Sunday, July 4, 2010

Grrr

I was fortunate to attend ISTE 2010, which was in itself an awesome experience. Last summer I attended it virtually and found myself energized, enriched, and bookmarking new websites every 5 minutes. The online community made this conference, growing professional friendships, and I was delighted to be apart of it this summer.

To add to my first in person ISTE experience and excitement was the fact that #edchat was going to hold one of its conversations at the convention center. I have been participating in #educhat and #edchat for 2 years now and hold those conversations as a big part of my professional development. I looked forward to meeting and talking with the people that have helped me grow in my field. The topic was a broad one and touchy: How do we ensure those without privilege have equal access to quality education. As with many of the weekly conversations, side conversations were perking up. People new to "drinking the water" were reflecting and people who have been working on reforming their school for some time were able to reflect in a different way. As I sat in my chair I could hear a few people in the lounge having conversations about the tweets and were very judgemental on what people were saying. I was disappointed because, even though they were not reflecting their opinions via Twitter, they were not allowing for the natural motion of conversation to pass. I also noticed that they at least held back the need to tweet those opinions, but caused me to become very cautious as to what I posted. To me that defeats the true purpose of these tweet conversations. I think that people participating should not be put down for what they say and side conversations should be promoted so that everyone, regardless on where they are with technology in their schools, pedagogy, and level of experience applying new types of learning environments into their classroom would be able to grow, reflect, and learn in an area comfortable to them, assisting them in their professional development.