Learning Mix

EduCon 2.0

January 28, 2008 on 7:29 am | In education, technology, web 2.0 | No Comments

As EduCon 2.0 wraps up, my head is spinning, as it usually does at a great conference. I’ll try to carve out time over the next few days to reflect on my experiences. The first day was actually the preconference, where the early arrivers had the opportunity to visit SLA and hang out with each other. I met some great folks and had a chance to spend time with Chris Lehmann and talk to him about SLA. He and this place are impressive. What a great school in so many ways.

That said, I have to say it was interesting to see that what’s going on in the classrooms was not so different from what happens in other good classrooms I’ve spent time in over the years. I guess I was half-expecting to find Utopian classrooms of totally rapt students, master teachers, ground-breaking innovation, and technology-rich, student-centered lessons. I did see some of that, but I mostly saw passionate teachers of various abilities using a variety of progressive and traditional approaches to reach large classes of generally engaged students, many of whom were on task and some of whom were on Facebook. In other words, I saw the reality of most good schools. This is not meant as a criticism at all but only as an observation of my own preconceptions.

More to come.