The conference had and amazing vibe. An hour after starting there was an active twitter back channel conversation and a collaborative google doc sharing ideas. There were less technical difficulties and the internet worked well. The buzz was palpable.

I have a few theories about why the atmosphere at the conference was so wonderful. I think OTF along with Peter and Brenda have created an amazing package including Garfield Gini-Newman covering critical thinking, Will Richardson doing personal learning networks and then a Minds On Media event to wrap up and personalize the learning. This combination seems to me magical.

Maybe it also had something to do with the timing. Many participants were on a waiting list from February. It was summer so folks who were there were really interested in attending and brought their own computers instead of work ones.

Whatever the reason, the vibe was amazing and the learning productive. The participants took amazing risks and we really pushed our learning.

One of the things that stood out to me today was how many people from our school board joined in to support the learning:

• The IT team was there for both sessions with technicians and engineers supporting teachers and helping us with equipment and set up. They also joined into a number of sessions. All of these things were way above and beyond and demonstrated their 100% commitment to teachers and education.
• Superintendents and other administrators joined in and learned along side with teachers
• Consultants (instructional strategy, special education and student success) helped out and joined in the learning
• Privacy and Information Manager joined us and held impromptu conversations with teachers about working in an online environment with students
• A teacher created all the required signs for the day in addition to prepping and running a station
• 10 teachers led amazing sessions for the entire day. They took the time to set up and put resources on the wiki and prepare wonderful sessions. This point goes to show how many amazing educators there are in the county who are willing the share and go over the top to support and share with other teachers
• Custodians and office administration facilitated the registration, room set up and sign in for the day, saving the organizers from last minute frenzy and disorganization
• Communication department documenting and posting updates to share our learning with the community, in addition to providing material to post on our wiki that supports teachers with social media

Without the participation of each member of this team, our Minds On Media session would not have been successful. In addition, this joining of forces really reminded us all that while we all work in different areas and specialties, we are all working towards the same goals. Student learning.

While I am still in brain overload from the day, one overwhelming observation that resonates with me from today is how engaged everyone was. Teachers took risks to learn something new, made connections between new technologies and their curriculum and talked about shifts in education. My favorite conversations were with a few teachers throughout the day about “how do we build capacity for this type of change in our schools?”. Those conversations were amazing because they really helped me realize how the culture is shifting and developing in our county. We have spent the year trying to “decentralize” or “delocalize” the learning and knowledge and empower educators to share, collaborate and work within families of schools. Having these conversations where teachers were actively thinking about how they could build these networks was incredibly encouraging.

A HUGE thank you to all educators who participated in todays Mind On Media session. It requires a big shift in participating in a session with so little direction where you are all of a sudden in charge of your own learning. Your risk-taking is greatly appreciated. Thanks to all!

Here is a podcast created by Sean McGaughey as part of todays podcasting session: http://mcgaughey.edublogs.org/files/2011/05/mindsonmediacalder-1diahvs.mp3

The wiki for todays session can be found here: www.scdsbmindsonmedia.wikispaces.com

My concern with this fridays MoM event is that we are working with one teacher from each school and then sending them back alone. That is always difficult when you don’t necessarily have the support and collaboration when you return. In this instance, we do not have the option to release two teachers from each school because our system is so large and there aren’t enough supply teachers to cover that many releases. Our work around for this is to help support collaboration among Families of Schools. This has been a year-long goal and the hope is to continue developing local support systems.

Back to Minds on Media… in planning for Friday we have created a wiki as a place to store links, resources and share ideas. We have booked a million laptops and projectors. We have put a call out to get as many extension cords and power bars. This is going to be our biggest barrier yet – getting enough power to support the stations and teachers neediing to power up. We are lucky that our big conference room has power drops in the floor at regular intervals. This will help tremendously. We’ve also got our hands on chart paper to put on the walls as projection screens (makeshift solution). The IT department knows about the day and graciously offered to have technicians and technical folk on hand for the first part of each session (we have 2 half-day sessions).

We have chosen stations that look at tools that are universally accessible in our school board. For example, voicehtread, blogging, networking (twitter, evernote, livebinders), pod casting, digital storytelling, WordQ and SMART technologies (focus on the notebook software which is on every computer not the hardware which isn’t available in every classroom) and ABEL/Learning Connections (we have a board-wide ABEL license so every teacher can access ABEL or Learning Connections).

One teacher is creating signs for the stations, we have an opening message that will include the guest wireless password and link to the wiki, we have an exit ticket (google form).

Any suggestions? Have I missed anything?

I’ve written about Minds On Media, the brainchild of Brenda Sherry and Peter Skillen, before. I am a big fan of this model of professional development. Created for ECOO, there are multiple stations around one large room. Teachers go wherever they wish. They learn whichever technologies they are interested in. If you get bored, you move. If you find something you want to go deeper into you stay at that station the whole time. It allows for teachers to choose tools that are useful and accessible to them and connect it to the learning goals they are trying to facilitate in their classrooms. It provides all the things we like to talk about being good for our students; differentiation, multiple access points, choosing the best tool to reach the goal and the teacher as a facilitator of learning instead of the holder of all knowledge. The day I co-lead a mini-Minds On Media session with a group of educators I learned more from participants than I “taught” for sure. Very collaborative.

Brenda and Peter have written about the role of the pedagogista here. Basically, our role was to circulate and help teachers step back from the technology and have discussions about the critical thinking, developing learning networks and inquiry-based learning. In addition, when someone wanted a little one-on-one time we helped out.

Throughout the day I had some great conversations with amazing educators. Many of them started with the educator saying “This is all so awesome, I just don’t know where to start”. After a full day with Garfield Gini-Newman around critical thinking and another day with Will Richardson doing the personal learning network blitz, we had all seen so many excellent ideas, tools and strategies. The struggle was to choose a starting point that fit for them. The question “what are the learning goals you would like to work on?” usually led to a discussion that allowed the teacher to narrow down their choices to a few tools. Then some more investigation allowed them to choose the right tool(s) and get started creating their lessons, focusing in on the critical thinking they wanted to reach. I learned more in these discussions than I have from many other professional development sessions combined. The previous day with Will Richardson had opened a whole new world for many of us in the room, and the value on networked learning was incredible. The room was buzzing.

There were also conversations that were just pure fun… One teacher was looking into beefing up her learning network and wanted to start blogging before she went to China to teach for the summer. She wasn’t a facebook user but wanted to share photos and experiences with family and friends while abroad. At first we started to create a blogger account, quickly questioning whether or not it would be available in China (unsure if Google is accessible freely in China?). She knew that she would have email, but unsure of which social media sites would be available. That led us to a posterous blog where she should simply email a photo or blog entry and it would be posted. As we wrapped up updating her twitter profile with a picture, I started to get that nagging feeling… Great fun, but we needed to get back to the critical thinking… Just as I was thinking this, she said… “so… I could do this with my English class. They could…”. We then started into a great conversation about how blogging could be used in the classroom.

I’m not sure how many educators get a chance to observe classes or sit along side a student while they learn, but this day was absolutely fascinating. Having the time and purpose to observe and question was wonderful for my own personal learning. One thing I began to notice was that after about an hour or so, teachers started to navigate to the tables in the centre of the room or settle in at a media station. After browsing the stations they either went to a place they could begin to design, build and construct with support people around them or settled into a station to go deeper into a media. Mali Bickley nicknamed these areas “creation stations”. This is ideal in my mind. How many times have you left a PD session and had all sorts of great ideas, but never found the time to actually get started. These teachers left with that project started. The biggest hurdle overcome.

Lots of great educators have blogged about this OTF session.

* Peter Skillen has the entire twitter feed from the session here
* Brenda Sherry blogged about it here
* Barbara McLaughlin
* Colin Jagoe
* Doug Peterson
* Danika Barker

Thank you Brenda and Peter for a wonderful opportunity and weekend!