I’m in the back of the room, with the electricity — though the buzz throughout this conference center hall indicates an electricity of anticipation. Will Richardson is known by all. It’s the magic of blogging that so many can become so famous by publishing. He, of course, deserves all of the notoriety, which he uses skillfully to press forward a case for retooling education, what we teach and how we teach it.
It’s not an all together comfortable place to be. I’m back against the wall, but there is just enough room for people to across in front of me getting from one part of the hall to another, and they keep stepping on my feet.
Oh! The referees have just marched in blowing — were those whistles? Great fun! The theme is taking it to the net. Think UNC, NC States, and Duke. They’re all no more than a basketball’s toss from where we are right now.
Will tells me that I’ve seen all of his…
just a sec. A member of the Science & Technology Committee in the North Carolina House of Representatives. She’s actually staying for the entire conference.
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| Will has them spell-bound! |
Anyway, Will says I’ve seen everything in his keynote before. Well, I’ll be the judge of that over the next hour. So comments and commentary follow…
Will has already been coached by the young man who introduced him and by me to talk slowly, because he’s down south. We like to savor our words. Will’s wiki handouts are at:
An emerging theme of his speech is that the world of our children is dramatically different from the world we grew up in (1950s and ’60s in my case). It’s the YouTube generation. We are watching the YouTube presidential campaign. It’s about learning. Will Richardson is a learner, and he learns through his blog. Everyone he interacts with, who reads his blog, who blogs about his blog, who comments on what he’s written — is a potential teacher for him …and they come to his blog because they believe that he is a potential teachers for them.
Kids understand this in a personal way. They do not understand it as a life-long learning skill. It’s a personal living skill. MySpace is where they go to learn, and it is not going away. Will pulls up a MySpace account maintained by a young woman, and it is very much a glamor site — highly suggestive images. Will compellingly makes the case that this young woman has put an enormous amount of time into maintaining her site. Several educators are murmuring about the dangers and how she is making inapproproate use of her site. I want to say, “She’s expressing herself exactly the way that our culture has taught her to express herself.” Just watch TV!
Good Point! Certainly some of what is available on the Wikipedia is not correct. We don’t know how much, though studies indicated that the Wikipedia is amazingly accurate. But — compare this with the probably percentage of what we teach today, that will not be accurate ten — or five — years from now. We, educators, are swimming in a wikipedia style of curriculum, foundering in an ocean of rapidly changing times
Another good point! Many kids are now doing their work in blogs and wikis. They have readers and commenters. They are engaged in conversations about their work. They are invested in their work. The rest of our children work on work sheets that are seen only by their teachers. They have nothing invested in those pieces of paper.
An outstanding introduction to this 2007 NCAECT Conference…
I am not sure if this fits this posting but after following your discussions and others over the last month
something hit me today after an email from a friend.
He is an ingredible home garage mechanic. He bought a taurus from an auction with a bad automactic
transmission. It got me thinking about how these things were developed and the people and technolgy they
used. It has always amazed me how automatic transmissions work. The maze of channels is very interesting.
You wonder about the first guys sitting around figuring this stuff out.
I Had a 48 Chrysler with a fluid drive transmission, a cross between a stick and automactic. Look it up in
google if you need more detail. Those chrysler guys from back with my 48 and the fluid drive must have had
some interesting conversations, and all of those conversations and development with just pencils and
slide rules.
You wonder what effect all the new technology has on people’s intellegence now a days and how many people
could do the things that used to be done.
It is sort of scary that it takes maybe just a few really smart people to create the technology but is it
dumbing down a large percentage of our population because they don’t have to think that hard any more? Or
they look at technology and don’t see it’s potential for learning.
Who knows. I guess just something to ponder about.
I am a big tech believer that Technology provides us with incredible tools for teaching and learning if we could just break out of our chains and classrooms. I wonder all the time if education will ever get it right. Schools are so much like the auto industry. I live in Michigan. The big 3 are finally figuring it out, maybe to late, but they are atleast making attemps at changing.
The Public education system scares me because it is still so much in the past and doesn’t even realize it yet. Some people are and will be the Toyodas or Hondas and before we know it Public education, The Big Three will be gone or wondering what hit them.
Dave:
I am glad that you and Will are presenting together, because I don’t see the two of you as different, but spreading the same message with different voices. It’s the difference in style that plays to one audience and may not to another. As teachers, we all realize that there are students that may not get exactly what we are teaching because of a diIsconnect from what we intend to what the student actually hears.
The last two posts on my blog are about Will’s presentations at CUE and your School 2.0 post from last week. I am truly enjoying the conversation and the multiple perspectives that are available.
Thanks
David, you said the following: “Certainly some of what is available on the Wikipedia is not correct. We don’t know how much, though studies indicated that the Wikipedia is amazingly accurate. But — compare this with the probably percentage of what we teach today, that will not be accurate ten — or five — years from now. We, educators, are swimming in a wikipedia style of curriculum, foundering in an ocean of rapidly changing times.”
I agree that not all information on wikipedia is correct. But, looking at some of the textbooks here in the high school I teach, I imagine it is more accurate, and definitely more up to date than the texts. One thing I will find interesting is how do the textbook companies keep up with the digital revolution? They will need more digital content in order to remain competitive with what educators and students can do with technology.