Student Panels – Sharing Authentic Student Voice

What most people know about Generation YES is that it has something to do with students, technology and student voice. So we often get asked by conference organizers if we can help them find students to participate in a student panel discussion. We always try to accomodate them with teacher contact names from local Generation YES schools.

It’s good that people are trying. It’s a great reward for the students too. It’s so rare that you see students in any way, shape or form at an educational technology conference that the mere fact of them showing up seems like a statement. But student panels often turn out to be less satisfying than planned. The mere act of speaking is not student voice, and just listening is not enabling student voice.

Yesterday I posted about our latest white paper, Sharing Student Voice: Students Presenting at Conferences. In that paper, one section relates to student panels which I’d like to share here. It’s written for anyone thinking of taking their students to an education related conference. I hope that it can help make student panels more relevant for both the students and the audiences involved.

A Special Note About Student Panels
Student panels are often arranged by conferences to show that they are listening to students and supporting student voice. Since your students are likely to be well-known as articulate students who are making a difference, you may get an invitation to bring students to participate in a student panel discussion.

These student panels can be nice rewards for students, but they do not promote student voice by themselves. Unfortunately, these panels often take place in a vacuum. Students are rarely present at meetings or working group sessions where real decisions are made. Too often the panelists are asked abstract questions that are well beyond the student’s capability or experience.

If you can participate in planning the student panel, ask if the students can participate in the full day’s events, by working on plans or proposals alongside adults. You may want to suggest that the students are not asked questions about things that they have little control over, such as national policy or how they could use technology to improve “education” as an abstract idea. Since student voice is always grounded in action, questions that focus on eliciting student perceptions about their actual work will be more powerful and more meaningful for both the audience and the students.

You can prepare your students ahead of time by helping them understand that their experiences, such as by teaching teachers how to use technology as a GenYES student, are valid answers. They do not have to invent futuristic solutions or make up grand plans. What they have already done is worth talking about and is the true expression of student voice. Be clear with them about whether they will have a chance to participate in any decision-making activities beyond a panel appearance.

Student trust is a hard-won gift, and over-promising that a student panel is a chance for them to have a real voice in creating change might backfire. It’s not hard for students to realize that in reality there is no mechanism for any long-term participation on their part.

Finally, consider bringing some non-traditional students to the student panel. Students who are not your academic superstars and don’t speak in 5 paragraph essays often speak the truth with greater ease than students who are more conventional. Be sure to make it safe for them to say the unexpected or unconventional, within the boundaries of appropriate behavior. Your guidance will allow students to move past what they know adults expect of them and share their authentic voice.

You can download the whole white paper here in PDF form.

Sylvia

Sharing Student Voice: Students Presenting at Conferences

cover of whitepaperI’m proud to announce the release of Sharing Student Voice: Students Presenting at Conferences. This 10 page monograph contains both research support and practical tips for teachers working with students to plan presentations of student work by students in formal, adult venues, specifically educational conferences. (Download PDF)

The paper contains:

  • Research on student voice and student empowerment, reflecting on 21st century skill development and inclusion of Web 2.0 technology
  • How to plan and submit sessions with student presenters
  • Types of conference sessions and how students best fit into different formats
  • Planning, creating, and practicing the presentation while creating student ownership
  • Treating the presentation as part of the reflective process that builds student voice
  • Balancing the needs of the audience with the needs of students while retaining authentic student voice
  • Top Ten Tips for Student Presenters
  • Logistics tips for bigger conferences and exhibit halls
  • The role of the teacher in the presentation, providing context and being the audience surrogate
  • Session and speaker etiquette and what to expect

I hope this resource is useful to anyone wondering how to take students to speak at a conference, or anyone planning an event that includes students. I wrote it to be a very practical guide for busy teachers!

We often work with teachers to bring Generation YES students to various events to talk about how they work with teachers to improve technology use, or how they function as a trusted part of the tech support team, or how technology literacy can be assessed with student peer mentors. We’ve learned a lot over the years about how best to do this, and want to share it with everyone. It’s not hard to do, but why not learn from our experience (and mistakes!)

Our first monograph, Vision to Action: Including Student Leadership in Your Technology Plan, released in February 2007, was a big hit and we hope to build on that success with more free resources that help school leaders enable student voice to improve education. We all know that student voice and student participation in authentic activities is important, but without focused, ongoing efforts by adults, this can get lost among other priorities. We hope these resources help people get started or keep their momentum going by not having to “reinvent the wheel.”

Over the next few days, I’ll share a few highlights from this new monograph, but if you’d like the whole thing, please feel free to download and share it with others.

Download PDFSharing Student Voice: Students Presenting at Conferences by Sylvia Martinez

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Connecting ed-tech to ed-reform

The design of American education is obsolete, not meeting the needs of our students and our society, and ignores most of what we have learned about education and learning in the past century. This panel will explore a new paradigm, including some specific examples, of how education in America can be reshaped in more productive and democratic fashions. YEARLYKOS: Education Uprising / Educating for Democracy

At the annual Yearlykos 2007 conference, a group of educators, including teacherken from The Daily Kos, will discuss a year-long project to implement education reform in America. The opening paragraph above is followed by an essay on education reform and links to support resources.

What does this have to do with technology?
As educators find themselves re-imagining learning based on their own tech-based awakening, the sense comes quickly that this is not about new technology, access to information, 21st century skills, or even 2.0-goodness, but broader-based education reform. But just as quickly, it starts to feel like there is no hope of changing a lumbering, entrenched educational system with a tiny lever called technology.

However, we are not alone, and it would be a win-win for both tech-loving educators and education reformers to join forces. The tools of Web 2.0 could tip the balance in the effort to reshape education “in more productive and democratic fashions.” The virtual voices of students and teachers alike could finally be heard in force.

Roadmap for education reform
The online handout from this session is a roadmap of current education reform efforts focusing on teacher autonomy, authentic student work, and educator-driven reforms.

Just a few gems:

Forum for Education and Democracy, founded by a group of prominent thinkers in education, including Deborah Meier, Angela Valenzuela, Pedro Noguera, Linda Darling-Hammond, Ted and Nancy Sizer, and others: http://www.forumforeducation.org/

The Education Policy Blog
http://educationpolicyblog.blogspot.com/ is group blog in which both Sherman Dorn and Ken Bernstein participate. It has the purpose of examining education from a social foundations perspective, and many of the participants teach social foundations of education in teacher training programs.

Educators Roundtable http://www.educatorroundtable.org is the product a group of educators who came together to attempt to stop reauthorization of NCLB in anything like its current format.

Coalition of Essential Schools, based on the thinking of Ted Sizer: http://www.essentialschools.org/

And wait, there’s more… This is not just whining about how bad things are, it’s a positive call to action. Be sure to read all the way to bottom of the page for a manifesto of how to change the teaching profession, not from the top down, but by leveraging (and listening to) teachers themselves.

Teachers and Teaching: Prospects for High Leverage Reform
Peter Henry (aka Mi Corazon) http://www.newteachernetwork.net

Wedged between two Byzantine bureaucracies—unions and school districts, constrained by unreasonable public expectations, hammered by ideologues, criticized by the media, saddled with policies shaped by non-educators, America’s teachers have almost no room to maneuver. Their training, workplace, schedule, and assignment are mostly determined by others, and their curriculum arrives “canned” in the form of textbooks from large, well-connected corporations. In some schools, extreme instructional strategies tell them what words to say, when, and how, as if teaching can be reduced to a standard script.

There is, however, reason for hope: If teachers are liberated from these structural limitations, they have tremendous potential as “high leverage” reform agents. As Peter Senge maintains in his thoughtful classic, The Fifth Discipline, small, subtle modifications of a key organizational element can have a major systemic impact.

It goes on to call for two fundamental reforms:

  1. Giving teachers autonomy, power, control and authority
  2. Ending teacher isolation

And ends on this uplifting note:

A great and resilient society, capable of successful adaptation and change, cannot thrive with an educational system built in the 19th century—managed by top-down hierarchies, one-size-fits-all models and ruled by the cudgel of fear. Excellence is achieved through individual mastery, a collegial network awash with inquiry and creativity, undergirded by trust and tangible support from the larger community. If we want teaching excellence and the resultant development of full student potential, teachers must be lifted up, given the responsibility, authority and training which enhance their natural human abilities, and then respected for taking on this most crucial and challenging work.

Educators inspired by technology and looking to create their ideal of authentic learning will see parallels in these resources with many of the thoughts expressed daily in the ed-tech segment of the edublosphere. There is much to learn and much to do.

But finally, at this time in history, we have to tools to actually make this happen. Ed-tech reformers have an important part to play… and we are not alone.

Sylvia

Calling HS students – Global Debate Series

Student activists in Ghana This Fall and Spring, high school students across the U.S. and select countries will have the opportunity to participate in The People Speak: Global Debates. Occurring over ten days each in October 2007 and March 2008, students will organize public debates in their high schools and coordinate a global student vote on the debate topic.

  • October debate topic: lowering carbon emissions
  • March debate topic: water rights

The Global Debates are an opportunity to develop the skills of being a global citizen and informed community member. This seems like a great, authentic opportunity to use Web 2.0 tools to plan and organize debates, or even to have a virtual team organize a virtual debate.

In addition, participating students and their teachers will have the chance to win a trip for their six-person team (four students, two teachers) to a Global Youth Leadership Summit at the UN in July 2008. There they will meet students from around the world, tour the UN building, and interact with UN officials. Teachers will receive a special training on integrating global issues into their curriculum.

Visit thepeoplespeak.org for more details. The contest and debates are an initiative of the United Nations Foundation.

Technology-enabled service-learning projects, a perfect partnership

Toolkit imageMany technology-using educators realize that technology is not something you can teach in a vacuum, but that providing students with context and real-life projects makes learning come alive. Web 2.0 tools can greatly increase student ability to collaborate in global projects or develop their own voice by participating as equals in local projects. This means students can go beyond “tech skills” to authentic learning and citizenship that lasts a lifetime.

Marrying tried-and-true resources and research with new technology means that you don’t have to reinvent the wheel for every aspect of student projects. Having a well-established project to participate in may also alleviate some of the access issues that arise when introducing new technology tools for student use. It’s harder to argue that blogs or social networks are just time wasters when they are being used to discuss cultural issues with students in Tibet, or say that student email is unnecessary when students are key members of a city-wide safe water campaign.

One of the best collections of resources for connecting to or creating projects that can change children’s lives forever is the National Service Learning Clearinghouse website.

As an example, the National Service Learning Clearinghouse has a new K-12 Service-Learning Project Planning Toolkit available for download. This free PDF contains resources, guides and worksheets to help you and your students implement a well-organized project, including:

  • Choosing a meaningful problem for your service-learning project
  • Linking to curriculum standards, citizenship and social-emotional goals
  • Developing an assessment plan
  • Implementing a high quality service-learning activity
  • Designing reflection activities
  • Organizing a culminating event

This website provides a wealth of resources, funding sources, and links to projects that are perfect for Web 2.0 and technology-enhanced activities.

One-to-one Laptops is Hard, Right?

A few weeks ago I met Martin Levins for the first time, even though we’d been email pals for some time. Martin is the Director of Information Technology at The Armidale School in New South Wales, Australia, and uses TechYES – our student technology literacy certification program in his laptop school.

The following article by Martin appeared in the Anywhere, Anytime Learning Foundation July newsletter, and both AALF and Martin have agreed to allow me to republish it here. I find the emphasis on in-depth preparation and “learning, not the laptop” refreshing, and resonate with his own personal learning being enhanced by writing for an authentic audience. Life-long learning indeed!

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One-to-one Laptops is Hard, Right?
by Martin Levins Director of Information Technology, The Armidale School

That’s what I get asked when I tell colleagues and other educators that our school has embarked on such a program. This year (2007), in our 600 student K-12 school, we gave out laptops to all students from grades 3 to 12 and one thing that has really surprised us has been how well the program has gone. Our school adopted an approach that was learning-driven, backed with three years of laptops supplied to teachers with carts for class work, and an opt-in lease program for parents. Our infrastructure had undergone a refresh of both switch gear and wireless coverage so we were ready; only a refinement of our management policies and procedures was needed. And we’re still learning here: while software and hardware are common to projects of this type, people, procedures and policies, this human “wetware,” is very much peculiar to a given institution.

Our preparedness was boosted by the level of executive commitment from the headmaster down. Backed by teachers and students who wanted more, this was an essential paving stone on the road to 1-to-1. Of course, it wasn’t all teachers who were ready to go; waiting for all to come on board is like waiting for Godot: it’ll never happen. It sounds harsh, but they’ll either adopt or leave. To help them with this decision, I had adopted the mantra of “changing, and staying the same,” asking teachers to really think about what they are doing, and since 2004, the discussion in the faculty lounge turned from sports scores to what makes effective teaching to, eventually, what makes effective learning.

Initially, teachers can be easily seduced by the wow factor, although that rapidly fades as (good) teachers realize that gloss doesn’t really make up for a lack of preparation or understanding. They take longer to realize that many of the shiny tricks are simple one-button mouse clicks and largely irrelevant.

An English teacher may worry that he, unlike his students, can’t make a transition that flips between two video clips. He perceives that he is somehow deficient, but good teachers are not deficient in their craft, irrespective of their IT ability. So a teacher can turn this situation around, asking the student showing such an effect, “How has that transition advanced the narrative,” shifting the focus away from the technology and back to the learning.

We’re noticing similar changes in our students as well. Lots of people talk about student voices: how students now have the ability to express themselves graphically, but we’re noticing more than this.

A ninth grade science class was working on the importance of binocular vision. One student generally described as “not capable of much” by many teachers grabbed his laptop after class and used the built-in camera to record his catching success with both eyes open, compared to one eye closed. He put the resultant Quicktime video onto his iWeb generated website (all of our students are provided with their own website).

Now here is the genuine wow factor: a student doing real science, designing his own experiments. Someone who is “not capable of much” doing real science in his own time, continuing his learning at home. Exciting, huh?

We’re seeing similar things with students writing more because their podcast sounds lame, but also writing less because their movie is too long. This apparent paradox is explained by Blaise Pascal: “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time,” meaning that writing concisely takes longer. Students asked to build a thirty-second advertisement have to do more thinking than one asked for a “five or ten minute” video. It also takes the load off the network!

I’ve found myself benefiting greatly from this approach as well. One of my “other” jobs is education columnist for Australian Macworld and I prepared for our rollout by writing columns on the infrastructure, management, pedagogical, and financial issues surrounding a 1-to-1 program.

The discipline imposed by writing for an authentic audience really made me refine my thinking about our upcoming project, reinforced the importance of reflective writing and helped me model what I wanted my students to do.

Reckon you can’t afford 1-to-1? You can: if the argument is compelling enough, you’ll find the money.

 

What is Student Voice?

After the recent NECC conference in Atlanta, several edu-blogs noted the absence of students participating in any meaningful way, with some calls for student participation in future conferences, and advocating organized student blogging.

The Fischbowl – NECC Reflection #1: Where were the students?
Beyond School – “Where are the Students?” Redux: Beyond NECC (A Tirade Against Infantilization)

We’re certainly glad to have some company in this cause! We’ve had Genertion YES students participating at NECC and other conferences for many years and this year at the Constructivist Celebration. I’ll be posting some of those reflections soon, but for now, I think it’s important to share some of the things we’ve learned about student voice over the last 10 years.

Generation YES was founded by Dr. Dennis Harper (see Edutopia article) on the idea that including students in the process of improving education is crucial, and that technology is a natural vehicle for that expression. The work we do with schools helps them start sustainable programs that create authentic opportunities for students to collaborate with adults and do projects that integrate technology. The key though, is that the research we base our programs on, and the research we do on our own schools shows strongly that DOING something is the key to student voice and student empowerment.

Student “voice” does not have anything to with talking (or blogging.) It’s about empowerment with a purpose — where students are guided by caring adults through the process of long term, meaningful change. When we offer opportunities to students to come to events like NECC, we don’t consider that empowerment. Students don’t have any stake in these conferences, and although they enjoy coming to these events (praise, lots of goodies, getting out of school, etc) the real empowerment happened back at their school.

Wikipedia offers an excellent article on student voice, well worth reading. “Student voice is the individual and collective perspective and actions of young people within the context of learning and education. It is identified in schools as both a metaphorical practice and as a pragmatic concern.

“Pragmatic concern” is a polite way to say that it’s a challenging effort that involves working against entrenched attitudes and traditional views that youth should be “seen but not heard”. It can also be the most insanely rewarding work in the world.

Adam Fletcher, coordinator of Soundout.org, is someone we work with in this arena, in fact, we used to share office space. The Soundout.org website has great resources, tools, and publications, all free. It’s not easy to create a climate for true student voice in schools, but resources like this and the work of dedicated educators can help pave the way.

Leadership Day – Leaders of the Future

Scott McLeod challenged edu-bloggers to blog about effective school technology leadership on Wednesday, July 4. Great leadership is inclusive leadership, yet one stakeholder group often forgotten is students. Strangely enough, this stakeholder group is the largest in K-12 schools, with the most to lose if their voices are not heard. Conviniently enough, this digital generation has more direct experience with technology than any other group–if we were listening. Sadly enough, if students aren’t included in this effort to improve education with technology, we lose more than their technical know-how, we lose the opportunity to shape the ongoing conversation and find the leaders of tomorrow.

While we wonder where the future leaders of the educational technology movement will come from, there they sit in front of us everyday, being ignored. Thinking that “school” doesn’t understand what their lives are like outside of the classroom. Wondering what their role will be in changing the world. Wishing that someone would give them the opportunity to make a difference.

Enabling youth voice in K-12 schools isn’t simple. They might not say what you expect; it takes time to teach them how to speak their minds effectively and work collaboratively. And they keep growing up and leaving, so it never ends. I’m not talking about the kind of token youth panel you often see at educational technology conferences, where students who can be counted on to say acceptable things are trotted out for an hour, everyone nods and feels good about listening to youth voice and then lunch is served while the kids are conveniently bussed back from whence they came.

This is a lose-lose situation. We lose their input, convince them we don’t care, and miss the teachable moment. We enable dependence in youth by not allowing them to participate in the process of school decision-making. And technology is only a small part of this. The curtailing of student press freedom and the blocking of online discussion creates fewer opportunities for student’s voices to be heard in every avenue and less opportunity to practice these skills.

It’s not just about leadership in educational technology, we should be worried about where the leaders of tomorrow will learn how to be informed, involved citizens of the world.

Related Download: From Vision to Action: Including Student Leadership in Your Technology Plan (PDF) This 8-page guide contains research, sample language, practical suggestions, 6 models of student involvement, and a planning worksheet. Print it out and give it to your favorite tech planning committee members!

Information overload? Let the kids decide.

In a recent post (Information Overload: Do Kids Manage Their Media Better?) on the Shaping Youth blog (about media and marketing influence on kids), executive director Amy Jussel discusses the difference between how adults and children handle information overload.

She quotes Marketing strategist Steve Rubel in an Ad Age article (unfortunately you have to be a subscriber to view this one) –

“In-boxes, smart phones and IM windows are overflowing. Always-on connections, mobile devices and new publishing tools have expanded the media we consume to include content from peers…New networks and platforms for participation are sprouting up and going supernova overnight, with no end in sight.”

Teachers looking at Web 2.0 and other technologies are well aware of this feeling of drinking from the firehose. The textbook is not the final word on any subject anymore (if it ever really was), you search for “lesson plans” on Google and get a number best expressed in scientific notation, parents want you to respond to email AND voicemail (and neither one of them work), you are supposed to download videos and upload podcasts and oh, by the way, here are 10 new tools invented yesterday that may or may not help you.

How will we teach students to handle all of this if we are overwhelmed ourselves?

But she asks a great question –

What if we preventively look to YOUTH for some of these answers? Youth voraciously digest media and STILL somehow seem to exercise more restraint than “addicted” adults overly dependent on their mobile devices and gizmos.

Many kids are able to ingest their digital media nuggets as tasty morsels instead of the ‘portion distortion’ some adults gorge upon, tanking up with “too much of a good thing.”

In my house, for example, my tween gets enamored in fits and starts with media’s ‘Next Great Thing’ then, like a pup with a new toy, she plays with it for awhile, puts it down and goes back to her primary modus operandi.

Why does this matter for school?

It matters if adults let feelings of inadequacy color what we teach and how we treat students. Information is overwhelming…. programming is hard…. the web is a scary, dangerous place… these messages are about adult fears. Students hear these as confirmation that adults don’t “get it” and it becomes just one more reason to tune out.

Students could be doing so much more to help teachers understand how technology and information works in their lives (Previous post: Web 2.0 – share the adventure with students.) In turn, students would be more open to the very important lessons teachers can teach–like good searching, media literacy, safety and using the web for appropriate, educational purposes. If we don’t teach appropriate, educational uses of technology, it’s our own fault if students fill the vacuum with inappropriate, trivial use. But we shouldn’t color the lesson with fear.

Stepping Up to the Buffet

There’s been an interesting discussion going on in some educational technology blogs about women and minorities being left out of the discussion going on in the edu-blogosphere, and as leaders in educational technology. Tim Holt (Not Invited to the Buffet) explores the issue, as does Lucy Grey and Wes Fryer (The Conversation is Open) .

Before I say something about gender issues, there’s an even larger constituency group not invited into this conversation– namely, students. I’ve covered this ground many times before. It’s what Generation YES is all about – working with schools to facilitate student involvement in improving technology integration. Let’s just say that as long as we treat students as passive objects of our educational system, rather than as full partners, we will overlook them as collaborators and will miss the potential insight and solutions they might bring to the conversation.

But what I’d like to focus on in this post is the gender issue in relation to educational technology leadership. Some of this I posted as a comment on Lucy’s blog. (Note: Despite my last name, I don’t represent any racial minority. My kids do, but I don’t. So I’ll stick to what I know.)

While the issue of a lack of female leadership goes well beyond the educational technology community, there are some unique conditions here. Technology is typically the realm of the male. As an electrical engineer, I’ve been in lots of places where I’m the only woman, and believe me, it makes you think twice about your “place.” But since teaching is overwhelmingly female, you might think this would balance out. However, I believe it simply makes it easier for a man to stand out as a leader.

I also don’t believe that “inviting people to the buffet” is the right image, either. Leaders don’t wait for invitations. You either step up or step back. Lots of conventional research on gender differences suggests reasons why women do not step up to leadership roles and if they do, aren’t taken seriously.

These gender differences aren’t necessarily a bad thing. It makes women stronger in some areas, like collaboration and communication. It would stand to reason that women might be better at facilitating, blogging, and well – leading. But it’s more complex than that. Here’s just one example:

Bias in the Evaluation of Women Leaders: Gender, Status, and LeadershipCecilia L. Ridgeway, Stanford University, Journal of Social Issues, 2001

Abstract: More than a trait of individuals, gender is an institutionalized system of social practices. The gender system is deeply entwined with social hierarchy and leadership because gender stereotypes contain status beliefs that associate greater status worthiness and competence with men than women. This review uses expectation states theory to describe how gender status beliefs create a network of constraining expectations and interpersonal reactions that is a major cause of the “glass ceiling.” In mixed-sex or gender-relevant contexts, gender status beliefs shape men’s and women’s assertiveness, the attention and evaluation their performances receive, ability attributed to them on the basis of performance, the influence they achieve, and the likelihood that they emerge as leaders. Gender status beliefs also create legitimacy reactions that penalize assertive women leaders for violating the expected status order and reduce their ability to gain compliance with directives.

But back to educational technology leadership. What happens to women on the way to becoming leaders? Here’s my short list:

1. Women are more apt to include others in a conversation, and will give up the spotlight to do that.

2. Women will not compete for resources, but will negotiate so that it seems fair for everyone. This gives men an advantage in a “winner takes all” situation. (As in, who gets the single keynote slot or the top job.)

3. Women are more adaptable about rules, and in a situation where the rules might favor them, will actually back away from “winning.”

4. Men are louder, more assertive, and more sure of themselves. It’s a Catch-22. They are this way because they are rewarded for being this way. You know the joke, men are forceful and passionate, women are hysterical and emotional. Men are smart and opinionated, women are calculating and bitchy.

5. No one wants to hear a keynote that is even-handed, where “on the other hand” is the dominant theme. Yet that is often a very female response to controversy.

6. Teachers are especially humble about what they do. How many times have you heard a teacher asked what they do and they say, “I’m just a teacher.” This resonates all the way up to the top of the ladder, where even very accomplished women distrust their own ability to articulate a point and then stand back as others say what they are thinking inside.

7. Both men and women pay more attention to what men say. Like the “gender pay gap”, there is a “gender attention gap.” I guarantee that every woman has experienced this. You say something in a group and then 5 minutes later, a man says the same thing and everyone exclaims what a great idea it is. Men, if you’ve never noticed this, start listening for it. You’ll be shocked.

Finally, Lucy made a good point that many educational technology leaders are independent consultants, and have to work very hard to “hustle for speaking gigs”. It’s a full time job, yet one with no steady paycheck, a lot of risk, no pension, and no insurance. Lots of women simply don’t have the ability to make that choice for their families.

I wish I had more answers… but anyway, at least I’m out here trying, as I know many, many other women are.