In a given school year, which four education conferences would you most like to attend? I mean, which are essential?
Bonus points for considering this question from the POV of a lanky tech-curious math teacher looking to take a more active role in his own professional development this forthcoming school year.
The University of Chicago annually hosts the most comprehensive scavenger hunt you have ever seen, comprising eighteen pages, 269 items, and a 1,000 mile radius, and then they post the list.
I’m trying to figure out which of my known readers is gonna flip for these items like I do annually. Favorites culled from the first few pages while my last class took its final exam:
Okay I’ve gotta quit but, seriously, someone get these people a MacArthur grant.
See you next year, kids.
You are unexpectedly transported to England in the year 1000 AD with what you are wearing, what you know, and nothing else. What challenges do you face? Specifically, how do you survive?
Such a fine summative question there, visceral, compelling, offering a gradient of responses all the way from “I wouldn’t.” to some of the comments at Marginal Revolution, demonstrating extraordinary command of local geography, sociology, and economy.
You’ve got people arguing for trebuchets, crop rotation, and bookkeeping while others argue that trebuchets, crop rotation, and the printing press are all ideas that’ll get you incinerated for sorcery.
And after dozens of serious vectors on the question, this gem:
Only what you are wearing and what you know? Well, I’m wearing a fully-comped Springfield DA in a shoulder rig, counterbalanced with three extra mags. I’ve got a Spyderco Police Model in the back pocket of my jeans, a pretty extensive magpie board in my wallet, and I know how to make grain explode. So, me, I’m headed straight for my new castle, comprende?
Comprende.
Three observations โ one substantive, one superficial, and one libelous โ on Scott McLeod’s recent ranking of the edublogosphere, and the ensuing fracas.
Libelous
We all get this right? Whenever Scott feels his Technorati ranking slip a little, he issues another Technorati-based ranking of the edublogosphere and watches his inbound links explode. Here’s another link, bud, but I’m on to you.
Superficial
Eduwonkette notwithstanding, do any of the top fifty blog anonymously? Most feature an author bio, an author photo, and โ bonus! โ a unique voice.
This strikes me as the darkest dividing line between a well-written well-observed edublog and a well-written well-observed edublog on Scott’s list. Gotta pin it to a compelling voice
Substantive
I have seen two very right-minded disputes with Scott’s list (thrown into the comments for brevity) and two very murky ones which I’d like to clarify:
The trouble is that it’s human nature to kind of hero-worship people. We all know who the ‘rock-star teachers’ are (to quote something that came my way by email recently…) and it would seem that, unfortunately, they run the show.
I’m not saying that they necessarily try to run the show. It’s just that because of extra time (they’re no longer teaching, they’re consultants), motivation (they’re this close to effecting a long-awaited change) or energy they’re the ones who are read the most.
This response suggests an edublogosphere stocked with idiots, each one duped of their subscriptions and trackbacks by a cabal of energetic consultants. Somehow, post after post, these rubes never wise up.
A less sinister, less unhinged explanation would note these bloggers’ consistent, prolific, and quality writing, their interesting ideas, artfully written โ in short, the objective quality of their output.
Truly, it’s impossible to account for taste, and in any other corner of the blogosphere, I wouldn’t even bother with this one. But these are educators, and I worry when educators dismiss even broad objective standards of quality for blogging / podcasting / vodcasting / whatever, or when educators confuse interesting ideas, artful writing, and a compelling voice for extra time, motivation, and energy.
This dismissive stance squanders one of the Internet’s coolest promises for our students:
You are your output. You can rise, fall, and affect change solely on the strength of what you submit to a blog, irrespective of age, gender, race, status, or disability
I mean, how would these critics rationalize the success of Students 2.0, a group of bloggers who aren’t first-movers, consultants, or otherwise endowed with vast stores of free time, who are, instead, just good writers with interesting ideas? .
How can we promote the blogosphere’s meritocracy to our students โ the fact that no one knows you’re a high school freshman on the Internet, that your ideas can go viral just as fast as anyone’s โ but deny it in our own blogging?