Garth and I are back in Boston for another exciting week at BLC with November Learning. BLC is one of those conferences that is unlike every other conference we have attended. Not only is there an international audience, but it is about forming learning communities (the "LC" part) and really thinking about the philosophical foundations of teaching and learning.
It was great getting back to Boston and stepping into the hotel to see old friends. Before we even made it in the doors we ran into Amy Burvall from Hawaii and the HistoryTeachers channel on YouTube. Helen and the staff of November Learning are great people and were all smiles as Garth and I were our typical selves at registration.
The biggest highlight for us this year is a Teach-in that will happen in just a few hours. Garth and I pride ourselves on actually putting into practice the concepts that most presenters spend years preaching about, without really doing. Along those lines, we always talk about "organic" learning and moving with the flow of your learners. The teach-in is a concept from the social movements of the 1950s and 1960s that I have always found interesting. Professors and students would simply occupy a space, sometimes for days, and just talk. Connections would be made, more questions would be created than answered and it helped to liberate the minds of the people actively changing the word. Our goal is the same. We will talk some philosophy, discuss how we see our role as teachers and then help people create something that will help them change teaching and learning in their classrooms. This goes beyond the idea of the "un-conference" or workshops. We hope that people really decide to throw away some old boundaries and leashes of the system to start seeing the learning process for what it can and should be.
*We created a page to house all of our BLC12 presentations...just take a gander up top on our menu.
It was great getting back to Boston and stepping into the hotel to see old friends. Before we even made it in the doors we ran into Amy Burvall from Hawaii and the HistoryTeachers channel on YouTube. Helen and the staff of November Learning are great people and were all smiles as Garth and I were our typical selves at registration.
The biggest highlight for us this year is a Teach-in that will happen in just a few hours. Garth and I pride ourselves on actually putting into practice the concepts that most presenters spend years preaching about, without really doing. Along those lines, we always talk about "organic" learning and moving with the flow of your learners. The teach-in is a concept from the social movements of the 1950s and 1960s that I have always found interesting. Professors and students would simply occupy a space, sometimes for days, and just talk. Connections would be made, more questions would be created than answered and it helped to liberate the minds of the people actively changing the word. Our goal is the same. We will talk some philosophy, discuss how we see our role as teachers and then help people create something that will help them change teaching and learning in their classrooms. This goes beyond the idea of the "un-conference" or workshops. We hope that people really decide to throw away some old boundaries and leashes of the system to start seeing the learning process for what it can and should be.
*We created a page to house all of our BLC12 presentations...just take a gander up top on our menu.
RSS Feed
