Sitting at the blogger café unable to get online. The situation is dripping with irony, but I digress. People I should be connecting with surround me, but I find myself retreating back to where I feel safe. In words.

I have been plagued by a sense of bitterness and apathy since I arrived at NECC, and no matter how I try to shed my prejudices I find myself asking: What is all this hype? Surrounded by snake oil salesmen and product pushers, it all seems like it is too much, too big.

Ironically, I find it easier to make connections swimming the waters online rather than making connections than sitting face to face with someone and discussing yet again how kids learn differently today and need a new set of skills to succeed in the 21st job market. I see my role as an educator as bigger than this. How much longer do we need to discuss these ideas? I am only thinking out loud here, and I hope I do not offend, but I am ready for a new discussion. I am not sure what this conversation will look, but perhaps that is what we should be talking about.

I can quip about how it is not about the technology but the teaching, but then again that platitude is neither original nor progressing the issues. If anything this conference so far has made me less evangelical about educational technology.  I don’t need a session sponsor by Cisco telling me how to use technology in my classroom.

Connection may be the name of the game here, but I still find myself the awkward teenager in a room full of cool kids pontificating about ideas that I would rather simply do than talk about.

For me, it all boils to down to a simple axiom, and while I feel like broken record and a bit of a simpleton when I express it, but learning need not be this complicated. Yes, there may be new skills. Yes there are new tools, but ultimately we simply need to be engaging students by creating authentic learning communities built around honest open relationships. These tools, these ideas are mere ways where we can create these communities. Students could careless about any of the ideas at NECC. They just want a teacher who is willing to be honest with them, respect them, and willing practice what they preach and learn along with them. The rest is all hype.

I have only been here for a day, but as a student here at NECC, I have not seen any communities like the ones I have described. I want to collaborate with others. I want to create a product. I want to use the tools, that so many companies seem hell bent on selling my school, to lean something new. Where is this happening at NECC? If these secessions exist, please show me the way.