Back from a weekend in Philadephia at Educon 2.3: http://educon23.org/

It was an amazing feeling to be rubbing shoulders with some of the thought leaders I have encountered online over the past few years: Sylvia Martinez, George Couros, Chris Lehmann, Karl Fisch, Dean Shareski, Alec Couros, Gary Stager, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Will Richardson, Kyle Pace, etc.

My favourite ‘conversation’ was encountering Gary Stager’s (http://stager.org/) description of Reggio Emilia which he advocated as an alternative to ‘data-driven’ bulls…’.

I also picked up some great ideas from the ‘Cultivating Connected Learning Experiences through Arts Integration’ conversation and have resolved to really push arts-integration.

The idea of individual student passion-projects came up several times (and reminded me of Keiran Egan’s work: http://www.educ.sfu.ca/kegan/). Students at the NYC iSchool and at the Science Leadership Academy (http://www.scienceleadership.org/) are committed to individual projects with appropriate expert mentors. Some of the examples I saw mentioned on the walls at SLA included: making toys, making an instructional video, producing a CD of original music, a themed website, community service, and even teaching a middle school class. I really like the idea of students completing a major project every year and I wish we could replace examinations with projects!

Dean Shareski led a conversation on the ethical obligation to teach, learn and share globally. This is a conversation that I need to lead at my own school, where some staff get caught up in protecting and hiding their own teaching ideas – “It’s my intellectual property.” Since hearing Heidi Hayes Jacobs present a few years ago, I have been convinced that schools should make teaching programs available online for anyone to access. Why the need to hide them away?

Another highlight was the interactions with SLA students and staff. Students were responsible for much of the conference and they thrived on the trust and responsibility. It was a powerful example of what is possible.

Several themes kept reoccurring during the conference: creativity, collaboration, technology, project-based learning, student voice, arts-integration, school reform, learning spaces, common planning time, etc. It struck me that I was not really learning anything new at the conference. After all, I have been following many of these people and ideas online for quite some time. It also struck me that the above list of themes is a pretty good starting point for improving schools. So, if we know what to do, why is nothing happening? I think there are two key reasons:

1) We are really confused about the purpose of schooling. Everyone has a different answer to what the purpose of schooling is and until we can get common agreement, all reform efforts are doomed.

2) Educators need to become far more political. We have much to learn from the organising and activism of people like Cesar Chavez and Marshall Ganz, and, like them, there is a moral imperative to our work.