(Just live-blogging notes)
I am attending -well, sort of- Learning 2.0: A Colorado Conversation. These are some side-reflections while at the conference. These notes are personal and not necessarily tuned to the session content.
The first session is by Ben Wilkoff and he starts off by asking how to create context for students online. A context where they can express just-in-time reflections.
Probably because I am not a native speaker of English I find it hard to fully understand some audience members when they are not that close to a mike. But this is just a digression. What amazes me now is to what extent my own expectations of a context have changed. I do not feel anxious that I cannot fully understand everything being said, or take perfect notes, which I know I wasn't before. I do not even worry that I may have to cut a session short and go out before the shops close here in Buenos Aires.
Actually the meaning of attending has changed once we have shifted to an online environment. There is a wiki to gather every distributed venue for the events and to archive chats. I do not regard it as a place to recover everything I may have missed. The wiki is just a spot I will go to for reference, for the missing links to take my thoughts further.
Unless I blog about the conference and publish my thoughts -i.e open my mind to speak with others- what is the purpose of attending online events? For some, certificates of attendance would do. They make sense to many people. For me, I think the way of assessing my own learning would be to track the conversation generated by this post. Mind you, not the hits in Statcounter, but the thoughts triggered as from these.
So what is my conference context?
A tweet pulling me in
 | budtheteacher Started. It's on. http://colearning.wikispace... |
Another tweet guiding me within
 | dwarlick In case anyone else is online, there's a Learning 2.0 conference going on in Colorado, Ustreamed at: http://tinyurl.com/2l2zee |
 | bhwilkoff Live Blogging Learning 2.0: http://tinyurl.com/2qsj9j |
A chatroom with people I know (online only) and people I first meet or hear of. Yet, we have things in common: we are sharers and learners, perhaps, the voracious kind of reader who would spend part of their weekend on this event. Take that for likemindedness enough to lead to some success learning wise.
The wiki has a short and clear intro to the purpose of the event as well as several links on the side bar. Yet I chose to start my way in by a tweet. Why? Maybe I felt it was more real than reading a static guide. It was just-in-time.
Ben rounds up,
"How do we make our classroom more authentic?"
Perhaps not showcase this connectedness, but model and drag them into the conversation just-in-time.
And now -towards the end of the first session- I go on to read the post that started it all. I do not feel this is late to read it. Just-in-time. My learning time.
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