Stage: A whole new world
You hear an inspiring keynote at a conference, read a book, or see a colleague use technology in their classroom. It clicks with something inside you.
Stage: Connection
You try to understand the role of technology in your life as an educator. Coincidently, you start to see this topic pop up all around you. It seems to be haunting you. You set up a blog reader and add a few feeds. You find a guru whose words help you make sense of the murky picture.
You read books, start your own blog, or change something in your everyday life. You go to an educational technology conference and attend every session.
Stage: Stepping into the void
You implement a project you never would have attempted before. You get more and more into the subject and are amazed that there is such a vast network out there. You add more blog feeds, listen to podcasts, buy books, start a wiki, subscribe to magazines, and join other networks and conversations. You wonder why grad school never felt like this.
You feel renewed as an educator and lifelong learner. Your colleagues wonder what’s gotten into you.
Stage: Firehose
You try too many new tools and join too many networks. You start to resent it when someone introduces something new. You hate your pile of unread stuff. Your blog feeds start to overwhelm you. No one comments on your best blog posts. It seems there is just too much to keep track of, and it never stops.
You get a bit depressed that you are so late coming to the party.
Stage: The big picture overwhelms
You wonder if what you are doing is just a waste of time. You find analogies to the failure of school in everyday occurrences. Your regular friends look at you funny when you start using words like “pedagogy” and railing about the “factory model of education” in everyday conversation.
You find that it’s not just technology-using educators who feel this way, that education reformers have been saying things like this for decades, even centuries.
You are sure that “school” cannot be fixed.
Stage: Ennui
You commiserate with your network about people who don’t “get it.” People who are coming late to the party annoy you. You tire of the clichés that seemed so fresh at first. You say things like, “If I hear about sage on the stage / guide on the side (or digital natives/immigrants, or anything 2.0, or insert your own pet peeve here) one more time, I’ll kill someone!” You meet your gurus and find out they are just human, and maybe really wrong about some things.
You stop going to conference sessions. Someone accuses you of being in the “in” group.
Stage: Renewal
You accept that you won’t ever be able to keep up with the hype machine and stop worrying about it. Your project goes well and your plans expand.
You start to narrow down your areas of interest and explore them deeper.
Stage: Building expertise
You attempt something on a wide scale, collaborating with other like-minded educators. You find renewed energy as you work with students or teachers and see things change. You find books, even some written decades or centuries ago that support your beliefs. You become better able to articulate the “why” of all this. You think about going back to school. You find experts outside of your newly constructed network.
People look to you for advice and expertise.
Stage: The circle of life
You connect with new people in their own early stages and give them guidance as they figure out what you have figured out. You mentor someone. A student says you’ve changed their life. You learn something new and feel that spark. You rededicate yourself to changing what you can. You think that if these ideas can take hold, even if it has to happen one person at a time, there is hope for the concept of school after all.
You use the phrase, “sage on the stage vs. guide on the side” – see someone’s eyes light up and forgive yourself.
Sylvia
PS Of course, this is not a recommendation, aimed at any person in particular, or suggests a linear path. Sometimes I feel like this all in one day! Hope you all take it in the spirit it’s intended and get a chuckle out of it.
It’s been two weeks since the 
How to structure a day with enough time for working on projects, learning new things, collegial interaction, and sleep. The man in charge, Gary Stager, has had plenty of experience planning these events, but I’ve had almost none. So listening to him talk about how this could work, drawing on 25 years of experience was informative. I learned a lot before the event even started. In the end, each day consisted of a short opening framework from Gary, one guest speaker, and the rest of the time spent working on individual and group projects. Plus evening social events!
classics to books that are great for classrooms and students. 
Once we got to the hotel to set up, we found 10 more boxes. Several companies had donated constructive, creative software and materials for our participants. 
Sunday excursion
Monday morning started the institute. Everyone started to arrive and settle down, install new software and meeting and greeting. The introductions were amazing. People had come from all over the country, and two from Israel and Khartoum. We had kindergarten to high school teachers, math, science, art, administrators, public and private schools, tech coordinators, district — just about every combination of educators you could imagine. After some opening words, we brainstormed some ideas for projects – dancing clowns, musical sculptures, a video or simulation about the immigrant experience, a boat, a kaleidoscope and more. Then people grouped themselves on a project. My job was to float around and facilitate, connect people with resources, open boxes of stuff, find clay or eyeballs or pipe cleaners or debug programs or whatever.
Some groups took off right away. I spent a lot of time with a group doing a video using the Claymation kit and the Frames animation software. We set up the green screen and brainstormed ideas. Some of the ideas worked, some didn’t, and when we did a test with the software, we had our first AHA moment. Working with our test pictures and the software lead to another, wholly unexpected discovery and that lead to an even better idea. Our story took on a new and different shape before our eyes because we allowed it to and we had time. If we had rigidly stuck to the original plan and schedule, it wouldn’t have happened.
Someone started making turtles out of the clay. Why turtles? Not really sure how that happened. But suddenly they were the stars of the movie. Somebody said, “it’s hard to line the turtles up to the previous frame” and someone pointed to the onion-skinning button, and that knowledge was passed quickly around the table. Then someone else sat down with one of the keyboards and composed a song to go along with the movie. We didn’t have to sit through workshops on music software, frame animation techniques, or turtle carving. The idea of “collaboration through the air” that Gary had talked about that morning had just happened.
But I wasn’t supposed to just help one group! So I walked around and asked people what they were working on. Two or three groups were going strong. But I found some people just “playing” with software. Hmm…. that wasn’t supposed to happen, where were their groups? One of the groups had disbanded, some were sitting at the same table, but not working on the same thing. So, I asked our fearless leader, Gary, what to do – should I try to get people working in groups? No, he says, let people approach things in their own way. Offer them help but let them decide to participate. So although this is against my A-type to-do list mentality, I have to trust him.
pictures and videos about their re-creation of this sculpture.
Each day ended with a circle where everyone could wrap up their impressions of the day. Typically I’m leery of anything that smacks of touchy-feely kumbayah theatrics. But it was important to bring the meta-analysis back to the day. People had allowed themselves to take their “teacher hats” off for a time, now it was time to step back and think about the meaning behind what was happening to them as learners and what it meant for how they might change their own management of student learning environments. More than a few people expressed how uncomfortable it felt to be “thrown off the deep end” and told to JUST DO something. But then almost all said that the feeling of moving past that discomfort and frustration was meaningful and necessary. Gary had mentioned watching for this “mouth-up frustration” as a good sign. But what’s the right balance of frustration and hand-holding? Obviously, in this group, there were as many answers as there were personalities. What does this imply for students?
I got a message today from 
