The NCAECT conference ended yesterday afternoon. I left the banquet just after Deneen’s closing keynote, but just before the association unveiled their new name. Brenda was waiting in the lobby of the hotel and we wanted to beat the rush of educators scurrying back home (across the state) and toward their weekends.
I think that what Deneen Frazier did was very interesting. Since she had already done a keynote for NCAECT in a previous conference, she did not deliver her one-woman show, The Natives are Restless. Instead, she reflected back on the conference, which she had witnessed through the eyes of her characters. She included in here closing, video clips from conversations she’d had with teachers and with students, pointing out some of the differences between our world and their world, between the way that we see our world and its future, and the way that they see the world and THEIR future.
The reason was not to say that we’re wrong and they’re right. Instead, I think that it was to say that perhaps there are opportunities for teaching and learning, if we can figure out how to channel learning through their eyes and ears. It’s like what England wants to do in making education more customer oriented. It seems to me that it has less to do with serving the customer, and more to do with sourcing their actions and tendencies.
The greatest moment in Deneen’s address was when she came out as one of the characters (with time to put only one of her skates on), and she came running out into the audience with a blue flag. She explained in her hyper-energetic way, that this flag was used, during NASCAR races (The Theme of the conference was race cars) to signal to cars that faster ones were coming and that they should move over and let them through. The she yelled, “Move over! You’re slow! Move over.”
I guess you had to be there.
Anyway, it was a very interesting and valuable addition to the conference to have someone whose job it was to be a lens on the event, especially the lens of our customers. Well done!
Interesting that this should be the discussion at this conference. I don’t know if you have heard of the recent case in Toronto at Ryerson University where a student is facing expulsion for moderating a study group in Facebook for an assignment that the prof deemed as an independent study. So sad that these students have to go through a school system that is not even trying to keep up with technology or their clientele!