COSN: when a conference is really a conversation …

[Bruce Umpstead]

It was a little hard to follow up MACUL 2008 with CoSN 2008, but that’s what happened. To be honest, I wasn’t enthusiastic about doing MACUL then CoSN back-to-back because it’s smaller than MACUL and counts as “1” in terms of the limited out of state trips that I can take this year.

But this apprehension dissipated by lunch Sunday, the first day, when Beth Baker and I made a connection with Stephen Heppel of Inclusion Trust from the United Kingdom. He is the inventor of NotSchool.com and Think.com, among other constructivist learning opportunities, and it is NotSchool.com that has inspired our shared work on changing educational paradigms through the effective application of educational technology, universal design for learning, and Mike Flanagan’s seat time waiver initiative.

Layer onto this connection a conversation with Scott Bryan from Troy Public Schools (Michigan) on applying for a small National Science Foundation grant that provides resources to “hack” Wii gaming unit and incorporate it as the “scalpel” in a virtual dissection lab. If we are successful in creating a powerful virtual reality, it would allow Troy to simulate realistic biology simulations while eliminating 500lbs of dead cat remains.

During this conversation, a secondary concept took center stage with Dr. Gordon Dahlby, Director of Curriculum and Technology (cool title), West Des Moines Community Schools, Iowa. Gordon also plays a key role with ISTE in planning the NECC conference, and the question he raised was this: how do we make NECC more personal, more intimate, without generating exclusivity?

After 30 minutes, we had scraps of a thought on “What’s the big idea,” patterned after the TEDS Conference, but allowing multiple perspectives in a conversation on big ideas, lead by a global thinker. Gordon’s thought was this could be facilitated by individual video cameras trained on individual contributors in a round and “mashed up” to create powerful media assets on global issues impacting education.

Remember: these conversations and connections happened within the first ½ day. There were so many other thoughts from the rest of our time together that my brain still hurts.