Oh, right, the symposium

So, my thoughts on the Symposium: It was aiight (Dr. McD's word).

As interesting as it was to see people all agog about technologies in teaching and learning, I felt like I was not truly a member of the community. Maybe it's because I'm not Twittering yet (oh I didn't say that) and I didn't have a laptop to whip out to check out what other people were Twittering; since I don't share these practices, I'm not a member of this community of practice. Maybe it's because the Symposium's theme was "How do we as teachers find ways to connect with those digital natives using their native technologies?" when I don't yet identify as a teacher--I'm still pre-service, after all--and I am one of those digital natives. It was difficult for me to participate in those sessions because the attendees were mostly talking about people like me rather than with people like me. I suppose this would have been a golden opportunity to get involved and give them "my side of the story," but perhaps my asocial behavior was also blocking this avenue. (Minh + big groups of strangers = not a good idea.) Maybe it's because I refused to tag myself. Was I openly repelling people because I lacked a technological identity?

This is something I've been thinking about. Does my identity come from only me--the way I'd like to think it does--or, if I don't have an identity (that is, I'm not sure how to practice with a new community), would the community assign me one? Would I just be the loner/newcomer/outsider/etc.? Can you be given an identity without your own input? Let's take out the "I" for a minute: If I were a shell of a human being (okay, a robot) sitting in a room full of members of a community of practice, could I still have an identity? I think I'm not wording this the way I want it to sound, so the point/question I'm trying to may be confusing.

About the Symposium itself: I had hoped it would have been more of a learning opportunity for me. I probably could have picked better sessions, but I didn't walk away with a lot of new ideas (although I liked "notecasting"). Maybe it's because we're in a class about how to use these technologies in teaching and learning environments, and I've already been exposed to most of them. The ones I didn't know weren't elaborated on. Where was the Jing session? Why doesn't the one technology that I haven't heard about get its own session? I think this is a design issue!

And, isn't it odd that we were all given analog pen and paper to tote around the Symposium? Eeeenteresting...