Bringing Big Ideas North

Big Ideas Fest 2014

Getting onto the plane to head to San Francisco to attend Big Ideas Fest in Half Moon Bay was something I had anticipated for three years. I happened across a mention of this conference via Twitter a few years back.  The images, tweets, website and speaker list made my heart race.  I'm a big picture thinker, so to encounter a conference where social justice, education, technology and the arts merge to address problems facing education made my brain explode. I knew absolutely, that I would find (to quote Lucy Maud Montgomery's Anne of Green Gables) "kindred spirits." I immediately tried to figure out how to attend the following year.

Alas, it was not to be. Financing a trip to San Francisco to attend a conference that happened during the work week meant finding money to fly, get accommodations, pay the conference fee and cover my substitute teacher costs. It wasn't until this year that I discovered the possibility of a bursary and then I knew I could make this conference happen for me.  I would have to tweet and write about my experiences and reflections, but as I tend to be a writer anyway, this wasn't a real hardship! In  fact, spreading the word about this conference and its unique method of getting a wide variety of people to collaborate in problem-solving is rather like being asked to proselytize. I'm happy to spread the good news!

Big Ideas Fest is a conference founded by Lisa Petrides of ISKME, to break down the silos between various levels of education and to foster collaboration and design thinking in solving the problems facing education today. With a solid grounding in Improv thinking, IDEO-founded design process and social justice, participants from the world of business to Kindergarten teachers to University professors to technology gurus hunker down in small groups to shed usual modes of problem solving to "move to provocation" and think beyond. I knew I'd be inspired by the "rapid-fire" speakers who each have 15 minutes to present their stories of real world solutions. Surprisingly, I hadn't looked at the pictures of the conference site until about a month before departure. When I saw pictures of the Ritz Carlton and Half Moon Bay, I knew I was heading to a transformational event.

Enlightenment seemed to be my key word upon my arrival. My flight got in during the Sunday afternoon, so I missed the first keynote speaker and the opportunity to create a luminary with the Artist in Residence. I did, however, arrive just in time for dinner.  The food was truly artistic in presentation and unbelievably delicious, but that was topped by the fun and stimulating conversations with educators from K-University, architects, and tech business owners. For a table of 10, we spanned the globe in home locations and ranged from teen to senior citizens. After a delectable creme brule, I headed off to my first workshop and then headed off to my home away from home to check out the fabulous bag o' swag from registration.

The next three days were a bit of a blur:  good food, amazing speakers, the hard/fun work of loosening up our reserves and imagination via Improv activities, thinking, talking and creating.  Highlights for me included:

•  making a new friend from Washington, DC at breakfast on Monday morning, then walking on the beach, 
• feeling excited to use improv strategies
• create a luminary, 
• chatting around the fire pits with educators from around the US
• finding kindred spirits from Guam!
• having my question chosen for Action Collab work on Tuesday
• connecting with a Collab group colleague who will continue to work with me (making BIF local connect between British Columbia and North Carolina)

The question that continues to plague me a little though, is how I'm going to use all of the great things I experienced and learned to truly make education better in my part of the world or in other parts of the world. I've started by trying to bring the Action Collab process into my building for my staff's on-going work in professional development. I am looking forward to presenting a workshop on the Action Collab process at my district's Professional Development Day in February.  The experiences were so rich and densely packed with strategies that I know I need to repeat it to revisit and deepen my understanding. Perhaps I could come back as a Collab leader, so I'll be investigating opportunities to get training in leading Action Collabs. 

I'll also be looking into Canadian OER (Open Education Resources) to make educators more aware of these resources. As a teacher-librarian, this type of resource truly appeals to me for both its generosity of sharing and its potential to use technology for a high purpose with no or low cost. On returning from BIF, I discovered the following OER resources that are Canadian hosted:

• CARL http://www.carl-abrc.ca/en/scholarly-communications/open-access-resources-for-students.html
• Open School BC (hosted in my home town of Kamloops) http://www.openschool.bc.ca/k12/oer.html
• BC Commons ( a new project) http://www.bccommons.ca/

And of course, the BIF promoted OER Commons: https://www.oercommons.org/

There is a lot to do, and so right now, my focus will be on finishing my writing, organizing the workshop and beginning the next phase of redesigning the library commons at my school - encouraging everyone to have some input!

Big Ideas Fest - I'll be back!!