Dean Shareski posed an interesting challenge last week. Through his blog post on his own watershed moments of learning, he asked those in his network to do the same.
At first, this seemed like a really simple task – like naming your favourite movie (Shawshank Redemption) or the best concert you have seen (Simon and Garfunkel) or your go-to beverage at Booster Juice (Ripped Berry). I read his post a couple times, and tried to quickly come up with a response, but it was not so easy. Watershed is such an interesting and challenging idea. While Dean gave us the permission to alter the categories, I will try to use the same ones he used: PD Event or Conference, speaker or presentation, book, tool, and person.
PD / Conference
I am fortunate, especially in my current role, I get to attend many pretty interesting events. In recent years I have moved away from attending the large conferences, particularly those built around keynote speakers presenting to hundreds of conference delegates. More recently various formats from TEDx, to EdCamp to Ignite have more held my interest. I have also tried to participate in more experiences that are about doing things than being told things. That said, it was a large conference that stands out as a watershed moment for me. For me it was the November Learning Conference in the summer of 2005. The event helped me understand the digital work was not about giving people computers, it was about ownership of learning. I heard from speakers who I would later regularly read and reference like Alan November and Will Richardson. And as is often the case, it was the conversations with those I attended the event with, that helped make it particularly powerful. I was there with Coquitlam Assistant Superintendents Maureen Dockendorf and Julie Pearce, along with Director of Technology Brian Kuhn and Coquitlam Teachers Association President Kathleen Thomson. I left the event inspired about what was happening in the larger education community and excited that we were and could continue to be doing it in our own community.
Presentation
I know the typical answer would be a presentation that I saw live. For me it is Karl Fisch’s presentation, Did You Know? I have written about this before describing it as My Aha Moment. The presentation was powerful, but it really changed how I thought about presentations in a networked world. As I previously wrote:
That experience was my “Aha” moment. I learned about the power of a network and also learned that it is not only the smart people you know, but the smart people they know that can help you. I also learned about the new power we all have to influence conversation. Previous to this experience in networking, there would have been no way I would have ever seen a PowerPoint created for an opening day presentation in a high school in Colorado. Now, just days after it was presented, I was remixing it and sharing it with my staff, and hundreds of others were sharing it around the world. I was also reminded of the generosity of our profession — we are all sharing and learning together with a common purpose around student learning.
It is interesting to look back on this, now 10 years later, and see how far we have come (or not).
Book
The World is Flat from Thomas Friedman gave me the larger context I was looking for concerning the changes we were and are talking about in education. The history teacher in me really loved the book and it was one we used as a study group book with staff. There was an urgency that the books created, doing nothing different was simply not an option. The runner-up would be Dennis Littky’s The Big Picture which was a great read on rethinking high school (and showing it can be done).
Tool
I waffled on this one a bit. It definitely could be the blog. My blog has given me a global network to share ideas. It also could have been Twitter. I was in the community during the early “let me tell you what I had for lunch” stage, continued through the deep engagement era, and am now still participating in the “can’t it be like it used to be” times. And it could have been Delicious – my first step into the social web through sharing bookmarks. In the end I am landing on a gizmo and that gizmo is my iPhone. It has truly changed how I can work. With some credit to some earlier smartphones I had, it was the iPhone that really unchained me from my desk. There is very little I need to do that I can’t do during a day from my phone, making it possible for me to define work differently. Work is no longer about a place. And yes, simply a computer a computer does some of this, but the convenience of all of this in your pocket really changes things, at least it has for me.
Person
What a challenging question. When I use the term watershed moments, it is not really the same as other terms I use for people like mentors, trusted colleagues or inspirations. I have written at various points about family members, former teachers, and colleagues that have been profoundly influential on me. When I think of people and watershed moments of learning, I think of people who take me from “I used to think X” and “Now I think Y”. So for me it is my former Coquitlam and West Vancouver colleague Gary Kern. Gary has always pushed me in my thinking to a place of discomfort. And that is a good thing. In Coquitlam, he helped me solidify my views around the work we were trying to do at Riverside Secondary and in West Vancouver he was the architect of many of the structures we continue to benefit from today, ones that were well ahead of the pack – from giving students their own digital spaces, to providing staff with a choice of devices to systematizing bring your own device structures in our schools. He was always the one sharing the article about “where to next” as soon as we thought “we are good”.
In looking at my answers it is interesting that many of the events that quickly surfaced as watershed moments for me, came fairly close together for me. They were largely during my school administration time in Coquitlam – in the window between 2001-2007. I wonder if there was something unique about that time with the explosion of digital changes, or maybe I was at a point in my career I was ready to move beyond doubling-down on what used to be and ready to look to what could be. Perhaps I just need distance to best identify these moments and my list ten years from now would include events and people from my time in West Vancouver.
I look forward to others keeping this conversation going in the comments or in their own blog posts and sharing their watershed moments of learning.
