Networked Learning at Conferences

We know that things are getting tight, when conferences are offering fold-it-yourself door prizes.  Yet the conferences are still happening and people are still coming.  Many of the conferences I’ve worked lately have actually seen an increase in attendance over last year.  There seems to be an intersection between shrinking budgets and a genuine interest in, and desire to change the ways we’re doing things.  The other day, I heard someone on NPR say that when we come out the other end of this recession, we’re going to see a different world.  I suspect that this will be especially true of education.

Sawyer & I cutting up after his keynote

I have only one more gig for 2008, Ontario’s Wester Regional Computer Advisory Committee’s Symposium 2008.  I delivered a keynote address for this conference in 2004 along with Canadian SciFi author, Robert Sawyer.  It was an honor to meet and talk with Robert and to read many of his books during the following weeks.

Photo by tyfn ((TYFN, “Amber Mac.” Flickr. 5 Oct 2007. 6 Dec 2008 <http://flickr.com/photos/tyfn/1491579051))

This year, I will open the conference and then hang around to see the afternoon address, delivered by Internet media star, Amber MacArthur.  I remember her from TechTV and have listened to a few of her podcasts, but will likely be listening to more in the coming days.  Her address is called, “The Do’s and Don’ts of Social Media & Web 2.0.”  I can’t wait.

Rolling around in my head, though, as I continue to prepare my talks, is something that I illuded to in my live blog of Jim Moulton’s keynote at NCETC last week.  It was only a year and a handful of months ago that virtually no one in my audiences had heard of RSS, only three or four had blogs, and Wikipedia was still the spawn of Satan.  Certainly there are still many educators who are unaware of RSS, continue to fear Wikipedia, and not everyone needs to be blogging.  But there are many who are attending these conferences who are in, with the new information environment, and who know as much as I do about the opportunities — and know things I don’t know.

“There are a lot of people attending ed tech conferences who don’t need to.”

Not only do I not like to teach things that people have heard before, but I suspect that we are wasting an enormous opportunity in not finding ways to tap into the knowledge and experiences that glow in the audience seats.

The way that my brain works, I know that I do better teaching from a script, sequenced presentation slides, arranged with purpose, to deliver a message through story.  But letting go of the script, breaking the slides out into flexible nodes of information, and asking the audience to share and build captures much more knowledge, experience, and perspective, and serves the needs of far more people.

I tried it during the second day of NCETC, and received this comment from educator Earnie Cox…

I think I might be one of those people that don’t need to attend as many conferences as I do. Your sessions today invited me to form questions and engage in discussions about the tech stuff I already knew about. That is what we need more of…

I basically introduced Personal Learning Networks, at a fairly general level, and then asked folks to raise their hands if they could identify and conceivably map out their learning networks conceptually.  Several hands went up, and I asked, they described their networks. 

One of the distinctions that I discovered was that most of them saw their groupmails as their PLN — and rightly so.  This gave me the opportunity to say that PLNs are not new.  We’ve always had people and information sources we connected to.  The distinction today, is that our networks can extend beyond our geographies, and even more importantly, they extend through content.  The people in my evolving network are there, not because we speak the same language, grew up in the same neighborhood, look the same, or live the same culture.  We’ve connected through our ideas, through our questions and answers, experiences and insights.

Our networks today can grow spontanieously by virtue of the conversations we are having.

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4 thoughts on “Networked Learning at Conferences”

  1. David – I have been feeling exactly this way about conferences lately. So much is geared to the beginner, I would like to see an intermediate or advanced level of sessions offered. Recently, I offered a session called “Making Things Happen, Tapping in to the Power of the Network” where I had people first focus on refining a personal/educational goal and then looking at how the network both in the room and Online could help them to achieve their goal. I also asked people to think about the expertise they have to contribute to their network. In the session participants did some writing, some visualization and a lot of talking to each other.

    I feel we need to start taking the next step and thinking beyond the technology to ideas about best practice and how technology can support that. I also feel that we need to practice what we preach and stop talking at people for an hour and start engaging each other in the learning. Thanks for bringing this up. I wish I could have been at NCETC.

  2. David – It’s good to hear that your on-the-road presentations will be ending at RCAC. I suspect that this event will be a turning point for many.

    The past 6 months, just about every presentation I’ve given has been ‘hyper’ in some regard. Not in the connotation of excited, but as in ‘hyper-linked’. Depending on the audience, I’ve been prepared to jump to resources, blogposts, examples, audio-video, or even to publicly search.

    Presenting and receiving carefully prepared content can be an engaging experience, but I’m finding it to be more powerful to model the flexibility and adaptability required of Teacher 2.0.

    Looking forward to seeing you in London!

  3. David,

    I am so pleased that you followed up on this statement from a previous post:
    “There are a lot of people attending ed tech conferences who don’t need to.”

    I know that there have been many instances where the broad spectrum of adult learners in a professional development can create an atmosphere of confusion and boredom. I think that social and professional networking is a wonderful way to cope for this (as it is a concern for all of us all of the time) and I thank you so much for pointing this out!

    Your post will most assuredly change the way I offer PD.

    Thanks,
    Another David

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