It may just be me, but it has been a while since I have attended a conference and have been wowed by a keynote speaker or presenter at the concurrent sessions. The message seems to be the same every time I attend a conference. "Don't worry about testing or the Common Core Standards. Make sure you are offering your students great authentic problem based learning that is individualized, and the rest will take care of itself." Easier said then done!
I used to attend conferences like these and get all jazzed up by some of the wonderful things that the presenters talked about. Immediately upon return to my classroom, I would want to implement some of these strategies and practices into my own curriculum and classroom practice. It was much easier to just jump in. Since making the move from a teacher to a technology integrator, this jump isn't as easy. Translating what I have seen at a conference, manipulating it to individualize it to the district that I work in, and to the teachers that work in the schools, has proven to be a much more difficult task.
Of course, I was an early adopter of all things tech myself. Especially if I could see examples of how it helped enhance education and inspire life long learners to dive deeper into the content. As a tech integrator, I'm not always presenting what I have seen to a group of early adopters, which makes my task that much more daunting! How can you take good PD and morph it into a package that fits everyone's teaching style, each district's goals, and yet not make everyone feel like it is one more thing added to their plate?
I truly respect the three keynote speakers that I recently saw at The Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference in Manchester, NH last week. In fact, I follow all three of them (Scott Kinney from DE, Angela Maiers and Richard Byrne) on Twitter, and have seen them all speak at other conferences before. Their messages are clear. I guess that is why I am missing the spark that I used to get when I attended these conferences. Things really aren't new. There are certainly new technologies and Apps that certain companies would love all educators to share as this pushes their revenue up, but I didn't see anything that I would walk away with and change my whole game plan around integration in education.
The one thing that I did walk away from the conference with is to find one thing that you are passionate about and do it well. As a tech integrator I often see many different tools, and ways to deliver content to learners of various abilities and comfort. Sometimes I feel that I can overwhelm people with the variety of ways to attack a lesson or presentation. To me, keeping projects and presentations more open-ended, in which the student(s) decide which tools they use to solve the problem and present their solution is the best use of problem solving and tech integration. However, this can be a cumbersome task for non-early adopters. They want to stick with what they know and continue to do what they do best.
Okay, so I'll try to attack PD a new way. Instead of floating out many different ways to accomplish the same task, maybe I'll work on one or two ways of doing it and do it really well! Offer so much PD that anyone who attends will feel like masters of the tech tools and the strategies for helping students at every step of the way. Take the time to find problems that people may have, or hurdles that will have to be overcome at each step of the project, in order to stride over these issues and make teachers feel more comfortable with these tools and how they can use these as the vehicles to deliver their content. Maybe only then will we gain some ground in pushing tech integration in schools for everyone.
