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A day with Will Richardson, Part 3

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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.
      • 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?
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