NECC Unplugged
I presented at NECC Unplugged today in a very noisy but welcoming Blogger’s Cafe. My topic was, “Grassroots Technology Change, or: Stop Telling People What to Do.” I spent a long time preparing a long text for a 10-minute “TED-type” talk. When the time came, I plugged in my mic and opened the floodgates. It was hard to stay focused on the text and hard to keep people engaged with so many people walking past and so many conversations going on around the room. But more clapped than booed (OK, no one booed) and at least one attendee came up afterwards to congratulate me and discuss. It was over before it began but I’m glad I did it. Click here to view the complete version of that long text.
The weirdest moment occured as I was waiting to present and took a casual look around the room. The woman sitting next to me was reading this blog! So strange to see your writing on someone else’s screen…
Mike - thanks for your session at NECC Unplugged. I was interested in your mention of doing the Tech Tasting for teachers to showcase their work for each other. Can you share (here or through my email) how this worked, how you got teachers to agree to do participate and the like? Were students involved?
Beth-
The Tech Tasting was the brainchild of the tech committee in one of our elementary schools. The year before, they had taken a “curriculum afternoon” and created a schedule of mini-workshops around the building. This didn’t work so well because it was too spread out; people visited one classroom and then went home. This year we wanted to create a forum where teachers would be able to talk about what they were seeing at the various exhibits as they moved from station to station.
We sent out a blanket e-mail asking for people willing to volunteer but we also made our own short list of people who we thought would be good presenters and applied a little “gentle persuasion” to them. The faculty at this particular school are a very positive and team-oriented group, so it wasn’t a problem getting them all on board. We stressed that this was going to be simple and informal, so it was not a tremendous amount of work for them.
We set up 10 computer stations around the library and each presnter was encouraged to develop some kind of handout. I kicked the session off with a plenary where I explained the logistics and encouraged people to ask questions. The presenters all got to take a 20-minute break at various intervals so they, too, could view the other exhibits. We then had a follow-up meeting a week later where the whole group shared their ideas and reactions with the rest of the faculty and then worked in grade levels to discuss what goals/projects they wanted to pursue based on what they had seen at the tech tasting.
Cheers.