[Live blogging! Please forgive misspellings]
I’m sitting in my first virtual conference. I know, I should be old hand at this, but I’m really an old-fashioned sort of guy. Ian Gibson, of Sidney, Australia is currently delivering the keynote address. Because his PowerPoint was too large, he is aiming his camera at his own computer display to project his slides. Using technology is about adapting.
The conference is called the Flat World Conference, and most of the audience is in Kansas. I’m sitting in my basement office here in Raleigh. I’d thought about wearing my bath robe, but opted against it, am wearing a clean shirt, tie, and dirty blue jeans.
Ian is talking about The World is Flat, by Thomas Freedman. The top ten list of flateners
- Berlin wall falling
- Netscape goes public
- Windows 95 with a built in browser
- Open sourcing
- Out sourcing
- Off Shoring
- Supply Chaining
- Insourcing
- Informing
- The Steroids (digital, mobile, personal, virtual, wireless, and ubiquitous
Einstein said, Imagination is more important than knowledge.
How do we stimulate imagination.
This is a key question for us as educators.
Ian, has just invited participation from his brother in Victoria, Canada, and a friend in Northern Denmark. It is a team of educators, presenting from three continents, and I’m blogging it from Raleigh, NC.
EKS (Elsebeth), from Denmark, is now talking about how these connecting technology affect teaching and learning. She says that learning can become much more collaborative. Her masters degree program is going international, and they feel that it is important to have ways not only to collaborate but to socialize, to be human learners.
It enable learning through dialog (the conversation), and to practice democratic principals. Learning to listen and incorporate. As important is the fact that collaborative learning support reflection.
How technology enables the traditional classroom
- bring the world into the classroom
- allow each student to put his hands on the world
Ian says that we should be teaching
- technological fluency
- verbal fluency
- collaboration
- leadership
- coordination
- teamwork
- interperson skills
- complex problem solving
All educators need to be part of the change. Not behind it!