A day with Will Richardson, Part 3

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people

Here is Part 3 of my notes from our day with Will Richardson. You also can see the live chat and/or follow the Twitter conversation and/or participate in EtherPad.

We started with a visioning exercise (and accompanying discussion)

Are we suffering from information overload or information overchoice?

The nichification / ghettoization / balkanization of society

Communities of interest don’t look like communities of geography

The #1 characteristic of a healthy network is diversity of ideas. (Stephen Downes)

Adolescents are growing up in a much more transparent environment than previous generations; whatever they do is likely going to be public (whether they like it or not)

We are spending a lot more time interfacing through screens

We are failing to teach adolescents how to use these technological affordances in socially responsible and productive ways

This is because the vast majority of educators aren’t information literate themselves

If you can’t figure out who’s behind http://www.martinlutherking.org/, you’re illiterate these days

It’s not hard to make the case that the world is now 24/7/365 anyone anytime anywhere. But we need access to it.

Turning to the National Educational Technology Standards for Administrators (NETS-A). We used this document as a self-rubric.

1a: share the story of what it could look like for kids, lots of meetings with stakeholders, showed videos/inspiring tool usage by educators, visited other places, created cognitive disconnects, built partnerships with business/industry

1b: has to be an ongoing process/conversation

2b: making videocasts, using iPod touches for teacher observation/evaluation, moved to Google Docs, using digital discussion forums, using blogs/wikis/EtherPad, school board is now paperless

2e: working with SETDA or iNACOL, being active in the blogosphere / Twittersphere

3c: are you creating opportunities for staff to do this?

5c: give credit when you use photos (modeling attribution),

We’ve got to share more with each other and with others (can CASTLE collect some of these stories?)

For example, Todd Abrahamson (Sigourney) is doing podcasts

Could we fill in the rubric examples as a group and then share with others?

Networks are about people who are cooperating and sharing; communities are groups of people who know each other, roll up their sleeves, and collaborate (go even further than networks)

We now live in an era of perpetual professional development

Check out the Electronic Crime Institute (John Carver)

Digital literacy/safety/security issues need to infuse everything; it’s not a stand-alone unit

Are our safety/security efforts both everywhere and nowhere?

I want my kid to fail safely in the vicinity of some responsible adult that can help her recognize the ramifications of the mistakes that she is making

It can’t all happen at school (Dave Keane). Where else is it going to occur? (Will Richardson)

Modeling by adults implies intentional, visible behavior

Models that Will has seen

Science Leadership Academy (Philadelphia, PA) – inquiry-based laptop magnet school, students are patenting a student-created biodiesel generator, SLA is tough to scale, defining questions = how do we learn?, what can we create?, and what does it mean to lead?, core values of inquiry/research/collaboration/presentation/reflection

High Tech High (San Diego, CA) – very tech-infused but not getting the global/networking piece yet

Australia is getting every kid a netbook/laptop by 2012

Can we do this? Is it possible? What choice do we have?

A weekly newsletter featuring the biggest ideas from the smartest people