Welcome - how exciting to see everyone gathered for breakfast and coffee. What a great networking experience for our district personnel. For now everyone is smiling!
11:00 Get ready for Alan November's session Post on "Building Learning Communities" around 11:00.
Still having a good time!
Alan November – Building Learning Communities
There is urgency in education to connect children with other around the world. For the business word this isn’t even a consideration it simply “is”.
Education is the only place where we have to explain the need for this.
Do we really know how to search for relevant information on the Internet?
If we wanted to know what the impact of the Pope’s speech is on the people in Turkey how would you structure the speech?
Ideas from the audience: Impact on the Popes speech on Turkey, Pope+speech+turkey+impact+riots,…
The problem with this is that you get resources from western organizations – wrong perspective for our question?
The solution is to isolute results to come from Turkey. Need to learn how to do that.
Search string: Host:tr Pope Island riots speech
November suggests we need to get rid of technology title, might was well use director of printing press. Do we want to be the leaders showing how to use “technology”The real revolution is information and global communication. We are asking wrong questions, “who much tech” wrong – “how much critical thinking do we need?”
How does Google produce & organize search results?
1 to 1 match between URL and search criteria (a word)
Title of web page (one to one) 2 matches
Content
Map to Links coming in – map to the link link:http://en.wikipedia.org
Teaching kids how to use power point before we teach them how to think.
Cannot lead with technology – get rid of every technology planning committee you’ve got. The answer is not technology, it is what flows through technology.
Problem: Motivating people who are not motivated. Let’s find another rpoint of view – how can we do that. How do the British interpret the results of battles in the American Revolution and how does that differ from American perspectives.
Host: ac.uk *American Revolutions
What do you do when teaching American History, works for any content, and you have a different point of view from your textbook?
Real work is teaching teachers to design assignments that are more creative and rigorous and demanding that will motivate students to prepare for it.
Motivating event: debate with the British (authentic audience)
When ever possible connect kids to an authentic audience.
Can find schools in England studying the Am. Rev.
Live debate over Skype
Questions are prepared
Hit record button for audio file of the event (need third party freeware).
Turn debate in to a blog and/or podcast.
This engages kids – they will listen to the debate. Will they read your exam?
Skype – Single most powerful tool we can give educators.
Why is it blocked in schools?
They are using it anyway?
Why not allow it and teach students how to use it thoughtfully and appropriately.
It would be like not teaching kids how to drive a car, do we just give them a car and let them go without helping them learn how to use it, how to be defensive drivers, etc.
We need to use the intellectual capital in our educations in schools to show kids how to use these tools in way to help them connect, communicate and collaborate globally.
Do we teach Powerpoint before we teach critical thinking?
Why doesn’t content beat technology any day of the week?
We have access to authentic content and can implement authentic assessment using these tools.
Two parts: Be good at information in order to have an intelligent conversation. Worried that we are not teaching children the architecture of the web
The power of the web is collaboration – the meta skill.
Teach them how to ask the right questions, find the right information using the right technology. Building learning communities….
