*THINK/*LEARN/*TEACH/*DO
This space is dedicated to sharing new perspectives stirred by the Berks “Generations” conference that have the potential to change our practices as thinkers, scholars, students, teachers, and activists.
What did you learn from your conference experience? Will it lead you to teach differently? To see the world in new ways? To act in the world differently?
Please share your conference and post-conference experiences with the Berks community by posting a comment in the comment box below. We imagine this as the beginning of an ongoing conversation that will take us from this Big Berks conference to the next. Depending on the volume, we will post all responses in the order they are received. Posts can be identified by first name only if you wish.
This was my first Big Berks, and I enjoyed it so much that I hardly know where to start. I love the conference’s casual, social, but intensely intellectual environment and am already looking forward to 2014.
I learned that live-tweeting a conference session is even more useful if I post it to my blog afterwards; I’ve posted my tweets from the “Teaching the Archives” session on Thursday and will be posting tweets from other sessions in upcoming days. It would have been really handy if each session had its own URL, so that I could have posted links to them as part of my Twitter coverage.
I also loved the poster session– its timing alongside a reception was ideal, and I’m really sold on the poster-session format as a good one for people who want to introduce a new project to lots of people.
I’ve written up some of my thoughts about the conference’s use of web and social media in a longer format at my own blog— focusing specifically on the great Sunday-morning workshop session and how we circulate our work before and after the conference.
As with Shane, this was my first Big Berks. I quite enjoyed the conference and I know this will affect both my teaching and research. Premodern non-western presentations were few but fantastic and will be useful to share with students.
I want to see more of the workshop format in future. It was an excellent way to move beyond the “read your paper paradigm” and gave me a chance to get up to speed on some topics before arriving in Amherst.
I also tweeted several sessions, more in the sense of sharing somet of what went on that in-depth analysis. Having some way in which the audience can leave more feedback for the presenters (especially in sessions where there wasn’t quite enough time for all the comments) would also be fantastic.
The Digital History Lab was superb! I hope more people get word of that useful resource from the site.
Consider using Drupal as a CMS platform on which you could post information as in this year’s conference blog, also pull tweet-streams, have a password-protected (if desired!) site to share workshop papers, some sort of forum for member input and the like?
[...] the page on the website, redesigned under Brown’s direction in this conference cycle, called “Think/Learn/Teach/Do,” that asks you to reflect on your conference [...]
This was also MY first Berks, and like Janice and Shane, I was one of the folks tweeting during the conference (@tanya_roth).
I also support keeping the poster session (maybe next time I’ll apply for that myself!) AND the workshop format. I was on a workshop and found it a really positive experience – and I’d come in having my doubts.
I’m a 2011 PhD grad, and in August I’ll start teaching at an independent secondary school. With this in mind, I came to the Berks at a transitional moment in my career. I was a bit surprised (and a little dismayed) at the lack of programming specific to *graduate students*, as I think the Berks organizers are missing out on an opportunity to provide some real support, inspiration, encouragement, dialogue for/with up-and-coming women’s and gender historians. I come from a department where only 1 or 2 other graduate students (out or 30+) had ANY interest in women’s history or gender studies – and perhaps the same number of faculty. Had I come to the Berks a few years earlier, the opportunity to meet with so many other grad students interested in the field – and professors interested in the field – would have been a huge motivator for me. At times, I’ve felt a bit marooned – particularly because my dissertation intersected with military history, and military historians tend to shy away from women’s history (to say the least).
I was, however, thrilled to see the (small, yet worthwhile) efforts to provide sessions/opportunities for K-12 teacher. Having lunch with scholars on Saturday was great. I did question the logic behind designating some of the sessions as particularly good for K-12 (some of those looked clear, others didn’t seem to fit with that theme). Perhaps more explanation to attendees about what MADE those sessions good for K-12 would have helped.
And of course, as a new K-12 teacher, I’d love to see more programming for K-12.
On a final note – having two disparate Berks sites was confusing – I didn’t find the ACTUAL conference site with updates, Digital History Lab info, etc., until the second day of the conference.