I showed Did You Know at a presentation with parents and teachers on using Web 2.0 applications to foster collaboration between teacher and student, student and parent, and parent and teacher. It was used as a starting point, a “Wow, we live in amazing times” sort-of thing. There wasn’t a direct follow up though.

I’m preparing to do a training for teachers new to online learning and once again plan to use the video to kick things off. Again, I didn’t have a direct connection for what’s next, but here’s the text of the slide for the presentation after Did You Know:

The Times are (have) Changing(ed) are (have) You?

School 1.0 (http://davidwarlick.com/images/school1_lrg.jpg
School 2.0 (http://davidwarlick.com/images/school2_lrg.jpg)
Rigid vs. Flexible
From Command and Control to Collaborate and Connect

I hope this is part of what’s next and is of some use to this project.

I think the high school graduate of today must be able to think creatively, be nimble when it comes to work (that is, able to handle career shifts easily) and be able to make himself an expert quickly.

Schools need to be thinking beyond small facts for some test. I don’t think it is possible to know everything right now and knowledge is growing. What do we do when we don’t know? I think we can support kids with more time spent doing research based projects. Help them discover ways to become the expert.

“True technology integration is understanding and negotiating the relationships between these three components of knowledge. A teacher capable of negotiating these relationships represents a form of expertise different from, and greater than, the knowledge of a disciplinary expert (say a mathematician or a historian), a technology expert (a computer scientist) and a pedagogical expert (an experienced educator). Effective technology integration for pedagogy around specific subject matter requires developing sensitivity to the dynamic, transactional relationship between all three components.”

What I like about TPCK is that it moves from a competency-checklist mindset to recognizing the nuanced creativity—they say “jazz”—inherent in good teaching and tech integration. If the goal is to foster teacher discussion about 21st century learning environments, this framework may help ground it in terms of what good teachers already do and know.

Looking forward to version 2.

The most important element I feel that needs to occur in preparing our children for tomorrow is to empower them to be critical thinkers. (Along the lines of what Roger’s response was.) While there may be a plethora of information online, who is to say that information is reliable, factual and trustworthy? As this increases over time (a short time at that), the information could potentially become far less with respect to any of those factors. This in turn goes back to what brought me here initially, the arguments about rote memorization of seemingly useless facts in grade school. Are they truly useless or is it a possibility these are foundations upon which to aide the child to develop his and her own abilities to think critically and objectively? Granted, these are fast becoming outdated ‘examples’ that need to be updated, but let’s not be too hasty and throw the baby out with the bathwater either.

I think if you delve into the comments at YouTube you might be able to assemble a nice selection of follow-up questions. What I’m grasping at here was what the very first YouTube poster said. The poster is 16 and a bit freaked out there’ll be a supercomputer that can think better than humans when s/he becomes an adult. I doubt you are aiming to scare the children of our future, so I’d urge the conversations to center around what Roger suggested — what do we do when we don’t know the answers to questions? Get together a game plan of sorts that helps the children feel more comfortable and adults more capable. Man, I hope that makes sense!

Yeah, more on this when I get back. Have a spanking-great week!

Kath

Here is a quote from the USA Today website from a teacher of 40 years:

“Regarding your findings that students spend the majority of their time listening and working alone…we did, and we turned out fine. Please remember that we take our tests alone; and, that especially in urban areas, working with an equally, educationally deprived classmate will not enrich the student.”

This is the problem with old school mentality, and the current emphasis on testing in public education. People mistake what students are being prepared for as being “testing.” For those of us adults who have worked in offices (or even out of them), we know that we don’t sit in a cubicle fill out a bubble sheet all day to get paid. We create reports/products, we work with others (in person, by email, on the phone). We meet and “brainstorm”. Hmm, this sounds like group projects in a classroom, doesn’t it? In fact, as your email from a women working on a team with members she may never meet can attest, more and more projects in the workplace are being done with such groups. Here’s my money quote:

Should we preparing kids to take a test in a cubicle or work together effectively on a team to produce something real and concrete? Should we prepare them to work professionally and effectively on the Internet, or leave it to MySpace to teach them netiquette?

Use any part of this you feel is appropriate, and “mash” it up as you wish.

Most of the teachers I show this too (and usually show this after having my teachers read “The New Face of Learning”) often ask the question: “will we be necessary in the future?” or “what will teaching look like in a few years?”

As unsettling as “Did You Know?” is, I think the second version should point us in a more definite pedagogical directions and show us where we might be headed as teachers.

“Ask your congressional representatives and senators AND ask your state educational department leaders -
‘Now that YOU know, what revisions should be made to NCLB during reauthorization and/or made to state accountability systems designed under NCLB to better position the regulatory leverage on local educational practices?’”

Thanks to you all for pulling this together. Many of us are part of that ripple/tidal wave of dissemination that Karl has summarized in The Fischbowl.

Some of my most valuable classes were those where I brought back answers to questions, collected during the past few months, when I attended a conference of local physics teachers.

How can we re-imagine schools to include sustainable living practices?

What role will nation-states play in our future? How can we give our students greater access to global thinking, and to learners across the globe?

How do we ensure that our stated values retain their integrity (so that ‘creativity’ does not equate to more poster projects and book report dioramas)?

How big should a school be, anyway?

What is literacy? Are there multiple pathways to literacy?

How do we engage the disenfranchised public? Does connectivism extend to all?

What is the (are the multiple) potential intersection(s) of biology and technology? What forms might technology take in years to come? At what level are we comfortable with the many possibilities?

How does our current bureaucratic structure enable/disengage learners from the kinds of changes we are envisioning?

Perhaps more questions later. Wonderful idea. Thanks for having it. jp

Coincidentally, I just came across a “visually enhanced” version of “Did You Know,” rebranded as “Shift Happens,” available on Slideshare at http://www.slideshare.net/jbrenman/shift-happens-33834/