Wednesday, October 15, 2014

BrightBytes Summit 2014

Last week I had the opportunity to spend two wonderful days in San Francisco at the BrightBytes Summit 2014.  Educator from all over the country, us 15%ers, spent two days discussing various ways to “fill our suitcases” for student success.  (When I referr to the 15%ers, it is the 15% of BrightBytes users).  We filled those suitcases with the 3T’s: Team, Tools and Tactics.  

We had the opportunity to hear from several speakers such as Richard Gerver, Bruce Dixson, Will Richardson and many more.  Listening to these speakers talk about educational issues of today and what we can do to help students succeed was inspirational.

One point made by the keynote Richard Gerver was that we should be creating individuals that don’t need managing.  These are those in the workforce that don’t need to be told how to do every step along the way.  They are the go getters and they only go to “management” if there is a problem that needs to be solved that is “above their pay grade”.  This leads to another point of Richard’s that I found interesting: we should be focusing on HOW to learn rather than on WHAT to learn.  If we can do this, we will create those individuals that don’t need to be managed.

On day two, there were a couple of points made by Will Richardson that stuck with me as well.  First, we need to leave all the adjective in front of learning off and just call it LEARNING!  To me, in the end, that is what it is all about!  The second point that stuck with me was professional development is now up to the professional, NOT the institution.  There are so many opportunities out there for teachers to improve themselves with like-minded individuals outside of the four walls of the school building.  From Twitter to EdCamps, all one needs to do is just look and find what they need.

There was so much more that I gained from this experience that I don’t have enough room, or want to drag on about, in this post.  I know that I won’t forget the time I spent at the Summit and cannot wait to go back in the future.  All the collaboration and communication that took place was invaluable!