C4T # 2

At The Teachers Desk

This week I commented on William Chamberlain's Reflections on EdCampStL 2012.  Mr. Chamberlain drove 5 1/2 hours to get to an EdCamp in St. Louis.   He says that EdCamps are about creating long-lasting relationships that allow you to learn over a long period of time through those relationships.   He relishes in the fact that he can meet people face-to-face that he had previously met online.   Overall, Mr. Chamberlain's experience  at the EdCamp in St. Louis was mediocre at best.

In my comment, I spoke about my concerns with the effects of new communications technology on young people in terms of face-to-face communication.  I said that body language plays a huge role in how we communicate.  Really great orators don't seem to be very common today.  Finally, I asked Mr. Chamberlain if he thought advances in communication technologies would have an adverse effect on young people being able to communicate effectively?   Overall, I really enjoyed this post.  I had a chance to explore some of the links and found some really interesting things relative to camps and conferences for teachers.  The best part about the EdCamp experience, is the face to face communication and hands on interaction by teachers from all over.

I went back to William Chamberlain's blog again this week.  Unfortunately, he did not have any more recent posts than the one I commented on two weeks ago.  However, in the post previous to his latest, William asks a good question.  How About Unconferences for students?  I discovered that unconferences were participant driven meetings, which tried to avoid various aspects of conventional conferences.  Teachers use them as a kind of platform for idea exchange.  There were quite a number of comments and conversation within the blog about ideas as a result of William asking these questions about his primary question.  

1. Could the students sign up ahead of time so that they could be scheduled and have opportunities to practice their presentations? If so, would that go against the spirit of the unconference? 
2. Would this be a student led only conference or would adults be allowed to present as well? If so, they could fill gaps in the presentation and perhaps have to wait to sign up the night/day of the conference thereby keeping some of the spirit of the unconference.
3. It seems like it would be easy to plan. I would need to get access to the school and advertise. Am I missing something significant?

Many of the suggestions in the comments included students giving presentations on what they were learning.  I asked William if he thought it could be more important for students to give presentations on how they were learning instead of what they were learning.  I explained to him that I had taken some courses in college for which I had no answer.  As a student, I would be more interested in hearing how other students manage courses that they just don't understand.