Phase 2 of Big Ideas 4 Education

Sorry for the delay in starting this phase.  I got distracted by an invitation from Chris Smith to attend a panel discussion in Second Life™ (see blog post).

Phase 1 of this project received 179 contributed statements, which surprised me.  This volume of ideas necessitated a slightly more sophisticated way to organize them.  So I read through all of the statements and came up with eight foundation topics (see below) that seem to cover all of the statements.

Click to Enlarge

1. Establish a education vision statement that combines trends, students’ info-experience, & a prevailing digi-networked information landscape.
2. Rewrite standards to more accurately reflect today’s environment, our students needs & unique capabilities, and their future.
3. Establish new methods and structures for improving community communication.
4. Overhaul teacher education, and policies and procedures for professional development.
5. Facilitate an exploration of new education methods and pedagogies that reflect today’s children and their information experiences, abundant and connective information environments, and 21st century skills.
6. Restructure the school environment including grades, school day/year schedule, building (or lack there of), information infrastructure, roles & rules, staffing, governance, and choice.
7. Commit to funding that is adequate to true education reform that reflects today’s rapidly changing world, our students’ info-experiences, and a dramatically new information landscape.
8. Overhaul state and national assessment policies and procedures.

For the sake of sorting and organization, I am asking you to continue your support by helping to match the statements with the foundation topics.  I’m asking that you sort five.  Should take no more than a few seconds.  If you want to match more, then just click the [Yes] button and it will give you five more.

Here are the instructions as posted on the Big Ideas web site:

Instructions

1. I am asking folks to match only five items. You can match more if you have time.
2. To the left (see image right and click to expand), you see one of the statements submitted during the past two days. Just beneath that are eight foundation topics that I have culled from the 176 items contributed by educators. There are four more statements beneath the foundation topics, waiting to be considered.
3. Read the statement at the top and then decide which of the eight topics it best fits into and then click the [Put Item ## Here] link to the right of the topic.
4. When you click the link, that item will go away, replaced by the next one. Again, select the most logical topic and click it.
5. You will be asked to match five statements. At the end, click [Yes] to match five more.

Added: Also, I know that the sidebar link that I included in the initial blog post didn’t work for a lot of people. It seems that textarea tags do something quirky to apostrophes and quotes. I’ve redone it, and this appears to work. So, if you have time and the inclination, please post this code in the side bar of your blog.

<a href="javascript:window.open('http://landmark-project.com/bigideas/', '_blank', 'width=700, height=600, toolbar=yes, menubar=yes, scrollbars=yes, resizable=yes, location=yes');void(0);"><img src="http://davidwarlick.com/images/bigideas_badge.jpg" border="0" /></a>

Thanks so much for your contribution to this project — whose final product is yet to be imagined.  But at least it is going to be a fine collection of our thoughts and experienced insights.

Cheers!

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