Hand it in to Publish it NECC2007 day 3
Notes from Will Richardson’s presentation
- future unclear
- What literacies do our kids need for the future?
- world is hypertransparent – this troubles some people
- idea of privacy is different for this presentation than for previous ones
[My note: this ties to the idea of content being less important in technology]
- powerful collaboration possible with web2.0 tools
- education still very much “do your own work”
- “we’re cooperative not collaborative”
- less ownership of content e.g. MIT Open Courseware has all course material for some of their courses online [and they are committed to making all their course material available online]
[focus on teaching students to be discerning consumers, thinkers]
- re wikipedia “errors are everywhere …”
- currency makes it worth the chance of errors
- rethink the emphasis that we are putting on content
- disconnect exists between ways adolescents connect and use technology and the way that educators do
- students need to be taught ways to leverage technology
- new technology alert – Microsoft Table Technoology [Wow! This is WAAAAY COOOL]
- “we have to stop looking at our classrooms as walls”
- use kids passions to teach them
[Many companies require workers to be self-critical. This is one of the points that was made at the panel session yesterday. My idea - identify and contact companies to speak to class about the world of work. Where is the time to think in our curriculum? We're so action based that we prefer kids to do worksheets that to sit "idle". How can we tell by looking at a student whether they are idle or thinking?
Reference - check out the article recently in the Wall Street Journal on HP's employees use of web2.0
- are our practices "preparing kids for their world when they live our system?"
- are we teaching our students to be life-long learners
- "[students] need to see people in front of them modeling learning in transparent ways”
- our students need to be self-starters
[How do we do that? KAS has started the conversation with its staff. What is the role of tech in this?]
[Ideas - have parents in at the beginning of the school year to discuss the use of social spaces, handhelds and other web2.0 tools, which our students are already using, in schools. There is a neeed for us to move beyond the walled garden to give students real life, real world experiences with the technology that they are already using anyway.]
There are many excuses for not exploring how new technologies can be used in the classroom. “I don’t have the time” is a common excuse. To combat this, meet with people as passionate as you, connect with them, collaborate with them, and most importantly, make the time for your students.
-How do students go about determining truth? How do they build networks? Are you teaching them how to do this?
[Discussion - What should we allow in our school?]
[Ideas to get students involved in charting the course of their learning. Find out what they are passionate about, what's important to them, what was their worst, best, most significant experience, use a digital literacy competition. Don't forget to teach kids how to determine identity (whois), how to pulish to the web, how to read and write in hypertext and how to harness the power of web2.0 for to chart the course of their learning.
Will used the KKK's Martin Luther King Jr. site to illustrate the need for web page analysis. I know how to use whois to determine who created a site and many of my students do too. I bet that many teachers do not. Please presenters, if you are going to use that site and others like it, please complete the example by showing who really owns the site and how that is determined.]
- we need to teach kids to be self-regulating and self-protecting; it’s not healthy for kids to be consumed by one activity
- get kids involved in “the real world for real audiences with real purposes”
- make use of the teachable moments while using real environments with your students
-don’t teach in isolation (walled garden)
- get everyone in the school, in your community involved in teaching ethics and responsibility in the digital world
[Ideas: Use Radio WillowWeb to show students/teachers the possibilities --> prepare them to create work for real audience and LET THEM DO IT NOW TOO]
Collaboration project examples
- International Space Station
- Flat Classroom Project
Note that shifts are not just happening in schools but also in communities, businesses, etc
[Comment: Great session. Will Richardson is a fabulous presenter. He uses lots of repetition so that you remember what he said and you get a chance to catch it the second time if you miss it the first time. I really wish that I could have gotten a record of this session to show with my students when they create podcasts. In my podcasting class last semester, we discussed the fact that people's attention roam and by repeating something, they get a chance to miss that part of it that they didn't catch the first time. Will has this down to a T.]
Things to check out
- Google Reader
- Those Awesome and Amazing Ants
- Tucker
- www.voicethread.com
- www.sfett.com/movie.php
