[Live Blogged. Please forgive awkward writing and misspellings]
I took this picture the other day on board an ExpressJet flight, of a young many watching his phone — an iPhone. Not all that impressive really. But I want one!
I’ll be using this blog entry to add items that I learn here at the CCSSO Summer Institute. If you have any insights about these items, please do not hesitate to add them. It might be interesting to show folks a spontaneous net-based global conversation:
Watching Karl Fisch’s 2020 Commencement Speech.
Much talk about standards, but there seems to be a real interest in restructuring or reinventing standards that address the needs of our children. He also says that the transition between high school and college will not be nearly as great.
Getting ready to hear from Bob Suter, IBM Vice President of Standards and Open Source. The world of 2020 will be unimaginatively different. So what is IBM concerned about (1/3 of a million employees):
- 70 million workers exiting soon — being replaced by 40 million. This gap is especially dramatic in the science and technology fields. People just don’t want to go into these fields. What’s more, more of the creative aspects are moving overseas. Even Europe, Japan, China, and India will face a shortfall of tech employees
- The world is flat. More of the work is being done remotely, from home, or from where ever.
- Innovation. It’s good. It’s occurring more rapidly. It’s more open, global, and requires wider collaboration across multiple disciplines, specialties, and borders.
- Looking for employees with social skills, especially virtual social skills. They’ll be looking for gamers and residents of virtual environments.
When today’s graduates were in kindergarten. The world Wide Web was just going mainstream. You might have heard: I’d never buy a book over the Internet! I’d never use my credit card over the Internet! What’s Mazon? What’s Linux?
Market categories are going to become unprofitable — such as office suites…
Now listening to a student panel. It’s called “The ‘Long Tail’ Student”.
The two kids who are with us are virtual school students. There are other students available through the phone, at least some of which are students in a virtual school. Seems a bit skewed. Here are some statements and ideas that are being shared:
- Using virtual school because school schedule prevented taking classes that she wanted to.
- To succeed in virtual learning, you have to have time-management skills.
- Relation ship with online teacher is not taht different from face-to-face teacher. Probably more professional.
- Good computer skills are essential
- Lack of socialization (from a home schooled student) is the only downside I can think of.
One of the kids just made us take a stretch break. Brilliant!
- Florida Virtual School practices somethign that they call, “Mastery.” It means that students can resubmit their work until they get it. The deadline is not a barrier.
- Which of your friends would you recommend online courses? All of them.
Kids were asked about the Maine Laptop initiative. One said that when the grades when on line, it turned a lot of kids around — that is their parents turned them around.
Question: What do you think teachers should know and know how to do, in order to work — facilitate learning in a laptop classroom?
- do not correct kids for doing things on their laptops that they are already doing. Not talking about inappropriate web sites, but skills. Do not ignore the skills that we already have.
- Keep an open mind to the tech skills that we already have.
- be willing to learn along with us… We might teach you some things.
- Do not teach teachers how to use technology. Let the students teach them!
There is a chat going on at the conference, with a number of the chiefs participating in a subterranian conversation along with the presentations and panels. Interestingly, they are using AOL’s AIM chat feature, and most of the attendees here were unable to down load the software. We’ve just learned that AOL had interpreted all of the accesses from this one IP number in central Maine as an attack. So they put up a block.
I’m interested in how the stats were calculated. I wonder if baby boomers will actually retire at the “average” age of retirement or if many will work longer, either because they want to or have to.
Regarding the iPhone…I finally went to the Apple Store yesterday and played with one. Wow! I want one, too. 🙂
I hope this is a continuing trend, students active participants in educational conferences. We sent students to Building Learning Communities the last couple years. It’s money well spent, they come back and share their experience (and blog/podcast it as well.)
I agree that having kids present is a terrific idea. At our state middles chool conference, we always have students demonstrate the arts through choirs and bands, thus showing off our best students to others. But then they go home and the teachers take over. I really like the student suggestion that teachers allow students to teach teachers more. I would love to be in that classroom. Hey wait! Maybe I can this year! LOL.