2. “The hardest part of many changes is not entering unfamiliar territory, it is letting go of what is familiar and comfortable and all the "unlearning" that entails.” Bruce Bearisto
12. We are logically and ethically bound to teach our children to live in the world as it is and will be, not as it was.
13. We are finally able to embrace the fact that everyone learns in different ways and at different rates, and experiences readiness to learn at different times.
14. It is critical to teach our children to consume information critically, and they can only do that through practice in the information environment that they will be living in.
15. "In the times of rapid change, learners inherit the Earth, while the learned find themselves beautifully equipped to deal with a world that no longer exists." ~ Eric Hoffer cc Steve Wheeler, University of Plymouth, 2010 washingtonrebel.typepad.com
16. Many thanks to the following FLICKR photographers: simonsterg (2 paths in wood) superkimbo (laptops being used in library) TodEhler (blueprint) Genista (road in desert) Swansea (baby and laptop) Tama Lever (Stanford iTunes) And Steve Wheeler for the classroom pics and the Hofer slide.
Editor's Notes
We have been using technology in bits and pieces at Aspengrove for a few years now. We’ve had some great successes, but it’s been a pretty piecemeal approach. What I want to do in the next hour is present some information on how we COULD be using technology in our classrooms and start everyone thinking about what that might look like in their classrooms.As I was thinking about this presentation it occurred to me that technology can be used in two ways in a school. It can be used by the teacher to beef up their presentation of material and to make assignments more appealing; or it can be used by students to help them learn what want to learn, when they are ready to learn it, in a way that makes sense to them. My opinion is that teaching with tech is fairly straightforward and doesn’t require any really substantial change in the way we are doing things; but learning with tech requires that we re-examine some of our assumptions about teaching and learning.
In a nutshell: “if we want to be a school that uses technology in transformational ways then we need to be thinking about the possibilities if we have access to technology in our classrooms; not thinking about ways to just bolt the technology onto the way we are doing things now.”This could seem quite scary because to be a truly innovative school that leverages the power of technology we will all have to change something about how we teach, and change is hard.Quote from Bruce – Connected Leadership course.
Here is a concrete example of what I mean.I think we can all agree that this is not an ideal learning environment (looks a bit like my gr7 math class though).
Is it really that much different than this classroom??GOAL: to get them to understand that having access to computers in a lab is not the same as leveraging the power of being connected to enhance learning.
In this classroom the technology is a tool, not the focus.GOAL: to get them to understand that having access to computers in a lab is not the same as leveraging the power of being connected to enhance learning.
To get us started I wanted to share with you some of our notes from the Technology meeting we has a few weeks ago. Here is what we agreed was working well. I think we should really be celebrating these accomplishments. We have come a long way on a couple of years.BUT, so far our approach to using technology in our classrooms has been about the tools. We have had increasing access to a wider and wider array of tools and some early adopters have been trying them out to see how they can support teaching and learning.
These are my whiteboard notes as we brainstormed our wish list for next year.When I looked at this list I realised that these are the nuts and bolts of using technology; what’s missing is the BLUEPRINT, the bigger picture.
I don’t know, but I have some ideas and I think this is a good time to start having this conversation. I have chosen a couple quick video clips to help us get started.
GOAL: to discuss reasons why it would be worth putting energy into moving down this road?Be clear that I think we should, but want to open the floor to discussion both for and against.Maybe finish by putting up the three compelling reasons and discuss each one with a partner?
