After our talk yesterday at the NSBA Leadership Conference, Nancy Willard and I signed books, an activity that still boggles me. BTW, Nancy has two wonderful books, Cyber-Safe Kids, Cyber-Savvy Teens, and Cyberbullying and Cyberthreats.
After the signing we remained at the desk and talked into my iPod, which will probably be Episode 79, of Connect Learning. While we were talking, two men came up, the executive director and the president of the Missouri school board affiliate. The exec had seen our talk, but the president missed it and he had some questions. After talking for a bit, he asked, “In a nut shell, what was your message?”
Well, this is hard, but it’s what I do. Factor ideas down to three (four if you absolutely have to) bullets, forming a structure you can hang everything off of. The are:
- The nature of information has changed and so too must our definition of literacy change.
- The market place has changed and so too must how and what we teach our children.
- Our children have changed and we need to pay attention, respect them, and capitalize on the learning skills they are walking into our classrooms with.
He said, “Fair enough!” I wonder if there’s a gig in it for me?
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Dave:
Great digest… I have been asked by my principal to help identify new directions for the school, I am a little reluctant, but I am going to jump in anyways! Basically, I’m going to advocate blowing our Global Communications course out to the student body as a whole and get every teacher to become ‘Globally Literate.’
We’ll see how it goes, but your three bullet points just gave me a great starting point.
I’ve been teaching long enough to have seen the changes you refer to in the four bullets, and I agree with you. I especially support your recommendation that we pay attention to and capitalize upon the learning skills kids bring into the classroom. The kids have so much to teach us, and we have so much to teach the kids. It really is a partnership.
BRAVO on the idea to use skype to include the sick student….now how AUTHENTIC is that? Great example to share with admin and board members!! Better, invite them to see if first hand.
I guess this (the 3 bullet points) and, importantly, the implications of this are “the new story” that we need to be telling in our schools. What a great summary.
You did a great job “telling” the story by actually showing how to make use of web resources using new tools and old (ie. Excel and data from webpage to create a visual map of earthquake activity).
Do you have a DVD that teachers can watch? It’s a lot easier to set this stuff up by watching someone do it rather than reading a book about it. But, thanks for the book, too.
Thanks for the bullet points, Dave. As I continue to narrow and refine what will be the focus of my doctoral studies, a nice, succinct list like this really helps me to crystallize my thinking.