Guest Post by Martin Meylin Middle School Teacher Mr. David Bibiloni.
Mr. Bibiloni wrote this post last spring after attending PETE & C. His thoughts are right on, and I’m glad to finally be sharing it here.
The Pennsylvania Educational Technology Expo and Conference (Pete&C) is a statewide event that provides quality programs focused on technology in the educational field.” This is the opening sentence from the conference website that a handful of L-S educators, administrators, and staff attended this past February. At this conference, the best technologies and practices are the topic of discussion as droves of interested attendees mill from room to room trying to capture it all. The goal: find some excellent stuff, bring it back to your school, and put it into practice. This event takes an army to produce, a year to plan, and money beyond money to finance. It’s kind of like a three day SuperBowl for technology in education. And do you know what happened within the first 5 minutes of the keynote? The wireless network crashed- like, totally crashed.
How could it be? Pete&C? This is where WiFi is a secondary or tertiary consideration. It’s a standard that shouldn’t be allowed to fail. It is an expectation that shouldn’t come close to not being met. How would the keynote speaker deliver his inspirational 21st century message to all of the twittering and coffee jittering eager-eared attendees waiting for the next great quote to send out to the blogosphere in hopes of fanning the flames of next-level technology in education? More importantly, how were the presenters going to present their topics that they had so masterfully prepared so that we would have something great to return to our schools, students, and communities? Let’s also not forget the hosts of the expo, that sat waiting for us to walk by, pick up free pens and t-shirts, and interact with their latest offerings of interactive boards, 3-D printers, and other captivating student software and hardware. What were they to do?
I began to conjure up the reactions in my head: “Well, that figures.” “Well, if it can’t work at Pete&C, why bother.” “And that’s why we don’t do technology.” But you know what happened? Nothing.
No one reacted by making a comment. No one stood up and left. No one decided that they were better off touring the chocolate factory instead. The IT staff went to work in the background and the keynote went off with a little less flair but all of the message. Those in attendance went about tweeting and blogging and listening for those gems to stamp #pete2015 with pride. Lists were created, groups were formed, connections were made, and the conference keynote ended in an eruption of applause.
This was my main take away. Technology in education is not about hinging the message, the activity, or the product on the next great technology or even technological practice. It is about technology hinging on the next great message, activity, or product. This sounds fancy but it’s not. It looks like the keynote address. It flinched but didn’t lose pace. The speaker was prepared with his message and the audience was prepared with their devices (running on both WIFI, 3g, and LTE).
In my 1st session, titled “Classroom Gymnastics,” was presented by Kevin Bowers who is an elementary teacher from Penn Manor. It was geared towards those interested in “Flipped Classrooms.” He was presenting at the same time as Aaron Sams (who pioneered the concept with Jon Bergman), but I was attracted by the fact that Kevin was local. He had originally planned on live streaming his presentation (which was excellent) and recording it for later viewing. But, when he realized the network wasn’t going to cooperate, he dropped the streaming, and opened a local folder where he had prepared a stored version of his presentation. Since his websites were still accessible online by those of us with cellular connections, we were still able to activate QR codes, links, and peer-to-peer networks to view and interact with all that he had prepared.
In my second session, titled “Turning the Tables on Project Based Learning,” Jennifer Brinson form had a host of technological resources prepared to deliver her message including websites, web-based projects, an assistant in the room to cue up various items, even students Skyping to showcase live work being done regarding the topic of the moment. She comes from a 1:1, technology award winning school that is always wired-in and always alive. With no network, her presentation was all dead. So, sitting in the front row, I plugged in a USB external battery to my phone, and setup an LTE hotspot for her to use. It went off without a hitch.
The final presentation of the day was where my take away took my breath away. Within minutes of the presentation, beginning at the end of an immersed and rewarding day, I knew I didn’t want to be there. None of the topics the presenter outlined seemed to relate to what I had imagined the session to be. Immediately, the network failed, but he had prepared the presentation offline so there were no setbacks. He had other setbacks though where he had not done all of his homework and he was asking us for answers to questions he had about his own presentation. The whole thing became unhinged and chaotic and I lost interest.
At one point though, he was able to regain his composure and steer the session in the right direction. He had given us all a link to an emerging free site that allows users to stream a video from one source and view it as a group on any device, platform, and from any location. As we listened to him, we joined his session online, and he began streaming a Netflix movie. While he did that he opened a chat box on in the window, and he was posing questions and answers to us, and we were communicating and discussing the topics with each other. We were all immersed, engaged, and no one was saying a word. Finally, he broke the silence by asking us to look up at the screen. For the first time in 10 minutes, we looked up at the screen only to notice that it was off. During the session, he had flipped the projector off and no one flinched. Like the keynote earlier, we kept pace. Engaged by an instructor who utilized our personal technology instead of his own magic show, he reminded us of the power of technology in our classrooms and in the hands of our students. He reminded us that for the first time, probably all day, we were part of a session presented by a guide on the side and not a sage on the stage—and he was right.
In something that had gone so wrong, this went so right—Pete&C went so right. The room which had grown so silent, erupted in applause. It was the moment I didn’t expect. It surprised me, and I tweeted about it immediately (not really- at least mentally).
As I walked away and wrapped up the day in my head, I realized why I had come today. I attended Pete&C not for the latest and greatest, but for the reminder. Pete&C reminded me that technology in education is not about technology for educators, it’s about technology for those being educated. It’s about empowering students of all ages with the tools to witness the unbelievable, create the unimaginable, and create solutions to problems that were once for experts only. I was reminded that if the SuperBowl of technology in education can function and deliver the messages, its “teachers” and “students” can work together to deliver information and solve problems, its droves of “students” can walk away with enlightened a-ha moments without skipping a beat all without a perfect technology system, so can I. But it you’re looking for something that’s the latest and greatest, here it is: the new Promethean Board is not on the wall, it’s in your students’ hands (and it’s not made by Promethean).
Instructional Techology at L-S 