Last Day in Vermont

A grand day in Vermont yesterday.  I did my session on Web 2.0 to School 2.0, and it seemed to resonate.  I did it a few weeks ago for the SETDA group at the Leadership Symposium at NECC for the first time and talking about the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0, within the context of teaching and learning (1.5 ;-)) seems to resonate right now.  So it was a fun session to do yesterday, and then to interact with the leadership teams as the continued to vision and continued their plan writing was a real treat.

I had a great evening as well, with the organizers of the conference and a couple of folks, Jeff Sun and his associate Jean, who are consultants from Massachusetts (Boston area).  It was fun sharing stories on folks we know mutually in North Carolina.

There seems to be no real reason for this blog, so I’ll just mention that there was one idea that seemed to come to mind and to my lips several times yesterday, as I talked with small groups of school leaders, as they struggled with the direction of their schools.  It was a shift from a world of information scarcity to a world of information abundance.  What does teaching and learning look like — what does a classroom and text book look like, when we have access to so many resources and so much information — so much that we can waste it?

3 thoughts on “Last Day in Vermont”

  1. David, I think your last sentence hits the nail on the head. Many teachers I work with are afraid of the overwhelming abundance of information available to them and their students. They would rather stay in the safe bubble of the Standard Course of Study than to open up the floodgates and not be able to control it.
    The funny thing is that the teachers who have let go of the control are always amazed at the creativity their students exhibit.
    My thought is that they need to stop trying to control and instead learn how to help students direct their energy and creativity.

  2. I hope to someday open my sons backpack and find this: a zip drive (notebook), a laptop (textbook), and two great works of literature, one actual book and one recorded on his ipod so he can listen to it while he is training for his future as a Nebraska Cornhusker:)

  3. David,
    I had the opportunity to attend one of your sessions at the NCeatc Conference in March and I was blown away. Your abundance of knowledge combined with your great presentation style really got me interested in this whole Web 2.0 and School 2.0 idea. Honestly, as a teacher I tried to incorporate technology into my classroom, but after reading your blog (and a few others : ) for the past months I realize I was in the boat of people “doing the same things just using technology to do it”.

    Your last sentence today is very powerful! I currently work closely with school districts who are often too worried about cramming as much technology as possible into a school, but are not putting as much thought into HOW this technology is going to be used. Better yet, HOW the students are going to use it.

    All of the questions that arise from your blog really get me thinking, and I love it!

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