In a world where content is continually changing, and you can learn almost anything for free, what's the point of going to a conference?
This is the question we started with in designing your Learning 2.010 Conference experience. The content is free and easy. If you want to learn how to use
Facebook in your classroom, a simple search on Google will bring you back many hits on how teachers are finding ways of using it in the classroom.
But what if you wanted to actually talk with those teachers? What if you wanted to pick their brains, sit and have coffee with them and bounce ideas around? That is not so easy.
Sure we have
Skype, Remote Desktop Applications, and even
iChat, but there is still something about sitting down with a fellow educator and having a conversation around topics that you are both interested in.
That is what we hope Learning 2.010 is for you. A conference not built on content, but on having conversations! Learning 2.010 has two parts to it.
Cohorts of learners and
Unconference conversations.
Cohorts of Learners:Our idea is this: Let's bring together educators from around the world to have conversations around a given topic. Let's give them time to sit together to brainstorm, hypothesize, and then create some sort of artifact that we can all learn from. Let's help build
Personal Learning Networks (PLNs) by having educators spend time together face to face discussing big educational ideas and then go away with new friendships and networks they can continue to grow and use after the conference. Lastly, we leave to many conference with nothing to take with us. We get back on our planes or trains and we walk away with no hard artifacts to remember our thinking, or ideas. What if we challenged each cohort to have conversations and than leave artifacts of those conversations behind for all of us to use?
This is our hope for the cohort sessions. That each participant will be able to find and join a cohort that interests them and have deep meaningful conversations with 19 other educators who feel the same. Will it work? We hope, but your participation will be the ultimate assessment.
Unconference Sessions:
400 educators from around the world will join us in Shanghai. How do we know what they want to talk about, want to learn about, what to spend time exploring? We can't!
So the second part of our conference allows you the participant to create the topics that you want to learn about. Starting Thursday night, you'll be able to throw ideas and topics out for other participants to vote on, and you vote on theirs. Those ideas, sessions, conversations with the most votes will be assigned a room where the conversations can take place.
This is our third time using the
unconference session format at the Learning 2 Conference and each year we receive feedback saying that it's the best part of the conference!
We hope you'll join us this September as we once again bring the Learning 2.010 conference to Shanghai!
