I decided to take a few minutes this morning and make a meager attempt at emptying out my aggregator. No grand designs, just get some ideas into my head. One interesting piece that I ran across what a video that Science Leadership Academy (SLA) folks, Chris Lehmann and Marcie Hull put together for K12OC. I’m embarrassed to admit that I haven’t seen a lot of the conference. My life has been a cracked up mosaic of hotel rooms, conference halls, and airports, and my time at home has been crazy just getting caught up with e-mail and knocking alligators off the boat. So watching Marcie and Chris try to define School 2.0 was refreshing, and it got me to thinking.
Marcie said, “What’s at the core of School 2.0 is this understanding of change and how change is going to be a constant part of our life, ever since the information revolution has taken place.” She also said that, “Educators intuitively know that schools need to change in preparing its students for the 21st century.”
I agree with this, that most teachers, librarians, and administrators understand that the industrial model, as Chris puts it, no longer provides for today’s children and their future. Chris says that, “A huge part of School 2.0 is that we not cram a lot of facts into students’ heads, rather that we teach them to be critical consumers and producers of information.” He continues by saying that schools need to change in order to reflect the wider world.
History, Biology, and Chemistry teacher, Gamal Sherif talks about equity, which is a central theme of SLA. He also asks, “Can you make ethical decisions because you can use Microsoft Word or PowerPoint?”
From the conversations in the video, it appears that the talk at this technology-rich school is about process. I would suggest that if we have to talk about a thing, in the process of teaching and learning, then we should talk about the information. As students and teachers come to understand and learn to leverage networked, digital, and overwhelming information, then the conversations about ethics and responsibility will come out.
The information is what we read, watch, listen to, and think about. The technology is merely the machine that we look at.
- The Video — http://k12online.wm.edu/School2.0.2.mov
- The Conference Page — http://k12onlineconference.org/?p=77
- Chris’ Blog — http://www.practicaltheory.org/
- Marcie’s Blog — http://ecram3.blogspot.com/
technorati tags:warlick, education, technology, literacy, chrislehmann, marciemull, sla
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