  The sessions are a mix of presentations and conversations — conference and unconference. Coincidentally, one of the sessions that I presented at TRLD was handled in unconference style, which means that I set a context and structure, and then the audience took over the presentation through conversation, me using inspiration to map the discussion.  The topic was ethics and the new information landscape, and I have traditionally presented information, mostly from my literacy book.  But the issues are more complex than can be organized and presented by one person in one hour, so I decided to trust the audience.

Several people came up after the session and said that it was the best and most valuable session that they had attended.  Of course it was only the second session in the conference.  But some of the commenters said it was the best session they’d attended in all of the TRLD conferences they’d attended.  I doubt that, but it speaks to the value of trusting the audience, trusting the learners, trusting the conversation.  I suspect that that’s what I’ll be seeing today here in Philadelphia.

2 thoughts on “Not a Good Way to Start the Day”

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *