Sharing

I am still reeling from the incredible four days I got to spend in Philadelphia at Educon 2.2. The administration, teachers and students at SLA are a wonderful example of how transparency and collaboration can create a vibrant school culture. They say Educon is not a technology conference and that was certainly evidenced the entire weekend. The conversations were deep, thoughtful and empowering but what caught me the most was that technology was always present but never the point. The point was how to be better educators and while technology is integral it always remained in the background. If we want to make our students ready for the world ahead of them they have to be comfortable leveraging all the collaborative tools to communicate but most importantly we have to teach them to be self directed, inquisitive, mindful citizens.

The other big thing I took away from my weekend was that there are a ton of great things happening in classrooms across the country and they need to be shared. The more success stories that are demonstrated the more people will be able to see the practical applications of good learning. So I hope to continue to encourage my teachers to find innovative way to learn with our students and then share them here. I am convinced that the more we are transparent in our learning the better education can become.

In that spirit, we presented The Alice Project at Educon. We took two students who did the majority of the presentation. It was great to see them speak confidently and honestly about their learning experience. If you get a chance please check out the project as it now contains everything from initial setup through reflection.

Here are a couple articles that mention Educon and the project as well.
Green.tmcnet

christian-long-and-the-alice-project-falling-down-the-virtual-rabbit-hole

Shared Smarts: The Wisdom of EduCon