David Warlick Raleigh, North Carolina, USA
Blog 2¢ Worth — http://davidwarlick.com/2cents
Bio David Warlick, a 30 year educator, has been a classroom teacher, district administrator, and staff consultant with the North Carolina State Department of Public Instruction. For the past ten years, Mr. Warlick has operated The Landmark Project, a consulting, and innovations firm in Raleigh, North Carolina. His web site, Landmarks for Schools, serves more than a half-million visits a day with some of the most popular teacher tools available on the Net. David is also the author of three books on instructional technology and 21st century literacy, and has spoken to audiences throughout the U.S., Canada, Europe, Asia, and South America.
Twitter: @dwarlick
Presentation Title “Inventing the New Boundaries”
Special Instructions:
- As you watch the video, during the first 24 to 48 hours, go to the session chat, register, and post questions, comments, and additions, as they occur to you.
- If you use Twitter, then post comments, while watching, that would be of value to your followers.
- If you blog or podcast about the session, tag your posts with k12online07 and k12online07pc.
- I am writing an article about the three converging conditions. The outline is currently on a wiki page. It would be useful to me if you could go and insert any elements of the address or concept that resonated especially well with you.
Description: For decades, education has been an easy institution to define. It consisted of a set of accepted literacy skills, a definable body of knowledge, and the pedagogies for teaching those skills to willing students who were arranged in straight rows. Today, for the first time in decades (in generations of teachers), we are facing the challenge of changing our notions about teaching and learning to adapt to a rapidly changing world. We are struggling to rethink what it is to be educated, to reinvent the classroom, and redefine what it is to be a teacher and a student. There is much that has changed, and for much of it, we have responded to by attempting to ignore, filter, or to block it out.This presentation, by 30+ year educator, author, and technologist, David Warlick, will explore some of these changes and challenges and arrange them as a set of converging conditions that might just help us to redefine and retool the 21st century classroom.
Video http://k12online.wm.edu/davidw.mp4 (44:26 Run Time; mpeg4; 10.2 MB)
Audio http://k12online.wm.edu/davidw.mp3 (44:25 Run Time; mp3; 10.2 MB)
Supporting Links
2¢ Worth Blog Post: “Extending K12 Online Conference” http://davidwarlick.com/2cents/2007/10/06/extending-k12-online-conference/
K12 Online Conference Wiki Aggregator http://davidwarlick.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.K12online07pc
Wiki Handouts for Our Students “¢ Our Schools http://davidwarlick.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.OurStudentsOurWorlds
Temporary (24hr) Chat Page & Chat Transcript WikiChat Page: http://davidwarlick.com/k12onlinekeynote_chat/
Chat Transcript: http://davidwarlick.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.K12OnlineConferenceKeynoteChatTranscript
[tags]k12online07pc, k12online07[/tags]
Don’t miss it – this is soooooo worth it!!
Thank you Mr. Warlick!
Is there a YouTube / Google Video / BlipTV version we can embed in our blogs or wikis? If not, why not?! 🙂
Doug,
We wanted to upload our conference content to a place where there was a significant pipe to handle many downloads at once, a place that we knew would be around for years to come, and a place that wouldn’t be filtered in schools.
However, we have encouraged presenters to also upload their files to places like you describe above and link to it in their supporting links. Many have chosen to do so.
David,
I need a password to “…insert any elements of the address or concept that resonated especially well with you.”
Beyond the download bandwidth bottleneck – a small hiccup – at the beginning, the keynote and chat was food for thought in both content and format.
Off to the fireside now 🙂
FYI, 27 downloads from the mirror site I set up (with permission) within the first 12 hours of the Keynote going live. You can download and see total download count at this Divshare address.
David,
Thanks for the excellent foundation and kickoff to our conference this year. I have already listened to it twice and wasn’t disappointed. Your keynote was relevant, inspiring, thought-provoking and entertaining. For those of you watching the video be sure to listen all the way to the end following the credits. There are some hilarious clips that help you to appreciate David, the “human being.” 🙂 I can’t wait for the rest of the conference and the teasers have been perfect for building interest and anticipation. Thanks everyone!
One tip–if you type a message on this comment page, you should copy/paste it into your clipboard before you type the mysterious letters/symbols and click send. If you mistype the code from the image your whole message disappears and you have to start over. 🙁 Guess who learned the hard way??
Peggy
Great presentation and my brief venture into the chat room was wonderful, too. This is my first year with K12 Online and it seems off to a grand start, with big ideas and informative discussions.
Kevin
Thank you David for kicking off this year’s conference with an inspiring burst of fresh ideas. I will look forward to adding my thoughts.
just finished watching in Sydney Australia. Thanks David,lots to think about and run with. Heapsbetter than the (expensive) F2F conference I was at last week.
Thank you everyone for all the efforts with this conference.
I totally admire David and his ideas and agree wholeheartedly. I just watched the keynote and think it is superb, stimulating.
I do think however his use of Wigan’s “soldiers” metaphor was wrong/inappropriate. Has anyone else noticed how even in education, the army / military is increasing used as a metaphor? What does that say about our society and in turn the increasing militarization of the paradigm that governs our culture and by default teaching/education. I think a better example could have been provided…
David
David is always pushing the boundaries. Many educators understand the basic concepts David has been talking about, reaching the parents/tax payers is the next major task. Educators are high stakes test driven and that will not change until parents are convinced scores on a test are a very limited way to measure success.
I found this presentation very powerful.
You were able to articulate things I have been trying to say to myself, to colleagues, and to my students for the past year. Now, I can have a conversation with them.
Thank you, David.
David-
Thank you again for a great keynote. I appreciate you creativity and vision.
Brad
There were many things I valued and appreciated in your keynote, David, but the analogy/metaphor to flying and aircraft really got me thinking!
I’ve put Dave’s keynote on Google Video here: http://tinyurl.com/36lu32 (which should resolve some of the streaming problems!)
Dave, thanks so much for a stimulating kick-off to this year’s conference! You are the king of the metaphor! I tried to come up with a cartoon for the “tentacles.” It doesn’t do justice to you graphic description, but if you are interested, it’s at: http://nexus.ontarioblogs.com/.
Thanks for another great keynote David. I love how you allow the rawness to be present… it would be so tempting (for me anyway) to edit out all the “imperfections” like the bouncy camera on the bridge, and so on… but the fact that you leave all that stuff in it gives it a real down to earth feel.
I loved the Invisible Tentacles analogy and the powerful statement about how we tend to want to chop those tentacles off in school, and what an insult it is to our kids. So true. Your summation of that idea with us wanted to make kids into the students we want to teach rather then for us to teach the kids they are, is a very profound idea, thanks for expressing it so clearly.
I liked the way you tied all the threads together in the end with your diagram of the three convergences. Very insightful and well constructed argument.
Thanks again for everything you do.
Chris Betcher
Your videocast triggered some thoughts about learning in the future. See my post at innovation3.blogspot.com
Thank you.
Wow! I realy was skeptical that this year’s keynote could live up to last years. Amazing. I will be forever looking at sudents now with “virtual” tentacles. Thanks David. I do believe you have already raised the bar on my expectations this year!
Great presentation – I agree that we need to teach students and adults how to teach themselves. but..how do you bring teachers with years of experience into the tech age? There is an element of fear that needs to be overcome. Those with teenagers seem to be more willing while others stick to “tried and true” methods which may ultimately lose the student. Advise?
ISB had great conversation after listening to the keynote.
And that’s what it’s all about…
Now how to get the teachers and kids to have the same (or better) conversations…
Is there a text transcript of the keynote? 🙁
Good to see you again! I really liked the way you “traveled” around your community to show us what’s possible when the boundaries are erased. Looking forward to the rest of the conference – I’m a newbie!
Great Keynote! I plan on using portions of this presentation with my pre-service teachers. Hopefully it will inspire them as it did myself! Thanks David!
Dave: At this point I don’t think we have a text transcript of the keynote, but that is a great idea and one I know we’ve discussed as conveners. The accessibility committee has discussed this too. It might be good to see a process emerge where different folks volunteered to share transcripts of sessions… Obviously this is time consuming, but it could really be wonderful. DotSub is a website that invites people to provide multiple language translations of video presentations. Perhaps the keynote could be submitted to DotSub by David, and then annotation could be added. I don’t know if DotSub permits a download of a text transcript once annotation has been added to a video, I’m not familiar with their processes and tools. I think this is a great idea, however.
I’ve been watching my sons play WOW for years now and observed early on that they aren’t just learning to game. They are learning leadership, how to problem solve as a team, how to effectively ‘police’ members of the group that are disruptive to the team. I’m amazed at the social structure that has been created in that world that is based on nothing… no boundaries as David would say, in yet almost like in Lord of the Rings, leaders emerge, norms are created.
As the director of tech at my school I’ve been trying to explain to anti gamers (even my husband who is dismayed at the time they spend) what I see and that not only are they really learning valuable skills, but that it’s also a social network for them, it’s where their friends are. Like David observed, they may very well be talking about school events, or girl problems or family issues.
Thanks for a great start!
David,
Excellent job.
I ditto the above sentiments.
Thanks for getting this off to a great start.
So, I hate to be jaded, but all this praise for…? I dunno, I’m underwhelmed with this opening keynote. I just have to be honest here, this was kind of like an ego-trip down coffeeshop lane with some educational tidbits thrown in. This was not at all what I expected. I applaud the effort to be unique, but did Mr. Warlick need to stroke his ego so much during this? I couldn’t take it anymore after about 5 minutes. Im trying to keep an open mind about the rest of the material, because this is an interest of mine.
Susan, I’m glad to hear you push back some on this– we don’t want to live in an echo chamber. I thought the closing portion of David’s keynote this year was the strongest part, so I’d encourage you to try again to listen and stick with it through the end.
I believe that there were several great take-aways in David’s keynote, but they were partially hidden and buried inside the presentation. I am still trying to determine all of the subtle concepts that we can take away from the presentation. I have started a blog post, but am distracted by real life to finish it right now. Maybe later, once I have a bit more time to reflect.
I especially connected with David’s point about how we are “chopping off the tentacles” of our students when they enter our classrooms, and really appreciated the “cartoon” created by Diane Hammond. It’s a terrific visual reminder of the ways we need to rethink how we are helping students learn. It reminded me of a quote I always had on the wall in my principal’s office:
“Our task is to provide an education for the kind of
kids we have… Not the kind of kids we used to have…
Or want to have… Or the kids that exist in our dreams.” Mary Kay Utech
The kids we have in our classrooms are living and learning in social communities, and we must “not be afraid” to find ways to adapt and define new boundaries and teach students to learn how to “work” the information. We need to capture their energy and “teach them how to teach themselves” by guiding them to find, evaluate, organize information and create new knowledge. These are just a few of the points David made so articulately and prompted me to do some deep thinking about “if this is true then what can we do differently to meet the needs of our current students to prepare them for a future we can’t describe. David provided some excellent suggestions as starting points for dialogues about this. There will and should always be boundaries but how can we redefine and adapt them to provide enough traction for our students to take off in that open air space after the plane takes off from the runway?? Lots to think about…
Peggy
Susan, I forwarded the link to our head of school and student dean and in my introduction I said… starts pretty slow, but hang in there it actually becomes quite compelling…
40 minutes is alot to fit in in our hectic days… I almost bailed early on, but glad I didn’t.
I suggested they watch it at home this evening with a glass of wine 🙂
In 1999, Thomas Friedman wrote “The Lexus and the Olive Tree – Understanding Globalization. He projected that, in a post-Cold War world, advances in telecommunications/technology, investment and information would change the way nation-states and individuals participated in the economy, both informational and financial. David Warlick references ‘The World is Flat’ (36:30) and creates a nice graphic of the education implications of Friedman’s ideas.
Warlick’s presentation is also an example of ‘user-generated content’. He compares the 1961 Grolliers Encyclopedia (28:15) with today’s product on a shelf. We/students must ‘produce an information product, a message, that will successfully compete for the attention in the information age…’(30:50). This is a critical literacy skill for students and adults alike.
This presentation set the tone, in both format and content, and was an appropriate way to prep the participants for K12 Online 2007!
I’d have to say that I didn’t get much out of this keynote and my impressions are definitely against the flow of opinion here. However, for me, I struggled with the overstretched metaphors, references to American coffee houses and didn’t find much that hasn’t already covered better in other more succinct presentations over the last couple of years. A few people have said to me that I needed to wait till the best part, the last 10 minutes – the problem being that the first 35 minutes became almost unwatchable in getting to that point. Look, I appreciate that David gave up his own time and effort to do this and he himself states that he is not so comfortable in front of a camera talking solo. He is much better than the extended pontification I watched. Glad others found it of value though – the problem could be me!
I love the digital age and I don’t feel all that alienated that I am a digital immigrant. I would kick and scream if you took away all my tools and toys. I live on the opposite side of the globe from my roots and my family. I am definitely a culture hybrid after years of living as an expat but I count on being able to access what the USA and the entire world has to offer me professionally and personally. I do however have some concerns as I am cajoled by folks, near and far, to get
Look I have to agree with Graham Wegner – I am glad that others found value but I struggled with the same issues that he did.
After talking to Graham and Sue (above) on Skype a couple nights ago about their disaffection for the keynote, I’ll just pitch in what I hope to expand on later on my blog, when life slows:
1) David (like me) is a USA Southerner. We southerners like to spin long stories, and take our time doing it. Brevity is not the soul of a southerner. It’s in the blood, maybe. And maybe we need to learn to “edit” our stories to “compete” more as “information products” in the digital age, as David said. But I generally found the overall structure of the keynote, which was more careful than meets the casual eye, thought-provoking. The generational motif – grandfather, father, David, his son – is an example of the unity beneath this apparent “ramble.”
2) The “talking head” problem. We’re seeing that in a lot of places lately – see the Ustream TV wave. I predict a sudden drop of interest in all video products if we can’t get beyond the talking expert’s head syndrome. Kudos to David, though, for at least modeling the “anytime/anywhere” settings in his keynote. Use of airport v. last year’s train station, eg., was thought-provoking. (I’m an English and history teacher, and this play with history as metaphor appealed to me in both hats.)
3) Keynotes in real conferences are long and windy too. At least David didn’t use a Powerpoint 🙂 But the camera can record other things than a speaker, and voiceover to visions to complement the speaker’s ideas might be where David can improve his own product next year?
4) Graham is right about the US-centric vision. Australians do things instructively differently in schools, and Americans could benefit by tuning into their blogs and other sites. (As an American teacher myself, though in a Korean international school classroom, I also do things differently: the boundaries of textbooks and “gravity-centered curriculum” don’t really exist in my world already, so maybe that was a bit of an obsolete caricature?)
5) The k12Online “watch and chat simultaneously” set-up may itself be a hazard. How much can we really reflect and listen with one eye on the chatroom chatter? How would everyone’s takeaway been different if they’d simply watched and listened with full focus to the keynote? I know I found it much more provocative when I watched a second time without the chat.
I’ll have to end there. I’ll be late for work otherwise :O
Insightful comments, Clay. It is indeed difficult to not only present in an asynchronous forum, but also present for an international audience in different contexts… I think I found David’s keynote last year more challenging and thought provoking overall than this years, but we need to also remember that he was framing this entire discussion over playing with boundaries for a diverse audience… newcomers as well as folks who have been using these tools awhile. I think your point about watching this without twitter is a good one. I actually took in the audio version of this in the car on a drive… I plan to post more of my thoughts on a blog later, but I’m glad you were able to synchronously chat with both Graham and Sue about this! How cool! Those types of connections are exactly the sort I hope we’ll see more of as the conference continues! (We will be including twitter userids in the registration database for professional development, which will “go live” on Monday.)
(At work now.)
Wes, I’m glad you added what I meant to myself: pleasing an international audience (of educators, especially 😉 is a thankless job, and impossible to boot.
And your point about the fact that I was able to “confer” (pleasantly chat, more accurately) with Graham and Sue in Australia on a complete whim here in Korea about David’s presentation is a radically suggestive datum in this whole thing.
I’m enjoying it all.
I for one invited and encouraged many “newbies” and I thought it was PERFECT for them and good for me to hear again. I guess my skill level is so that it really helps and motivates me to hear it again and again, and being a southerner too, I just LOVE to hear David’s voice. It’s soothing. I personally know FAR too many teachers who desperately need to listen to and act on exactly what he spoke of. Yes, I ve seen David in several conferences. Each time I enjoy them more. At NECC’s edubloggercon, I found myself starstruck being around such an eloquent speaker. I guess those experienced advanced folks in the blogosphere need a whole different keynote that will challenge there ways of thinking and motivate them to make some profound changes to better themselves, but I for one have much more to learn myself. David’s speech hit my target.
As I posted in my blog (vvrotny.edublogs.org), I here are the gems that I uncovered in David’s keynote. Like a good story-teller, you sometimes have to unpeel the layers of the onion very carefully:
1. David changed the metaphor from the railway to the airport
This is an apt switch, since teachers need to switch their role in the classroom from that of a railroad engineer, pulling the students along a common path, with some excursions down the side rails, all together to that of the teacher as a air traffic controller. Each student is like their own airplane, with their own flight plan. The teacher has to orchestrate all of the movement in the classroom so that each child is able to complete their own flight with minimal delays. In some cases, they are going to have to team up together in order to accomplish this goal, but everyone is following his or her own plan.
2. The metaphor of Ender’s Game
In Ender’s Game, the hero of the book, Ender Wiggin, is a six year old who is selected to attend the elite Battle School. At the school, he is singled out and kept away from the other students, made special. Ender finds a way to create a network of the other students despite the efforts of the teachers to teach other students his tactics in the battle game. Ender shares strategies with the older students. As Ender gains experience, the teachers keep putting him into situations which are more difficult and unfair to his success, including having to fight two armies simultaneously. Each of the armies had the chance deploy and set up. Each time, Ender finds a way to succeed, including finding a loophole to end the game
In each of these games, Ender is having to recreate the rules, on the fly. This is no different than what teachers and students are facing in the classrooms, the fact the the rules of the game, go to school, go to college, get a good job, are changing and due to global competition, the deck may be stacked against us. Just ask recent college graduates if the rules are changing. As many of them are moving back home, unable to find that entry level job that 20 years ago was more easily found.
3. We are not growing up to our parent’s world
Like David, I also remember watching my father get dressed. I too followed a similar path through school, preparing me for a future which was like of my father. But with the turmoil and current changes in the economy, that future never materialized. Instead, jobs are more fluid. It is important to teach students to think and troubleshoot their own learning. More of us are going to be like David and many of the professional athletes that we cherish. We are going to be free agent, contract employees. Major corporations may still exist, but they are going to be filled by a fluid set of workers. We need to teach students to be entrepenuers, who will need to develop their own audience and voice in order to sell themselves. This is preparing our children for a future which was past, with individual guilds.
4. To begin to bridge the digital divide, we need to create our own learning networks
Just as we need to capture the magic of learning that toddlers and young elementary students bring every day, we need to ignite this same love of learning for our students and ourselves. It seems that by the time students reach high school, the love of learning for learning’s sake has been stomped out of their lives. When watching young people, they collaborate with each other to share their learning. They are following their own flight plans. We try to teach children the way we want to teach, rather than the way that they want to learn. I believe that we need to meet half way, but we have to make the first move.
5. The nature of information has changed
The ability to publish has changed the way that students deal with information. They are not longer fed the information by the traditional gatekeepers, teachers and librarians. They are able to access it in a variety of sources, text, audio, and video. Being literate involves being able to create a product and develop an audience for that product that separates it from the white noise of all of the similar products. We want our students efforts to rise like cream to the top.
Likewise, as teachers, we need to find a way to package our message so that it can compete for our student’s attention. They are being bombarded by other’s clamoring for their attention, tv, radio, mp3 players. How do we motivate students? We find a way to hook them, and then through the relationship created, engage them in conversation and personal discovery.
6. How do we drive learning in a flat classroom, freed from gravity?
There are three converging conditions which can become new boundaries. We are producing a Info-Savvy generation who needs us to help deal with and shape the information to fit the framework of their learning. They need guidance and scaffolding to help them deal with it. They need to make mistakes in a safe and effective environment.
These are our challenges. As we continue through the next two weeks of the K12 Conference, create connections and continue the conversation, I am hopeful that when next year when we gather for the K12 Online conference that we will be able to:
* share success stories where teachers are reshaping their classrooms and managing their students individual flight plans like a good air traffic controller, with no accidents or slow downs.
* let the students begin to create their own rules to fit the game which is rapidly changing and often to their disadvantage
* help all learners, students and adults, learn how to develop their voices using a variety of tools, so that they can develop an audience and create their own personal learning networks.
40 sessions and 3 live events to go. I know it will take me longer than the two weeks alloted for the conference. I look forward to my learning and new connections that I will make.
As Clay said “pleasing an international audience (of educators, especially 😉 is a thankless job, and impossible to boot.” I don’t think it is about “experienced advanced folks in the blogosphere need a whole different keynote” but that individuals will connect with presenters for different reasons.
I can name some really classic examples of really well known, and respected presenters, whose sessions I have attended that I totally have not connected with and others, like Nigel Paine, who I would listen to talk about the same topic a million times because his style probably suits me more. If you looked at the difference in styles between them I am more able to relate to how Nigel tells his stories.
I remember having a discussion with another Australian colleague regarding sessions we had attended on online facilitation – I totally loved one session and was lost in the other – he totally loved the other session and was not fussed with the one I loved. The person I loved proved all the facts and figures, which I immediately love since I am a scientist, whereas the one he loved modeled colorful use of language, and my friend is into language whereas I can struggle if I can’t relate to the words used.
Lets be honest — this is the great part of K12 online conference — with so many sessions, presented in a range of formats, we will all connect with different ideas and we will all have fantastic, spontaneous discussions on our thoughts that will question our beliefs leading us off into directions we would never realise were possible. Thanks Clay, Graham, Patrick and Sheryl for the spontaneous conversations– I enjoyed it. Looking forward to more conversations with more people as the conference happens.
I’ve included a link to my blog entry reflecting on Dave Warlick’s keynote.
http://maineideasineducation.blogspot.com/2007/10/dave-warlicks-k12online-preconference.html
I enjoyed this keynote. Liked the ‘we are not afraid’ example. I used to be afraid of experimenting with technology. I used to think I have to master everything perfectly before bringing it in class. I used to think I teach and students learn. Inspired by educators like you, I am learning to learn together with my students and I am not afraid. I love it. Thank you. 🙂
I enjoyed the presentation. It made me reflect quite a bit.
I do agree that the collaborative model is the model for the future. There are a couple of pitfalls however that we must be aware of. As we let this world digital connection into the classroom, it can also serve from time to time as a distraction as the social networking becomes, well social networking about everything except the task at hand. Work productivity has improved with technology, but also much is now being lost as people social network on things unrelated to their work.
How many times have we been spending quality time with someone when all of a sudden the phone rings, or as in David’s case, his son keeps pulling out his phone to instant message someone. In this case the connected person is quite disconnected socially. Their mind is somewhere else. So in this connected world, we are going to see a generation of disconnected kids who put more weight on their virtual friends than on the people present in the same room as they are in. We need to teach them how to manage both.
I do think the social networking model is going to lead to stronger more capable students who will have better chance of success.
Still, there are great collaborative activities that can be done in a classroom with real hands on materials that can yeild results and can prepare students for the future equally as well. The use of tech can augment this. The skilled teacher can work offline as well as they can online.
Our model for education is how to apply a core knowlege to new experiences, how to problem solve, how to find necessary information, how to work with others to achieve these goals, and now creating something unique and original. You can be part of a movement.
Anyone who has been involved with music, art, or a social cause, knows that as you are learning through your network, you are also contributing to a movement. A movement is something that gradually changes the work and perception of others and those involved have the sense that that are contributing something original to it. They have ownership over it. They are a part of something important.
So now kids can participate in shaping the world around them, not just learning about the world around them, they participate in it and are learning how they can shape and impact it in a real way, not a passive way.
The metaphor with Ender’s game and was brilliant. Students (and teachers alike) need to create resources in their ever-changing environment.
Great presentation. This is the fourth time I watch it. I can’t believe how much video adds to your presentation. I had missed the last part where you break done the presentation theme and link it to the k12Online Conference. I had used the
This was very inspiring! I have a picture of my great-grandmother in her turn of the century Cuba classroom and I thought of her using chalks and small boards with her students. Today’s classroom is certainly not my great-grandmother’s classroom! It reminds me that I need to find more ways to bring technology into the classroom and not feel so hindered by the mandated curriculum. Hmmm…
What really struck me in your presentation was that we are preparing students for an unpredictable future…a concept I’m going to think about! I also liked your analogy of sidetrips–my most memorable research & learning was traveling down those paths.
David was easy to follow and listen to. I like his sense of humor. I agree about some students being connected and others not, but that could be someone’s definition of a digital divide. I agree with his view on the side trips being more memorable and enjoyable when learning.
After watching this presentation I could not help noticing one true statement made by the presentor. The gap between computer savvy people and non-savvy computer people is constantly getting bigger and bigger. Problaby there is not way to stop it, but there might be one way to cope with it; and that is to start learning more about technology. I specifically liked the statement made about how teachers hold an opinion about their students and how they expect them to behave during instructional time. I have just recently began to make this connection to my own students, and began to notice that computer or technological jargon is present in my classroom, and I do not know which students actually have access to a computer, either at home or at school or whereever. So I think that we as teachers have to be really careful about casting stones when it comes to this topics. Some of us teachers are not computer savvy and could be losing touch with our students. We teachers need more technological professional developments.
As teachers, we should never stop
learning. Educational technology
is a dynamic force in creating
the classroom of tomorrow. This online conference is an excellent
way to close the gap on the Digital Divide. Teachers across the nation can log on and learn easy ways to incorporate technology into their classrooms.
Things have changed, and will continue to change. Technology has always played an instrumental part in this change. Now, the personal computer, IPod and digital camera are playing a more significant role in these changes than ever before. As computer can process more and faster, the tasks usually only in the hands of a few are in the hands of many. Perhaps to project forward, we must only consider those areas of the world that are limited to the common individual, and imagine that eventually even those elite and specialized tasks will be available (due to technology) in the hands of everyone, and then can you imagine what will be possible.
There is no argument about the fast growing importance of technology, about all those modern changes that are brought to a classroom with technology, about the non stop process of learning for teachers… But I think that technology should not substitute a teacher who still has to to remain a role model for students, be a significant person in students’ life. Maybe even more than before, when we all lived in a “analog” (not digital) world.
I struggle when working with teachers to help them see how our students are a different kind of learner. They in turn must wrestle with the daily expectations of delivering a certain content. How can we meet in the middle?
I’m still thinking about the line from the movie David’s son had created, “You’ve got to know the territory”. How many teachers are starting to feel that they have lost their knowledge of the “territory” within the boundaries of the classroom? I love the fact that I have the job of helping these teachers define these new boundaries. It’s wonderful to see teachers retool themselves with the addition of technology and more importantly information in digital form. Just like the train tracks David mentions, some of these journeys can be a bit bumpy.
Your comment about changing our sense of pedagogy to look at the classroom 2.0 to adjust our teaching is helping me to think about how to adjust my thinking about technology in my classroom.
I am a novice when it comes to technology but, I understand how it engages my learners and I am curious about what I need to do differently as a teacher. The educational goals or essential learning for the 21st century that we want for our students needs to be a topic for discussion by the entire learning community where I live.
Additionaly, the role of the teacher will change. As it has in one small way with myself, looking and inquiring deeper into the world of collaboration through technology and communicating beyond the walls of my classroom is creating “thinner” walls in my attitude about technology. In the back of my thinking is how to use the tools available then, bringing it to my learners…
I work with young students (ages 5-10) and I agree with David that we are educating them for a future we can’t begin to predict. I don’t think many of our parents have realized that yet and they are reluctant to embrace technology as a vital element in the learning setting of their children. It seems that parents think of technology as games that may or may not be healthy activities for their child and then they fear the access to the Internet and socializing because of the media hype about safety concerns. We need to keep educating parents about a future where skills of autonomy, creativity and collaboration are highly valued and need to be inculcated at an early age.
There were several good points that David made throughout the video about teaching/learning in the 21st century. However, most interesting to me is something I noticed about my learning while watching the video. I thought I was so relieved when he was going to state 3 concise key conditions converging on our classroom; I like bullet points. But the reality was I learned more from the casual conversation approach as he hopped from place to place in the video than the bullet points. Interesting!
Although I am watching this WAY after the fact….I really did enjoy many of the points that were made throughout the presentation.
Musicians need to be able to work both as individuals AND ensemble players AT THE SAME TIME. As a music teacher, I strive to teach my students how to do this. Technology assists in this process.
Using technology, my students are able to create projects (as individuals or small groups) and collaborate for opinions and ideas. In this “highly specialized” world, I believe that technology, while not teaching “social skills” in the traditional definition of the word actually allows our kids to cross boundaries and borders….pretty exciting stuff.
I also LOVED that he spoke of the SELF-DIRECTED learning that takes place when the kids use the technology to create.
I continue to work diligently to be an educator that does NOT chop the “tentacles” that my students create with their natural desire to explore, create and learn!
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