“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times…” – Charles Dickens

As my daughter Holly and I walked into Room 301, Marcie Hull’s classroom at the Science Leadership Academy, home of EduCon 2.1, we were feeling pretty good. Our presentation was ready, our co-presenters Brittany O. and Allie V. were on-site, and we were armed with not one, not two, but three laptops (and my Verizon Wireless Broadband Internet adapter). Can you say ‘multiple redundant failover?’ Sure, I knew you could…

Turnout was good, I guess we had about 15 people in the audience, including my friends Maria Knee and Bud Hunt (thanks for taking pictures!), some folks from the amazing and inspirational IS 339 in The Bronx, and Joel Arquillos — Executive Director of 826LA, the non-profit writing tutoring center (and one of the participants in Friday night’s amazing panel).  A very good turnout, considering our Session One competition.

I got things underway with a brief presentation I put together based on the recruitment PowerPoint we used to attract kids to the club when we launched in the beginning of the year. My goal was to provide a basic context for the main presentation by our club members, who planned to shoot, produce and publish a session of “Jenny Brown’s Awesome Webcast About Stuff” directly to our Ning.

We came SO CLOSE…

The kids started strong, thanks to preparation in the car on the way (Brittany’s brilliant, perfectly timed, tightly written script). Rocking my spiffy new Macbook Pro, our correspondents deftly shot and began producing the “Jenny Brown’s Awesome Webcast About Stuff” episode (I even had a cameo, my first in the series). As the kids worked, we engaged the audience in discussion about our mission, the club’s operation, use of the Ning platform, other suitable sites for student newspaper/media clubs, participatory media in general, content choices made by the kids, pretty much everything having to do with the club. (I was relieved to learn that IS 339′s student newspaper/blog, The 339 Hard Line, also has a bit of Twilight content as well.)

After a slight misstep (my fault, I directed the crew to export to .M4V, not .MOV, as required by the Ning for upload), disaster struck. For some reason, there was no audio track in the recording! :( We checked and rechecked every setting and still don’t know what went wrong. Even with the help of Christine Cavalier, we were unable to correct the problem. Note to self: always do a COMPLETE TEST of ALL EQUIPMENT prior to a CONFERENCE PRESENTATION. (smacking forehead) I had brought my Macbook into school the week before and thought we’d tested EVERYTHING but apparently we didn’t. Would muting the Mac’s speakers have caused iMovie not to record the audio? I’m not sure but that was suggested as a possible explanation.

The best news is that the kids were essentially undaunted by the setback. Clearly buzzing about the presentation experience and discussion with  the teachers in the room, they were flying so high, I don’t think anything could have brought them down. And for that, I’m truly grateful. We’ll go ahead and produce the show at our club meeting after school on Monday, so we can at least complete our mission, but in many ways, we’d accomplished what we set out to do. I knew that bringing the kids to EduCon would be an experience they’d remember for a long, long time – and watching them interact with everyone, speaking confidently about their experience, offering their insights, being recognized as the experts that they are – was incredibly validating … for all of us!

Thank you, Brittany, Allie and Holly – AWESOME JOB!

-kj-