Warlick's CoLearners
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Key Points from the Full Day Workshop
I'm asking Sid De Haan and Sandra Gluth, who are organizing this event and attended yesterday's installment of our day, to pull out what appear to be the key and pivotal points of my presentation. It may be useful to get an observer's perspective.
- David's New Learning: The Mist of Life - planetary system full of drama
- Most important thing about David is that he is a learner and strives to be a 'master learner'; 21C teacher must be a master learner - permission to learn - model for our students
- Words - redefine, literacy, warlick - if in blog entry, your blog will automatically become part of the handouts
- Important to tell stories
- Three Kinds of Leaders:
- so good that you can't help following them
- creative and inspiring
- leader who can tell a compelling new story - needed in education today
- fits the marketplace
- resonnates with deeply held values
- something you can point to; people can identify with
- Perfect Storm - Converging Conditions
- New generation of learner
- New information landscape
- Unpredictable future
- Changing landscape - workplace of the future
- technology has revolutionized our culture
- Not preparing children for our future; need to prepare them for theirs
- What do we know about their future? Almost nothing.
- The World is Flat - Thomas L. Friedman
- Christopher Columbus sailed west to learn that the world was round. I just sailed east to discover that the world is flat.'
- Daniel Pink - has had one job in his life
- Kids are looking for a 'new story' - searching for a better experience that the creative arts people are creating
- We need to put more $ into creative arts as well as other areas. Creativity is undervalued in our education systems - success in future.
- Kids are different today than we were - living in a new world
- Smart, connected, and no formative connection with the 20th C but they're learning in 20th C classrooms.
- Kids are 'alien' - connected through walls, connected/collaborating with others all over the world in information universe, investing enormous amount of time and skill into social networks,
- Kids learn what they need/want to learn because they are connected; we don't fully appeciate the depth and breadth of the digital divide; kids that are connected and online are learning that working together can achieve results; kids not connected are at a huge disadvantage.
- Access to high speed Internet - a right/need for all in every country to remain competitive in a rapidly evolving world?
- In the next couple of years, just about every bit of information that we need will be digital. If kids don't have this access, does it matter if they know how to 'read'?
- Kids in our elementary classrooms now have a lot of experience playing online collaborative games. How can we use this in our schools?
- McArthur Foundation - invested great $ into researching what kids do with media experiences; Kzero.co.uk – video games are literally ‘learning engines’ – entirely about learning and assessment
- Living and learning with new media
- Use online media to extend friendships
- Explore interests by research and collaboration
- Learning is peer-based, self-directed (exploring and tinkering, and ‘messing around’)
- ‘geek out’ diving into a topic or talent – highly socialized
- Learn freely and with autonomy o- in contrast to the traditional classroom setting
- Our generation thinks of information as a product you buy and consume; kids today see information as content they can use - mix, change, and express in a new way
- Information has changed
- Web 1.0 - finding and reading info (library)
- Web 2.0 - interactive (conversation)
- How do we drive learning in a 'flat classroom'?
- It is going to be the teacher who can maintain the classroom as a 'learning engine'
What content would we use?
- Example - High School Teacher
- Othello – equivalent to play is movie – quicktime web site for determining which movie to see – assigned students to create trailer for Othello; power of assignment was that she gave a problem – didn’t talk about grades or assessments – wanted students to create trailers that she could show students next year to entice them to read Othello
- Creative = 'inventiveness'
- Conclusion - We need to stop integrating technology and start integrating literacy.
- Best thing we can teach our children is to teach themselves.
- What does it mean to be literate in this new information environment?
- What do these new literacy skills mean to educators in terms of keeping up with their own professional learning?
- Part of being literate today is being able and willing and encouraged to ask questions about sources, to investigate – digital detective – url backtracking; stop teaching students to stop assuming authority of printed text and prove authority – give evidence that content is accurate, valid, reliable, and appropriate for what you are trying to do.
- Reading means exposing what’s true
- Arithmetic expands into employing the information - working the numbers embedded in the information - make numbers tell their story
- Writing – teach kids become good producers of content
- The ‘long tail’
- Feeling overwhelmed by information is a condition of our time; means that information needs to compete for our attention
- Any teaching of literacy today has to include the responsible ethical use of information
- Technology is the pencil and paper of our time
- Contemporary Literacy
- Exposing what is true
- Employing the information
- Expressing ideas compellingly
- `within an Ethical context
- How do we do this? It’s starts with us…
- Stop integrating technology and start integrating literacy.
- The world is the curriculum. The world is changing every day.
Restructure and retool your classroom every single day and then we’ll have reform.
- We’re not afraid .com
- Digital Native Information Experience