ISTE NECC 2009 - Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell's keynote address at the ISTE NECC 2009 conference began with an analogy of Fleetwood Mac's success with the album Rumors and how the band struggled to perfect their music over the 16 albums that preceded it. #necc09mg

Without 10+ years of hard work, it is hard to achieve mastery. The live blog and discussions over twitter reflected on this thought. Some felt that it did not account for the creative genius of the talented educators who are new to the practice of teaching.

My thoughts? Practice makes perfect is not always the outcome, despite how long some folks practice their craft. Learning from experience and creating knowledge from it aligns with my constructivist philosophy. One of my favorite quotes comes to mind.

Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.

(attributed to Will Rogers and Barry LePatner)

We need opportunities to fail and to learn from failure in order to appreciate and achieve success. #necc2009mg

I enjoyed last year's keynote address and the reflections on the wisdom of crowds. This year, I'm humming "Rock on, Gold Dust Woman" and looking forward to tomorrow's sessions. *grins* #necc09 #necc09mg

Conferences for May - June

For the Global Learning Forum event in May, Andy Stricker, Mike McCrocklin and I are working on a paper that analyzes the benefits of collaboration in the game simulation. The measurements include interdependent group decisions and how the leadership role transfers within virtual teams. It builds on John Bransford's research on anchored-modular inquiry.

It also reminds me of Dr. Bransford's 2006 presentation on collaboration and cooperation. In Second Life, we floated on red seats above his maze where the participants needed to work together to open and navigate through each room. The ceiling was cut away so we could observe the action and video screens lowered around us so we could see video examples from the experiment.

After the presentation, we were able to wear a device as we entered the experiment during an informal tour. A copy of his transcript is available from SimTeach.

I am hosting the Mystical Festival on Acheron LV426 May 15-17 to benefit the American Cancer Society's Relay for Life. It is sponsored by Elf Circle's RFL team, Circle of Life.

The Mystical Festival includes crafts, concerts, dances, fashion shows, Second Life classes, fortune telling and Elven magic in a Tolkienesque setting.

Check back for a listing of events and times. We have a series of events from March - June followed by the design of the campsites and run through the Second Life Relay for Life.

June 28 - July 2, I'll be in Washington, DC for the ISTE NECC conference. Many thanks to Lisa Linn for inviting me to participate in the Second Life Playground and workshops. The SL playground will run for three days this year.

After ISTE NECC 2008

ISTE NECC 2008 was a high energy conference designed to stimulate our creative fires. After passing by the Bloggers Cafe en route to the Second Life Lounge, I could not help noticing how fervently these archivists of today's education and learning culture crafted their posts from the conference activities.

They are responsible for my dusting this site off and posting today. *grins* Give me a few days to gather and post the research from classes in Second Life.

My favorites from NECC 2008 included the Second Life Lounge, the Second Life Playground, Peggy Sheehy's research on teaching in Second Life at Ramapo and the collaborations discussed during Bernajean Porter's Digital Storytelling sessions. I thoroughly enjoyed the first and last keynote addresses that highlighted the Wisdom of Crowds and encouraged us to envision the future while looking at how far we have come over the past 20+ years. (More on that in a later post).

If the conference link should age, as all good things do, visit the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) to read more about their National Educational Computing Conference (NECC).