What if …. The Flipped Conference (part 2)

My last post was about a new way of holding conferences.  A new way of professional development given current disruptive technologies and more inclusive practices.  Today, I’d like to elaborate on this briefly, to flesh it out and give it some muscle.

See my presentation on the Flipped Classroom below.  In the presentation, I ask about what a “Flipped Conference” would be like.

Here’s what a normal conference session might look like:

Contrast this with how I imagine a Flipped Conference session would look like:

In the normal conference, attendees have interest but most have little background knowledge to enable them to “join in”. The presenter remains all knowing, in control.

In the Flipped Conference, all presenters post up their lecture in video form on a youtube or vimeo channel or a website. Attendees can take a look, watch at length those they will attend. They can prepare, do the heavy lifting and be ready for a session that engages them and applies the knowledge of the video presentation.

They arrive at the conference session where they aren’t lectured to, presented upon. No. They are given tasks, they engage in discussion, they critically evaluate the concepts and form some kind of “tacit knowledge”, knowledge that is their own.  Key is that through a focus on the personal and being actively engaged, attendees relate their own class/teaching to the subject and thus we see the beginnings of transformation.

What’s your take on the Flipped Conference? Who’ll be the first to hold one and really begin for ELT, a process whereby teachers are the focus, not the “big names” and presenters.

 

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ddeubel

Teacher trainer, technology specialist, educational thinker...creator of EFL Classroom 2.0, a social networking site for thousands of EFL / ESL teachers and students around the world.

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