Thursday, April 16, 2009

Windows to the World

A fun evening of Cheesies and Licorice Nibs was had by all listening to some of the greatest edutecnologists around. Ben Hazzard, Lisa Kolb, Rodd Lucier, Ryan M, Clarence Fisher and others all skyped into a room of eager and raw teachers. Now by room I mean at least there were 20ish of us. But hey we had twice as many people in the ustream chat room.

It was a nice culminating event of the rant that I had a few weeks ago. Following that rant Andy and Darren met me for a coffee. From that conversation Windows to the World was born. I would like to thank John Evans and Andy for working so hard to make things work out.


Here are some of the tweets using the #wttw.


For the people in the room it was nice for me to see some new faces. I set up a wiki for Manitoba teachers who use twitter. I called it http://mbteacherswhotweet.wikispaces.com. It is the same idea as the terrific pbwiki twitter4teachers You will find all of the participants from the f2f listed there. Also at this wiki you will find the chat log from the ustream.

I still find it amazing that an evening like this will bring together over 40 people in the ustream chat room and in a city of 700 000 people and a gazillion teachers we are only able to find about 20 to partake in the evening. I personally tried to get 5 people to come to the evening. None showed up. Some had legitimate excuses but still one would think that learning and experiencing this Koolaid is important to teachers today.

I have not stopped trying but it is getting frustrating when so few care about changing their pedagogy. I guess I will wrap myself up in the fuzzy blanket of happiness that is my PLN and the knowledge that WE get it. Thanks Andy, John, Darren, Ryan and Clarence for joining me in understanding the importance of what we do for the future of education.

Kids get it, we get it...... when will THEY get it. A Monty Python song comes to mind



Something about Always looking on the bright side of life!!

4 comments:

Moturoa said...

Thanks for the Twitter invite and the opportunity to be able to do more than lurk.

Allanah K

Mr. H said...

Thanks for the comment Allanah. You are welcome to any event put on in this province.

Appreciate you sharing your time with us.

Chris

Jo-Anne Gibson said...

I've known about ManAce for awhile but this was my first time out. It was a thoroughly enjoyable and stimulating evening. We had two teachers from the same school in attendance so I guess we're doing okay but I'd like to convince our technology coordinator to give it a try next time. Thanks for the Twitter links.

Jo-Anne

Mr. H said...

Thanks for the comment Jo-Anne. Events like this will have to be done again. I appreciate you coming out and hope that you are able to use the information that was shared.

Chris