Salon

Welcome to.....A Meeting of 21^st Century Minds

“To converse is human… to salon is divine” 

People in the 21st century like to pride themselves on being the first to introduce new ways of doing things.  I was reminded of this when I started exploring exactly when professional learning communities started to emerge. I thought it had to be around the time “I” started hearing about them. Not so.  I discovered that people have been involved in professional learning communities for centuries. In fact, some of the best known artist, thinkers and writers were avid members of collaborative communities that helped them foster and cultivate their ideas and artistic and academic pursuits. During the seventeenth century, Parisian artists, poets and thinkers regularly gathered in "Salons" to talk about ideas. Some of the most influential thinkers of the day met purely for the joy of conversation and for the pleasure of thinking together. Out of these meetings came much of the cultural change that occurred during that time in history. Here are just a few:

• Le Divan Lepelletier was a Paris café that played host to an intellectual band of writers and artists who influenced the Romantic Movement in Europe. A Paris newspaper of the day reported that “In this little nook, around marble-topped tables, on badly padded benches… to the sound of those innocent games of dominos, the best minds of our age gathered, chatted, prophesied.”
• Authors C.S. Lewis, J.R.R Tolkien, and a number of other writers met every Thursday night in Lewis's and Tolkien's college rooms in Oxford during the 1930s and 1940s. Referring to themselves as The Inklings, they met to read and critiqued each other’s writing, and for good conversation!

I wonder if these artists, writers, thinkers and doers would have accomplished as much if they had done about their craft on their own. I suggest that creative productivity is a natural outcome of a well-oiled professional learning community and that PLC’s serve as a catalyst to unleash the individual and collective genius of its members!

"When you share you will grow, get stronger, get deeper, gain courage, see yourself clearer, open up, feel vulnerable, face your inner fears, find friends, deepen in your journey, have support for the rest of your journey. Share the Journey- We become better travelers." ~ Tom Morris

I see some parallels between those who met in Salons, Café and College rooms to discuss their ideas (and visions for the future) and emerging educational technology leaders. Like these influential thinkers from the past, emerging technology leaders are reformers at heart who will take discussion and use it as a catalyst for powerful classroom transformation.  

~ Brenda Dyck

Over the next few months you will be participating in five different Salon discussions, led by the Calgary Regional Consortium's Technology Consultant/Coordincator, Brenda Dyck. The launching pad for these discussions will be a series of articles that have been carefully selected for this series.  Session 1-4 will be Elluminate sessions and Session 5 will be a supper session (face-to-face). 

I hope that our time together will serve as a starting point for us to think in new ways about teachnology in learning and will introduce us to ways of packaging our new and revised understandings that are both meaningful and useful to all of us.  Our Salon topics are:

Salon Series Two (February, 2010- April, 2010)

Salon Series One (September, 2009- December, 2009)

Brenda Dyck

September, 2009

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Discussing Until Late 

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