The best way to start this post is with two paragraphs from the invitation to the conference.

The title of this year’s eduTech conference is “Teachers in the Flood of Technology Choices.” The conference will focus on the role of teachers and schools, who on a daily basis are faced with an increasing offer of educational technologies. The overwhelming offer of untested options coupled with the mounting pressure on teachers to make room for new technologies present a danger that they will develop a negative attitude towards their adoption.

Oh, how very true! I won’t even go into describing the disaster that PowerPoint has caused in schools – and in Slovenia we have even »empowered« it with smart boards.

The invitation to eduTech conference continues on a positive note.

Connecting with teachers and practitioners and the continuous search for good practices has taught us the importance of highlighting innovative teaching methods.

As is clear from the invitation’s first paragraph, the conference was not organised by any of the Slovene ministries or by the National Education Institute, but by some group that has decided to do something useful. Apologies, this last part of the sentence was generated by artificial intelligence, Copilot to be precise, as soon as I typed the word »but«. Nevermind, please ignore it and let’s start again. Undo, undo.

The conference was organised by the Kočevje Business Incubator. Like the incubator itself, it was no less than fascinating. My bad-mannered (!) Copilot might add a critical line here regarding the fact that a representative of Slovene politics only showed up at the event shortly to read some smoothly articulated lines. Copilot might even comment that those words sounded rather empty. However, other than that, even Copilot would be amazed: we had the pleasure of listening to the always excellent Miha Kos, getting to know Kobi, attending a speech by the Teacher of the Year 2022 Uroš Ocepek, seeing how Arduino adapts its microcontrollers for school use, having among us the founder of Kubo – Daniel Lindegaard, hearing about the ways to introduce robotics into schools without needing to change the existing curricula… The programme truly showcased the best in Slovene education.

I actually need to admit something: I missed a good part of the presentations because I got caught up chatting in the lobby with other eduTech participants and attendees. Do I feel bad about it? Of course! But since the presentations have been recorded, I will still be able to watch them online, while Daniel Lindegaard doesn’t exactly come from Denmark on a weekly basis, let alone with time to spare for a half-hour chat. I also met several old acquaintances and made some new connections. Moreover, I have no doubt that the ideas we came up with while brainstorming with Uroš Ocepek will inspire quite some new Pumice learning scenarios. The two of us were actually among the last ones to leave the venue – at the time when it was nearly finished being tidied up after the event. (That was also the time when I finally had a moment to take some picture, hence the slightly unusual choice of composition in the title photograph.  )

The conference ended with a tour of the Yaskawa factory. Another thing really worth seeing.

Kočevje was nice, but it was even nicer to be back home. Ok, I only wrote the beginning of the previous sentence, the rest was generated by Copilot. What a rascal. While the weather did get cloudy in Kočevje during the day, I got so soaking wet while cycling in the rain towards Ljubljana that my clothes and shoes probably won’t dry till Pentacost.

But back to that first sentence of the paragraph above – what I actually wanted to say was quite the opposite. Did you know that the municipality of Kočevje was awarded the title of the most progressive municipality in Slovenia? As a result of its wise and strategic decision-making, the Kočevje industry, tourism, and related infrastructure (and by this I don’t mean motorways, but railway connections, exemplary cycling lanes) have been developing impressively… And all the credit for this goes to the people. Not decrees, laws, guidelines, and directives, or nice-sounding, but empty words, but the people who have decided to »do something useful,« as Copilot would say. Whether that means attracting investments from huge Japanese firms or bringing computer science and robotics education into Slovenian schools.