Today I attended the annual Oklahoma Assn for Gifted Creative and Talented conference. Registered, paid my $35 smokes, the whole 9 yards.
The theme for the conference was differentiation: a 40 year old practice that states, simply, that teachers should tailor each lesson to address their students' different levels of learning. (See Renzulli, 1997 as a starting point of literature review, if interested.)
Differentiation's a weighty buzzword these days but it is effective and many of these good folks are walkin' the talk and they were preachin' the word, baby. I sat through a most-excellent presentation by a team of specialists who take their job of individualizing students' educations very seriously...and, one could tell, with passion. They are reaching high-ability learners and making a difference in their education. Very heartening.
The keynote speaker was Dr. Susan Johnsen--an expert in gifted ed who has authored a ton of articles and chapters and who edits one of the best journals on gifted ed (see one here on independent study). Her morning speech was very good--10 helpful ways to differentiate for gifted students--a healthy mix of experiential research and anecdotes; it's always hard to sit through a powerpoint after breakfast but I was thinking and taking notes the whole time...good stuff. She knows of what she speaks, yo.
As she was wrapping up, I started to plan out my day--3 breakout times with 7-8 sessions each. I chose two tech sessions for Periods 1 and 3. Period 2, I offer my thanks to Catherine for choosing the Cluster Grouping one and dragging me along--good call, kid!--it was the best session all day (see aforementioned comments). Their work is impressive--individual lesson planning for students, helping teachers manage their GTs' needs, and never-say-die advocacy for these high learners.
Periods 1 and 3: Tech tools and web tools; both were web 2.0 tool presentations by teams of 3 teachers. i did learn about four new-to-me web tools. But, well, I'll just say it. I was disappointed in both sessions.
Neither inspired me at all. Neither gave me any insight how I could use the presented tools for GT students. Neither gave me any insight how I could use the tools to differentiate a lesson for GT students. Neither gave me concrete examples of how they used the tools (or concepts) to differentiate for their GT students. Neither gave me any tangibles I could bring back to my undergraduates next week. Neither used the interactive whiteboard interactively, only intra-actively. (there IS a difference).
The teams covered common apps (Prezi, glogster) and the latter didn't even know about glogster edu (free, ahem!). In my previous life, I helped manage conference presentations for my government contract's submissions to three of the biggest educational conferences in the country...I made sure we didn't submit similar topics--if two folks turned in presentation submissions that were even tangentially close, i grouped 'em and we moved on. One would think that with a total of three tech sessions (in this rather smallish conference), some kind of communication would be called for to address overlap. A simple wiki could suffice.
Anyway, both sessions failed to impress me. The description for the first one even managed to tick me off a little: "you will be introduced to free resources that will inspire and engage all students..." Okay, really? how in the heck can a resource inspire me? To put it bluntly, it can NOT. A thoughtful and reflective teacher can a) teach me what she or he knows about the subject, b) can give me a tool to help me learn more about the material for myself, and/or c) team me up with my peers so we can learn from one another, teach one another, or research together. Technology does not often inspire. Considered application of technology can give students access to desired information and ability to communicate the new knowledge to others.
Both session presentations included photos of their classrooms with desks in rows and teacher in the front. Now, granted, many of them were elementary classes and I understand that Behaviorism is important for novice learners but we were discussing (or at least I thought we were supposed to be) GTs--high ability learners who don't need sit-in-rows & drill-and-kill. poem memorization, even if filmed, isn't interactive learning. Non-linear prezi's ain't creative on their own. put the content in a glog if you want but it ain't creative by itself. asking those students to read Jabberwocky and tell us what their impression of the beast would be-draw it, blog it, make up a song about it, make one out of toiletpaper tubes. Asking the class for each of them to design a character or backdrop for the poem would be. "Who is drawing the vorpal blade?" Who did the Tum-Tum tree?" Put those together in a prezi and, seems, to me, is suddenly much more meaningful. Now, I'm an admitted constructivist. i'd rather focus on the process of learning, not the nice, compartmented final product of a memorized poem and polished "this is how you will use powerpoint" presentation. But I didn't get the impression that the students' creativity was being unleashed. Don't even think I heard that word in those two sessions, now that i think back about it. wow.
Technology in education is a tool. To be carefully chosen and applied by teacher and student alike. To be used creatively and assessed with an equal dose of creativity, thank you (nothing about creative assessment today in these sessions. sigh). But technology should be transparent...just a vehicle to assist the process and enable the students to communicate their product to peers and teachers. Technology should never be the focus. the content and how the students compiled it, chose to present it, and retained the content should be. It just kills me that some of us lose sight of the beauty of the great gift of technology by focusing on it instead of the student's use of it.
I was impressed with the enthusiasm of the teachers I met today, their devotion to their trade and to their charges. They work hard. Their budgets are being cut...most of them see it every year. They are doing more and more with less. But their desire to help their GT kids hasn't abated. They were here to get ideas about how they'd use tech in their classrooms...i hope they did, I did! But I think I unfortunately got significantly more ideas of how I won't be using tech.
