Digital School Solutions

Blog entry posted February 16th, 2010 by Carolyn Demefack

During the last week of January, I had an opportunity to attend EduCon 2.2, which is “both a conversation and a conference.” It’s a conference that generates lots of questions and really maximizes the collective knowledge and experience of its participants or “co-facilitators” most with some connection to education and technology.

It attracts educators of all specialties and pleasantly lacks any commercial presence (no vendors or “product” demos). Because the conference takes place in an innovative public school, Philadelphia's Science Leadership Academy, and students play a core support role (tech support, guiding participants to sessions, and managing the live session recordings) it’s environmentally, as well as conceptually, grounded in an educational context.



The guiding principals of the conference are:
 1. Our schools must be inquiry-driven, thoughtful and empowering for all
 members
; 2. Our schools must be about co-creating — together with our students —
the 21st Century Citizen
; 3. Technology must serve pedagogy, not the other way around; 
4. Technology must enable students to research, create, communicate and
 collaborate; 
5. Learning can — and must — be networked.



There was an incredible assortment of “conversations” to pick from, not to mention lots of networking opportunities and panel discussions, but here are highlights from three great sessions:



Session 1: Thinking Creatively: Inventing the Possible -- 
Presented by Linda V. Nitsche

During this session, we explored strategies to advocate for and integrate creativity in the classroom, including frameworks for creative thinking and best practices to nurture and develop a supportive classroom culture:


1)  Ken Robinson's TED talk, "Do Schools Kill Creativity?" challenges us to 
rethink schools to value creativity. 

As we stand at a crossroads where the strict content standards of No Child Left Behind may ease, allowing for a broader view of students' strengths and capacities, creativity is again gaining momentum as a key skill and capacity for the 21st century. 


 2) SCAMPER: Alex Osborn, a pioneer in facilitating creativity, developed this list of "idea-spurring questions." They were later arranged by Bob Eberle as the mnemonic SCAMPER.



3) Edward de Bono’s Lateral Thinking
 -- 
A way of thinking that seeks a solution to an intractable problem through unorthodox methods or elements that would normally be ignored by logical thinking. Edward de Bono divides thinking into two methods. He calls one 'vertical thinking' that is, using the processes of logic, the traditional-historical method. He calls the other 'lateral thinking', which involves disrupting an apparent sequence and arriving at thesolution from another angle.



Session 2: Educational Technology and the Law: Stump the Lawyers! -- Presented by John Becker and Justin Bathon
For this engaging session faciliated by two professors of educational leadership with law degrees served as advisors while participants discussed confusing legal concerns around education and technology. And, yes, they began the session with a disclaimer.
The hot topics discussed were:
• Free (Electronic) Speech/Expression (1st Amendment) for both adults
and students
• Search & Seizure (4th Amendment) Looking at kids’ digital stuff
• Internet Safety – CIPA, Cyberbulling, Sexting
• Information Privacy – FERPA, HIPPA, FOIL, PPRA
• Copyright/Fair Use

. Here are some interesting Ed Law Blogs: 
School LawBlog -The Edjurist -
Adjunct LawProf & Ed. LawBlog -



Session 3: Managing Filter Failure - Getting to the Good Stuff -- Presented by Lisa Thumann and Liz Davis
Clay Shirky says, "it's not information overload - it's filter failure" Have you figured out a way to filter in the relevant information and filter out the noise? We explored the use of tools to support more strategic ways to address this. Here are some tools discussed:
• Delicious • Diigo 
• RSS •Clusty & Searching beyond Blogs with Technorati.