{"id":25992,"date":"2020-07-03T19:27:41","date_gmt":"2020-07-03T23:27:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.educationrevolution.org\/store\/?p=25992"},"modified":"2020-07-03T19:27:46","modified_gmt":"2020-07-03T23:27:46","slug":"peters-conference-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.educationrevolution.org\/store\/peters-conference-report\/","title":{"rendered":"Peter’s Conference Report"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week AERO finished it’s first-ever 4 – day online\nconference.  By all accounts it was a resounding success and far exceeded\nexpectations.  <\/p>

When the COVID-19 virus made the decision for us that we would be\nhaving the conference online we were pretty nervous about it.  <\/p>

We had planned to have the conference in Minneapolis, Minnesota\nwhich would have been another first for us.  The virus had other\nplans.  <\/p>

We had to suddenly rethink the conference and ditch a good\ndeal of the planning we had already done in preparation for\nMinneapolis.  <\/p>

In the beginning, the idea of the online conference didn’t quite\ncatch on.  We wondered if our numbers would stay on the low end. \nWith a little less than a month to go to the conference, the numbers started to\npick up significantly. <\/p>

Then a day before the conference we had 475 people registered with\nmore trying to get in!  <\/p>

Thursday morning started with online school visits with our\nfriends from Sri Aria in Malaysia and Liberated Learners leading the way. \nThe conference officially kicked off with a welcome from Jerry and\nPeter.  <\/p>

Many people had a chance to introduce themselves and then were put\ninto  Zoom breakout rooms to network and get to know each other\nmore. <\/p>

One thing we were worried about was networking. Networking is\nthe backbone of the AERO conference and AERO. <\/p>

We put a lot of thought into making space for that to happen at\nthis year’s conference but weren’t sure how it would go.   In true\nAERO fashion, the community stepped up and took every opportunity to network\nand connect.  It was beautiful to watch.  <\/p>

One reason that networking was so effective was that our friend\nKristy Cheng, from Sri Aria school in Malaysia, kept the main room open for our\ncommunity members in different time zones.  This was one of the highlights\nof the conference as many reported on the amazing conversations\/connections\nthat happened during these hours..  <\/p>

In the afternoon our set of 20-minute talks started with Gina\nRiley, followed by Mara Linaberger, Zoe Greenhouse and ending with Andrew\nPudewa’s. <\/p>

Then the series of over 45 workshops began.  <\/p>

After a short break, students Kat Farr and Walker Meyn were\ninterviewed by Peter Berg.  The interview focused on mental health in\neducation.  <\/p>

The evening concluded with a keynote from Peter Gray.  The\nmain room remained open during the overnight hours.  <\/p>

Friday kicked off with another set of amazing workshops. \nMany participants stayed in the main room during the lunch break for the launch\nof The Quest for a Just Society petition (see article). <\/p>

Another set of workshops got us going again after the\nbreak.  <\/p>

Then Wayne Jennings delivered a keynote speech on some of his pioneering\ninvolvement with public alternatives. <\/p>

A panel with Brian Connor, Jacob Dennis, and Walker Meyn from the\nNational Youth Rights Association on youth rights in education was next. \nThey described the scope of work NYRA is doing and about how each of them\nindividually contributes to it. <\/p>

After a break, we all watched the documentary Unschooled. \nWhen we came back to the main room to hear people’s thoughts we had an\nunexpected treat.  Taylor Wildenhaus, Associate Producer on the film\njoined the chat and spent about 30 minutes with us answering questions. <\/p>

Kristy kept the conversation going all night.  Some of us\nwent to bed so we could rest up for the over 15 hours of programming on\nSaturday.  <\/p>

Saturday began with more networking and discussion in the main\nroom.  Another set of incredible workshops took place in the\nmorning.  After a break in the afternoon, a long evening began with\nanother set of incredible workshops.   From there we had the pleasure\nof listening to an International Youth Panel on consent in education. \nAnna, Katherine, Mike, and Sofia took us through their journey through\nself-directed education.  They then showed us their campaign for SDE for\nall, focused on student rights and consent in education. <\/p>

Shortly after, Amir Nathoo, founder of Outschool.com<\/a>\npresented on how the online marketplace can support self -directed\neducation.  He took us through some possibilities and also the latest\nhappenings with Outschool. Outschool has gone from 8000 students to\n300,000 during the pandemic. <\/p>

After a break, we came back to hear Catherine Fraise, founder ofWorkspace\nEducation. Right after that, professor, author and education critic Yong Zhao presented.\nAdler Yang and Ozzie Su joined Yong in a short panel discussion.  Adler\nand Ozzie continued with their presentation describing pioneering work in\nTaiwan. It was quite a long day filled with so many amazing perspectives, ideas,\nand calls to action.   <\/p>

Many of us were pretty tired by the end of this long day 3. \nWe were excited for day 4 but a little sad that this was the last day of\nthe conference.  <\/p>

Sunday began with the documentary CaRabA, about what would happen\nif the court decided that compulsory education was unconstitutional, followed\nby a discussion with the filmmakers.  There was also networking and\ndiscussion in the main room.  Our last set of incredible workshops rounded\nout the morning session.  Public superintendent of schools Dr. Michael\nHynes and Kate Robinson, daughter of Sir Ken Robinson made the culminating\nworkshop.  <\/p>

Sadly, it was time to close out the conference and say “see\nyou later” not goodbye to all of our friends from around the world. \nJerry and Peter asked for feedback and suggestions during a short evaluation\nsession and ended the conference with thank you’s to all the volunteers and\nparticipants. <\/p>

Throughout the entire conference, there were impromptu pop-up\nsessions and discussions many of them are still continuing.  One of these\ntopics is titled The Elephant in the Room: “The protests in the United\nStates of America and around the world are highlighting the gross inequities\nbased on the amount of a chemical (melanin) in a person’s skin.  The\nabsence of this issue at the conference is deafening, especially since the AERO\nconference was to be held in Minneapolis this year.”   This has\nraised deep, critical discussion.  <\/p>

This was a truly global conference with people from 6 continents\nand over 30 different countries.  We are still on high from the\nconference, processing all that happened, carefully considering feedback,\nand recuperating. Thank you again to all of you who were a part of\nthe conference and thank you to all of you for being a part of\nAERO.  <\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week AERO finished it’s first-ever 4 – day online conference.  By all accounts it was a resounding success and far exceeded expectations.   When the COVID-19 virus made the decision for us that we would be having the conference online we were pretty nervous about it.   We had planned to have the conference in Minneapolis, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[240],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-25992","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.educationrevolution.org\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25992","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.educationrevolution.org\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.educationrevolution.org\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.educationrevolution.org\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.educationrevolution.org\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25992"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.educationrevolution.org\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25992\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":25993,"href":"https:\/\/www.educationrevolution.org\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25992\/revisions\/25993"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.educationrevolution.org\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25992"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.educationrevolution.org\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25992"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.educationrevolution.org\/store\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25992"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}