Thanks to Vinnie Vrotny of North Shore Country Day, I am making good on a promise to post the title of the book referenced at the end of Ian Jukes' talk last Saturday. It is Teaching for Tomorrow by Ted McCain. I cannot yet vouch for the book but intend to determine whether it really is worth mass purchaising for faculty. Here's a review.

In the meantime, check out Vinnie's great notes from the Jukes session he attended last year. They are very comprehensive and remind me of everything I wrote down hurriedly during the session last week, clearly a repeat performance. 

Thanks, Vinnie!

So I might have paid more attention to the evangelist part of Jukes' r.e.e. After a check in with Dr. Jansen of Macalester, it turns out that the science I quote in my notes is a bit misleading. The presentation had a truly evangelical feel to it - perhaps more spirit than hard,  fast and defensible science. But I don't think there's an argument about the essential point, just some corrections to the myelin stuff.

Anyway, it was a most entertaining and stimulating conclusion to a fantastic conference that started with registration (see image below) and featured powerful speakers suspended high above the Radio City audience (next image) a hard working crew that preferred to remain behind the scenes (next image) unless you agree to be photographed with them (next image).



See you all next year in Chicago!

...and click here if you'd like to see posted the really scandalous behind the scenes NAIS images.

So if you worried that these entries were going to be all fluff, the wait is over.

"As new neural connections form, the most heavily used pathways of the brain get coated with myelin, which boosts the connection speed by 13 times. Then the neural 'bandwith' is stepped up again by as much as thirty times, allowing much more information to be transferred at greater speeds; So if the student is only developing sport or music or chess pathways, those are the pathways nurtured; if the kid only sits on the couch and plays games - those neural pathways will be the most developed."

Ian Jukes was talking a mile a minute Saturday morning and the amazing thing is that I got any of this stuff at all. A real swashbuckler of a speaker,  he practically threw his unsuspecting presenter off the stage, grabbing and crumpling up the man's introductory notes,  jabbing his thumb in the air and shouting, "get off the stage already!" No kidding, this really happened.

Jukes delivered - home run. My technology, sadly, has not. Everything fine until today when I tried to get my laptop (complete with images, extensve notes from Jukes) back online through hotel internet access. I expect our tech wizards back on campus will show me what I did wrong. So I'm in the hotel business center. Anyway....

Here's what crystalized for me halfway through the session this morning, and by the way, Jukes made us stop and process together about five times during the three hour session - excellent pedagogy. So yes, we are the digital immigrants and our children are the digital natives and they exist in a different world and yes, we need to learn it, understand it, encounter it.

But there are, by definition, no adults there. Nobody home on a Saturday night. And we can never really belong there. They're making the rules by themselves. It's a little like the internet itself. Unregulated, amorphous, constantly evolving.

So our kids are riding this wave, developing their brains in ways that, according to Jukes, differ significantly from ours. One example: I, and probaby you, are comfortable reading this black text on white background. Jukes tells us that the digital natives prefer blood red and pink, or burnt orange. Acutally, more than prefer - they're brains are wired to be drawn to these colors. At the bottom of their preference list? Black text on white background.

They're essentially on their own. We've got to catch up, can't ever really be natives, can't have the tools to reach them, so maybe we need ambassadors. At our discussion table was a guy in ( I think) his late twenties, maybe thirty. On the cusp. Designed lots of web pages, he said. So maybe he's our answer.

Highly recommend readers to visit Jukes' website which, were I more savvy with this hotel machine, I would have linked to this entry. You can google him. (I'll update this entry Sunday with more details and links.) Lots of exceptional material on brain research and I can't wait to get to our Dr. Jansen, MPA trustee and brain person at Macalester College, for her take on this.

And I'll be considering the purchase of a key book for faculty, the title of which is locked away in my laptop and will be posted tomorrow.

So look for more brain runoff in additional entries in coming days (complete with scandalous pictures) - and thanks to NAIS for trying to go a bit more digital with these blogs.

Way to go Dane!

 

Ok, this is the one I'm probably most looking forward to - Saturday morning with Ian Jukes, coming up in an hour. I'd heard Pink and read his book; watched the TED video of Sir Ken when one of our parents sent me the link a year or so ago - great stuff.  And yes, I'm keenly and exclusively focused on this particular track of the NAIS conference (as opposed, say, to the equally relevant global one.)

"Educator Ian Jukes will engage participants with an interactive presentation and conversation devoted to understanding digital kids. " Perfect. This is hot. We're so far from these kids in experience. I want to understand their world, even though I'll never truly inhabit it. (This stuff,  for  example, is just playing AT being digital after all - this blog which is really no more than a digital diary.)

But here's the interesting thing, and I should ask Kitty or Amy about this: the description in the NAIS conference program goes on to describe Jukes as a small caps "registered educational evangelist." If you're like me,  you're wondering, first of all, who's registering educational evangelists. Secondly, are we talking photo ID, iris scan, what? I guess we'll find out. Tune in later today for a report.

Finally, a request from a faithful reader:

"This is almost too late but please just write down some of the short 
"take aways" that you pick up at the sessions from our keynote. I'd really 
like to know what Sir Ken had to say."



- Tom Jordan

Elmwood Franklin School

Buffalo, NY

I wish I could do more, Tom. Sir Ken and Mr. Pink struck similar chords as they advocated for a shift in emphasis in schools - towards a greater focus on creativity. This is a gross oversimplification and I would direct you, Tom (and other readers) to the widely circulated video of Sir Ken at the last TED conference, and to Mr. Pink's book - "A Whole New Mind".

A thoughtful analysis of the ideas of these two excellent speakers will have to wait for another day (although Dane probably will knock this one out of the park.) Table 228 beckons. "It is so refreshing to talk with these young aspiring teachers," my friend at table 227 said this morning at 7:15 as we waited for first interviews.  "It's what makes this job worthwhile..."

Daniel Pink signs autographs


Onstage at Radio City Music Hall


Typical Conference Session - Sitting Room Only


Why we're here - Elisabeth Morrow School Chamber Group, Radio City

True, with a conference of 6500 attendees, is it really possible to create "participatory" activities for everyone (see previous entry)? Our schools, on the other hand, are smaller, more manageable communities. NAIS annual is like a mid-size college campus, come together for just a few days - hard to do it any other way.

Passing the rows of conference rooms in the Hilton this morning, with their rows of chairs pointed dutifully towards the front of the room, soon to be filled with rows of attendees facing forward and passively receiving the (considerable) wisdom of our presenters, I wondered why we can't upend the model. It may be as hard as changing a school....  

What a room! Should be on everyone's NYC itinerary - the great golden arches over the stage of Radio City Music Hall. And Sir Ken was almost as good as his Ted video - the one that's been making the rounds on the web for the last year or so. 

Conference registration went smoothly enough. Press credentials all in order. The bloggers are in.

"So how are these school people, treating you OK?" I ask the concierge at the Hilton.

""It's just the first day. I don't know. OK, I guess," she tells me. I promise to check back with her throughout the conference.

"So have you heard anything about these conference bloggers?" I ask about a dozen different people hovering around registration, lobby, taxi-stand. Puzzled looks from everyone.  Good cover, I suppose.

"I thought it was getting pretty pricey," a head tells me when I ask how the conference is going so far, " but I just came from a great global session - really fantastic. It's worth it."

Highpoint for me so far was the ride in from La Guardia this afternoon with another head, friend of mine, listening to him dictate an emergency letter to his assistant back home. Always a pleasure to listen to a pro work a problem, especially when it's someone else's problem.

Which is what this conference is really all about - being with the real pros, listening to them work their problems, whether it's over drinks or in captured minutes between sessions - or, of course, at any of the sessions themselves.

I have yet to experience a session. I'm living on the other side for an hour or so this Wednesday afternoon:

Table 228 is a small table in a huge room with hundreds of other small tables. Practitioners of this art form sit opposite a long procession of eager (or wary or hopeful or resigned) candidates who've come to interview for one of the positions for next year.

(I'll give extra points to any candidate interviewing with me who mention this blog -our way of evaluating the reach of this experiment.)

Looking forward to a first session, to checking back with the concierge, to meeting good people who want to work at our school - and to rubbing elbows with the pros.

I take this work seriously and am really trying get in the zone for this annual conference of independent school professionals this week. So the penguin suit on my chair in the office this morning knocked me off my stride for a second.  

 

"You want me to wear this tomorrow, right?" I asked the parent who was anxiously hovering around my office door this morning before school. "No, now!" he said. "We need the penguin outside this morning welcoming kids into school."

 

What we won't do for our schools. I'm sure our website will feature various shots of Mr. Downs in his penguin suit later this week. It's all part of our annual Book Festival and this year's "Under the Ice" theme. Polar explorer Ann Bancroft will speak Friday evening when I am in New York with 6,200 conference attendees. So the penguin suit is my peace offering for missing the big event.

 

Not sure yet how we'll measure the success of this NAIS blogging experiment. I've had one email in relation to a posting, but our tech guy says that perhaps NAIS Heads and others may be active readers, just not participants who comment or send emails. So if you're reading this and have a particular preference for what we "cover" at the conference, send me an email at mdowns@moundsparkacademy.org  

 

I'm thinking more along the person-on-the-street kind of reporting. Dane is doing such a splendid job covering the richness and diversity of the conference offerings and mixing it up with useful NYC information. I figure there's a Pulitzer in it for one of us....  

Weather.com ten-day outlook for NYC shows highs of 43, 42 and 42 for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday of next week during the NAIS conference. Lows 32, 29, 25, showers, showers, sunny. Of course, this could all change, but for those of us travelling from points south, west and north, it's something to begin planning around.

We'll be coming from 73,72, 73 - same days next week in Tucson. 49, 54, 59 in Atlanta and 17,19, 27 in our fair cities of Minneapolis/St. Paul on the 27, 28 and 29 of February.  

The forecast is significant for those of us who expect to be pounding the pavement between the Hilton, the Sheraton and Radio City Music Hall. Boy, that sounds good - Radio City Music Hall. Last time I was in that building I was maybe five years old staring up at a mile of Rockette legs. Inspiried idea on the part of NAIS to hold events in that historic space.

Dress warmly and look for over 6,000 independent school people, badges flapping in the mid-town rain and wind.

 

...and speaking of the Met. I got a good dose of Karita Mattila this past weekend - dental work and all, like we were sitting in row four. Over 600 movie theaters worldwide broadcast last Saturday's Metropolitan Opera performance of Puccini's "Manon Lescaut" live via satellite in high definition ditigal. We were at the Regal Eagan 16 and it was a bit odd eating popcorn and deciding whether or not to clap along with the live audience at the Met.

No sign in the local papers that the Regal Eagan 16 will be broadcasting the NAIS general sessions live in high def digital, so I'll be arriving at LaGuardia next Wednesday.

For those readers* unfamiliar with the finer points of Minnesota geography, Eagan is a southern suburb of Minneapolis/St. Paul, which is the new official brand title of what many have until now refered to as the Twin Cities. One of our three (count 'em) local public radio stations recently carried a story about an effort to re-brand our fair cities in advance of the Republican National Convention this summer.

Or maybe our real branding target is the upcoming annual fall ISACS Conference, returning to Minneapolis/St. Paul after a long time away....check that - having NEVER been here before. So all you readers* from ISACS schools should be marking your calendars to attend the ISACS conference here in November.

* readers would refer loosely to anyone not on the NAIS payroll who has read any of these blog entries and has an opinion about what to cover in this space prior to, during, or after the NAIS conference. NAIS is, afer all, paying top dollar for Dane and Mike, so let's not let those NAIS dues go to waste!  Email mdowns@moundsparkacademy.org or post suggestions in digital high def to comment box on this page.