News from NECC - Keynote Speaker Malcolm Gladwell

Malcolm Gladwell keynote kicked off the 30th annual NECC with a message about creating meaningful learning environments that included examples from education as well as diverse disciplines such as economics, sports, literature and music. His keynote was NOT about technology, but about learning.

Galdwell is the author of "The Tipping Point, Blink and Outliers - The Story of Success

Here's my take away:

• "Sometimes the struggle to learn something is where the actual learning lies."
• Two learning strategies: capitalization, leveraging our strengths and compensation, focusing your efforts on weaknesses. Galdwell believes we "that we spend too much time capitalizing when we'd find much more success by compensating. We should embrass failure because that's how we learn."
• Did you know that Fleetwood Mac's Albumn "Rumors" was their 16th. Can you name their first 15?
• Cognitive complex tasks take 10,000 hrs of practice for anything near success. That's 4 hrs. a day for 10 years.
• Bobbie Fischer, chess great, made it to the top in 9 years. In comparision, Mozart was a late bloomer. It took him 14 years to find success with concert 9- 271. The Beatles did not just brust on the scene in 1964. They played 1200 live concerts together many in a stripe club in Hamburg Germany before "bursting onto the scene". Mark Twain did not write Huck Finn until he was in his 50s and it took him 9 years to conclude the book. Why? He didn't like any of his endings.

FEEDBACK - There is value in timely and targeted feedback. Do we provide timely and targeted feedback to our students?

Notice - have I mentioned anything about hardware, software, or tech integration? Nope, gosh, I thought I was at a technology conference. Yes, the newest tech toys will be displayed and students and teachers discussing, demonstrating and advocating for technology will be front and centered. More importantly, this is a learning conference and technology is one of the tools.

More to come ........