As always, I’m amazed by the density of the AERA program. The thousands of sessions that crammed the San Diego Convention Center and adjoining hotels are all over the map and cover just about any discussion you want to be a part of within the world of education. There are always sessions that will help propel my thinking more deeply on various education issues (an obvious highlight this year was Angela Valenzuela’s John Dewey Annual Lecture: “United States Assimilation Policy and Generational Trauma: The Dismembered Passion of Love and Betrayal”  in which she claimed that Dewey was clearly a Chicana feminist – awesome!). However, I’m frustrated by the clear divide between the academy and the classroom. Aside from the teachers with whom I shared a panel session*, I see very few classroom teachers at these conferences. Why are we generating this knowledge if were not funneling it back into the classroom?

Likewise, I spent the second half of my week at the Digital Media and Learning Competition Showcase, talking clouds (a larger discussion of the Windy City Black Cloud and the discussions that took place to follow shortly).  Along with the 2nd year of winners, the MacArthur/HASTAC showcase bursts with cutting edge learning ideas and applications. As I perused the work the other grant winners undertook over the past year, I was excited about how I could apply these projects to my own classroom.  Further, I was thrilled at the morning talk by Connie Yowell – the Director of Education at MacArthur. In it, she basically challenged attendees to think about learning implications in a 21st century environment. She asked us to think about what 21st century assessment looks like. These are things my colleagues and my administrators need to hear. I’m fairly certain I was the only practicing classroom teacher in the room at the time. This isn’t a gloat. I’m concerned that teachers weren’t there to network, to learn, to be inspired. And while AERA, too, has its problems, that the showcase took place at the same time that the majority of educational researchers were on the West Coast, I hope to see a larger connection between digital innovator, researcher, and educator.

Although I’ll talk a bit more about the DML Showcase soon, if you’re interested in seeing a screen a snippet of a short film you can see online but this time on a screen … and then see Cloudy briefly discuss the Black Cloud, by all means.

*Mark and I presented on our Graffiti curriculum. I’m embedding the slides we used for the presentation for those interested.