NMC17: Joining the Edunauts

A well-run conference like the annual NMC (New Media Consortium) Summer Conference always sends me into the stratosphere. And the one that officially opens tomorrow in the Boston area with pre-conference workshops has already thrust me into the lovely lofty heights of the teaching-training-learning-doing endeavors I pursue as part of my own lifelong-learning efforts.

Arriving a couple of days early and rooming with Apple Distinguished Educator/Henderson Prize Winner/Future-U Founder/entrepreneur/innovator/NMC Ambassador/colleague/friend (yes, I am a bit fond and in awe of him) guaranteed that I would be flying high very early this time around. As we sat down to dinner last night here in Cambridge an hour after I arrived, Jonathan began telling me about his latest creation, Future-U, and his efforts to “build a framework to scaffold the next phase of work and education into a thriving future.”

The three-hour workshop he will be facilitating here tomorrow afternoon (June 13, 2017) will more fully explore the themes he and I discussed last night, and his workshop description captured the essence of what we discussed:

“With up to 70% of future jobs under threat, education systems need to do more than provide digital skills. A new mindset is needed to help students bypass the ‘know-what game’ that is being mastered by artificial intelligence. Instead, the future belongs to those who can think, unthink, and rethink well enough to make their own jobs. This workshop will benefit anyone interested in unpacking this proposition by canvasing the ‘Agile Thinking’ approach, the Future-u.org framework, and NMC Horizon Reports to build out discussion of where education is heading and how it can get there.

One of the many elements that always intrigues me about the conversations I have with Jonathan and other NMC colleagues/co-conspirators as we are drawn together at NMC summer conferences is the way they zoom back and forth between views that seem to be at the 33,000-feet-above-ground level while never failing at some point to dive to ground zero with an eye toward responding in concrete ways to real challenges we face. The initial conversation in 2014 with Jonathan,  Palm Beach State College Director of Innovation and Instructional Technology/NMC Ambassador Lisa Gustinelli, and others initiated a discussion that has literally extended with numerous training-teaching-learning-doing colleagues over a three-year period in a variety of onsite, online, and blended environments: trying to find a word or group of words that adequately describe what we all do.

It was an exploration that continued last night as Jonathan described the work he is doing through Future-U on “future literacies” (which to my eyes seems to share turf with what Doug Belshaw has described in terms of eight elements of digital literacy and other ideas I’ve encountered over the past few years) and Jonathan mentioned, almost in passing, the term “edunaut” that he has been using to describe “educators, experts, and [others] who are ahead of the curve and working to aid a transition to a successful tomorrow.”

Looking to see if others had stumbled on to the same term this afternoon as I was writing this piece, we struck gold in a Czech-language site that described edunauts as people “who are continuing to find new teaching methods, new skills and new learning objects, daringly venturing into places where no teacher has ever been…” and a Danish-language site that describes edunauts as ‘teachers, educators, and executives who will create strong visions, new knowledge and change of educational practice.”

So, there we are: a word that for me captures so much of what I see in training-teaching-learning-doing environments that include onsite and online gatherings of colleagues in ATD (the Association for Talent Development). And similar gatherings of colleagues who are working in libraries—onsite and online environments that are an essential part of our lifelong learning landscape. And so many other gatherings of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances who share a passion for helping create a world that works better.

Yes, the thoughts are flowing. The colleagues are arriving. And the best is yet to come here at the NMC 2017 Summer Conference at this latest convocation of the edunauts.

N.B.—Those interested in meeting other edunauts can request an invitation to the private community space at https://future-u.mn.co/