As someone who has rarely missed attending the Jerusalem ETAI Summer Conference over the past 26 years, I can certainly say I firmly believe in the benefits of attending conferences.

I still haven’t filled out the speaker proposal form because a question has been bothering me.

Do conferences have to be devoted solely to “input”? One goes from session to session, sets up an attention device and prepares to receive input. That is the pattern. Sometimes there will be more than one speaker, sometimes questions from the audience will be answered but the pattern remains.

Is it possible to have an “output” session?

Perhaps I could suggest a few topics to be voted on before the conference over our teachers’ mailing list. Let’s take “Error Correction” as an example of a topic chosen.

Perhaps there would be a session (or one on each day?) devoted to hashing out a set of Do’s and Don’ts related to that topic that could be posted on the conference site after the conference, as a combined effort teachers output of that particular conference. I think the number would have to be limited – we would have to come up with no more than seven or ten strategies / attitudes that are recommended, and the same number which most certainly are not. If we use this example we would perhaps need to produce a separate document for talking and writing. Short lists will be a useful document to have as an “output”.

In addition, having a limited number will make it more into an interesting discussion or debate. While I would call on everyone to be very polite, accepting everything said (sort of “anything goes” attitude) will not lead to an actual meaningful debate over what is effective or less so. Actually, its adding the element of polite dissent to brainstorming (I posted about this here).

On the other hand, this seems a very risky proposition.

I don’t know if teachers are as interested as I am in debating issues of classroom strategies.

I don’t know if the number of teachers in a session at a time should be limited for such a thing.

I don’t know if I can moderate such a session and keep the discussion on track and civil.

I don’t know if I’m simply trying to recreate the amazing dynamics of an #eltchat at a face to face conference without the help of the marvelous moderators we have there.

Has anyone encountered such a session?

I know, take a deep breath.

Take the long view.

As Tyson Seburnt and I were discussing recently – build it and they will come, right?

But why is it so hard to convince teachers that sharing resources and ideas is in their best interests and will actually make life easier for them?

I gave a talk to another group of itinerant teachers today. The talk itself went well. We discussed issues regarding teaching reading to deaf and hard of hearing children, vocabulary acquisition and the tricky issue of the relationship with the classroom teacher. The teachers asked questions and shared tales from their work. There was a nice atmosphere.

At the end of my talk I showed them my Hebrew counseling blog. I title my posts there as answers to questions (instead of me repeating myself all the time!). I showed them how one can search by tag to find relevant posts. They expressed some interest in that (the post on using a word cloud caught some people’s attention, I think).

Then I went into my “motivational talk” mode and explained how this blog could serve them as a place to share resources. If they would tell me about a site they found helpful, a book or a strategy that worked well, I would post it. That way they could all benefit from each other’s ideas being in one place. For a resource collection to be truly useful the content must come from the teachers in the field.

Dead silence.

Not even nods.

Sigh…