I just backed out of Second Life for the second Preconference conversation, precursoring the Learning 2.008 conference in Shanghai later this month. The two invited speakers this time were myself, Suriawang, and Scottish educator, Ewan McIntosh (Learning Loon). The first bit of disappointing news was that Marco Torrez and George Siemens will not be able to join us. This is a huge disappointment, because each of them would have added so much to my experience.
The good news was that the conference sessions will be available the first of the week, so I’ll know how to prepare. Half of the sessions will be formal presentation and the other half will be unconference sessions. Again, I’m looking forward to the learning that I will certainly be doing as a result of all those conversations.
Our conversations got deeper today, with questions about education in other countries. McIntosh took exception to my comment that Scotland has an advantage over the U.S. by virtue of its size. It’s easier to affect change in a small place than a large one. But the issues are certainly far more complex than that and with many exceptions. It is one of the questions I heard several times, though, when I was in his country several years ago. “How does the U.S. do what it does, as huge as it is?”
McIntosh also took exception to the emphasis that we, many of us, are placing on collaboration — and I agree with his notion that we shouldn’t throw out the value of individual insight and creativity, to follow the trumpet call to collaboration. I think it is one of the weaknesses of todays digital conversation, that our statements tend to be chirps about this and chirps about that — and as a reader reads one blog post about the importance of the creative arts, it can sounds in opposition to science and math.
This is probably a good thing, in the long run, because it has us constantly struggling to find the middle ground, the blend between collaboration and individual, science and art, lecture and self-directed learning, and all of the other spectrums.
After the formal conversation was over, Chris Smith, one of the moderators and the architect of International School Island, took us over to a device called the Opinionator. Please correct me, Chris, if I got the title wrong. In a circle, there are five containers that a person/avatar can walk into. They are labled agree, strongly aggree, disagree, and so on. The question is asked, and the participants walk into the container that corresponds with their answer. The pie chart in the middle rebuilds itself in real time, to reflect the percentage of users who are of each answer.
I find this terribly exciting, that we are in a place where we are inventing new tools, capitalizing on new environments. Terribly exciting.