Live Blogged — so please forgive typos and awkward wording
It took less time to get from Raleigh to Toronto than it took to get through the Toronto airport. I’m sure there’s a reason. Checked in to my room and now sitting in the InterContinental Ballroom for Stephen Heppell’s opening keynote address. I went up and introduced myself and then found a seat to wait. I’m going to have trouble understanding him with my hearing difficulties. So we’ll see. Aimee Mann and Talking Heads playing in the back ground. I’m home…
This is the 105th annual OLA Super Conference. That’s amazing — I guess. I just got back from Mississippi’s 25th technology conference.
Heppell asked a group of students what a literate teacher should be able to do, and they agreed that teacher should be able to:
- upload to YouTube
- edit a Wikipedia article
- choose a safe online payments site
- subscribe to a podcast and un subscribe
- turn on and off
preditivepredictive text - manage a groups Flickr photos (and spell Flickr!)
- look after a community in Facebook
He tells a story about a school in the Caribbean, where they were doing a teleconferencing event with other schools. It’s a wonderful island with parrots, white sand beaches, iguanas, bannana trees…. He asked the students what they’d like to show other schools about their island that others might not have seen. The kids said, “peace!”
Heppell is helping with inventing new schools in several countries and they are seeing huge leaps in performance among students by all measures.
Why do we group students together because they were born between two Septembers. Where is the research that says that grouping students born between two Septembers results in effective learning? think about it. Libraries are not age grouped. They’re open ended time, mixed ages, variety of groups, and project focused.
He shows a school where kids meet each week in the library to discuss what’s happened over the past week, researching, and working the topic. They video the conversations, and then post them to YouTube for parents to watch. Some schools block YouTube. Some schools use it.
He’s showing some videos from teachers.tv, including a school that gave students head-mounted video cameras, so that teachers could see their performance from the students’ point of view. Much debate came from that.
Robots are doing what people use to do. We need students who can design better robots.
In working with lots of film crews, he often learns that the camera man is profoundly dyslexic — and very expensive. Might there be valuing in helping people to become more dyslexic?
If you live for the next 25 years, you’ll likely live for 200 years. But our children will be so smart, they’ll keep us as pets.
Think about smart pills. We really need to be thinking about such things.
Heppell says we use to have “Now,” and “Not Now.” Now we have “Nearly Now.” You sat in class, and listened to me lecture. You in the now listening, or in the not now doing something else. Today, with text messaging, social networks, etc. there is the statement and then the wait for the response — but not too long. Nearly Now. Interesting.
Lots happening in the Caribbean. They have big banks, tourism, and they’re rebuilding all of their schools. In an entire day, a single student never comes in contact with more than 125. Why would you want them to see more than that? The pictures of these schools are incredible.
A student says, “What I want from education is the be noticed not only on the island, but to be noticed world wide.”
This had my jaw on the ground — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3xF4hOcDi5Y
Where are we seeing the most innovative and exciting education. It’s in small places.
Regarding your quote: “Why do we group students together because they were born between two Septembers. Where is the research that says that grouping students born between two Septembers results in effective learning?” I remember attending a conference about 12 – 13 years ago on a district using outcome based assessment. The idea was basically that you didn’t move ahead with your age level but with your skill level, in each subject. As you master a concept, you move to the next concept. I loved the idea and would love to see it in effect using today’s technology to allow students to demonstrate skills.
BTW..my jaw dropped with the video, too. Wonder if I could actually teach that successfully.
That YouTube video is AMAZING! Here’s an idea; have your students watch it as many times as they need to and then see if they can
figure it out!!
use the method to solve new multiplication questions
figure out how to use it if there is a zero in the numbers being multiplied
explain how to use the method to others
Love it!
I don’t wish to sound like a curmudgeon, but can’t one get the same message by reading an issue of Wired. Heppell is undoubtedly clever and a great speaker. He also receives boatloads of funding to observe whether or not teachers can find a youtube video.
Once again, if you want tranformative ideas, I suggest reading Papert.
Hi David,
Just a quick note-I had never heard about “preditive text” so I went to Google to see what I was missing. There were quite a few entries, but Google asked if what I really wanted was “predictive text.” That seemed to make more sense as to what was indicated so I’m thinking that maybe that one part of your post needs a bit of text correction. Not because I’m a stickler for proper spelling on a blog, but because “preditive” text seems so plausible that it threw me off track as to meaning for awhile…
Thanks for the reference to Konrad Glogowski’s blog of proximal development by the way. I found it to be well worth the visit.
Fixed, Barry. As it says at the top of the article, it was live blogged, and the spell checker didn’t catch it. It did, however, catch the world blogged.
Fixed, Barry. As it says at the top of the article, it was live blogged, and the spell checker didn’t catch it. It did, however, catch the word blogged.
Gary – sorry but you DO come over like a curmudgeon!
You simply can’t “get the same message by reading an issue of Wired”. Wired is about technology not learning and that is the point. And I wish I could get “boatloads of funding” for trivia – I could do even more pro-bono work like Notschool.net then, but of course it isn’t easy to get funding for what matters.
As you say, Seymour writes great stuff – if you are interested in those directions you might explore
http://www.heppell.net/weblog/stephen/otherwriting/2007/01/29/eTui-atoytoengendermeta-leve.html
Hi Dr. Heppell:
Thanks for the links. I’ll check them out. Lots of people I respect, respect your work.
I was not questioning your motives as much perhaps as the pieces of your message educators walk away with.
Surely, the” teachers don’t use YouTube or bank online” stuff are very small symptoms of a much larger set of problems. Learners continue to grow and tend to know how to function in their milieu. One could easily do a keynote about how teachers don’t read the newspaper, but I don’t think that observation offers much insight into what we might do.
I hope we can meet soon and continue these discussions over a cleansing ale. I’ll buy.
All the best,
Gary