{"id":13267,"date":"2018-10-25T11:23:40","date_gmt":"2018-10-25T18:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/?p=13267"},"modified":"2018-10-25T11:23:40","modified_gmt":"2018-10-25T18:23:40","slug":"educon-reflection-what-ubiquitous-necessary-and-invisible-means","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/educon-reflection-what-ubiquitous-necessary-and-invisible-means\/","title":{"rendered":"#EduCon Reflection: What Ubiquitous, Necessary, and Invisible Means"},"content":{"rendered":"

EduCon 2019 is around the corner! EduCon<\/a> is both a conversation and a conference where we can come together, both in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools. Every session will be an opportunity to discuss and debate ideas—from the very practical to the big dreams. Hosted by the Science Leadership Academy and Inquiry Schools, the in-person event happens every January in Philadelphia. Here is a post-EduCon blog written by its founder after the 2015 event to give you an idea of what to expect.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

What struck me was that this was the year that it really didn\u2019t feel like an edu-tech conference at all—not because there wasn\u2019t tech everywhere (Raghava KK said that it was the most tweeted conference he\u2019d ever seen), but because it really wasn\u2019t the thing we talked about much at all.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what Ubiquitous, Necessary and Invisible can—and maybe even must—mean.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no question in my mind that the schools we need much be technology rich. We have to make schools leverage the best of what we are and what we know. In the world we live in today, that means that we have to use the tools of the day—be they laptops, Chromebooks, smart phones, social media, Google Apps or anything else. But owning that the tools must be used is really only the very first baby step we have to take.<\/p>\n

And once we\u2019ve taken that baby step, we can ask the bigger and better questions that so very much need asking.<\/p>\n

Those were the conversations I saw at EduCon—what will our classrooms and schools value? How can we make them more equitable places—especially in regard to issues of race, gender, class and sexuality? How can we ask hard questions about the world we live in and the world we hope our children will create? How can the work we do in schools help students become deeply thoughtful about the world around them? How can we empower them to believe in—and work toward—a vision of the world that is better than we have today? How do schools need to evolve to more authentically ask these questions?<\/p>\n

And yes, how do we leverage the tools we have to do all of this better?<\/p>\n

For eight years, we\u2019ve tried to create a space where teachers can come together to talk about progressive pedagogy in a technology-rich environment. The eight years have seen incredible change in the world our schools inhabit—from Common Core to the rise of social media to a growing social justice movement to thousands of schools going 1:1 to unprecedented budget crisis in many districts across the country. With all of these changes, the conversations at EduCon have grown richer—and harder. Part of that is because there remains a critical mass of people who come every year, and who keep blogging and tweeting and talking, but also because there are more and more educators who have never been to EduCon before but who are looking for the difficult conversations, who are not settling for easy answers, and who know that it\u2019s not enough just to look for edu-tech solutions, but rather are looking for the places and spaces where educators want to ask the harder questions.<\/p>\n

The fact that we can create technology-rich spaces that aren\u2019t about the tech but are about the next questions we have to ask is exciting to me. The fact that EduCon can be one of those spaces is tremendously humbling. The fact that these conversations will continue to happen far beyond the three days of the conference gives me hope.<\/p>\n

By Chris Lehmann
\nOriginally Posted at Practical Theory<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

EduCon happens in January and is both a conversation and a conference where educators come together, both in person and virtually, to discuss the future of schools.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":34,"featured_media":13268,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[8,1071],"tags":[87,443],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13267"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/34"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13267"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13276,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13267\/revisions\/13276"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/educatorinnovator.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}