Thursday, November 1, 2007

So the World is Flat - Now What? (feedback)

My presentation here in Austin, Texas, at the Southwest TechForum will focus on the responses school leaders and other educators should take to our "flat world." These are the main points I plan to make in my presentation tomorrow-- I'll gloss over the 30,000' level changes and mainly focus on the classroom level. If you have feedback or ideas on this, please comment! I'll check out the comments tomorrow before the keynote starts at 8:15 am US Central time.

Prescriptions for big picture school 2.0

1- TIME: change the bell schedules of schools
2- MONEY: stop paying for seat time
3- STANDARDS: cut back the numbers, move to habits of mind
4- ASSESSMENTS: authentic, differentiated,
5- INSTRUCTION: blended, mix of digital and F2F
6- TOOLS: laptops for all
7- METRICS: story of newspaper article Wednesday, perfection is not the minimum standard
8- PROFESSIONAL DEVELOPMENT: more of it, less whole group, blended, differentiated
9- LEADERSHIP: inspired, visionary, change agents
10- CREATIVITY: beyond lip service, insist on visible outcomes
11- OPEN CONTENT: publish standards-based learning objects on the open web, CC licensed
- ref 3 amigos keynote

Prescriptions for classroom-level change
1- DIFFERENTIATED CONTENT FILTERING: grant teachers less restrictive access to the web via your district content filter than students (story of China vs Oklahoma filtering comparisons)
2- PERSONAL TOOL USE: connect for PD, for personal usage of technologies
- you don't have to wait for your district
3- STUDENT CREATED MEDIA, Student media festivals
- digital storytelling: OK digital centennial, WWII Oklahoma stories
- cell phones for learning, gabcast, Liz Kolbs k12online preso
4- PD via K-12 Online Conference
5- USE WIKIS: Classroom Project Wiki, whitelist on your content server
- Local wikipedia article authoring
- Encyclomedia example
6- CHANGE LEARNING TASK EXPECTATIONS
- abandon 19th century learning tasks
- expectations of uniformity, conformity, factory production model
- spelling tests
- don't just do what is convenient or easy, do what is best for students, what is authentic, uses real tools
7- USE VISUAL MEDIA: Lynn Burmark, processing 60,000x faster
8- BLENDING: Differentiate pathways for learning
9- PEER LEARNING: Invite students to teach
10- CHANGE MIN EXPECTATIONS FOR COLLABORATION:
- project based learning
- real work, real tools, real issues
- 1 Internet-based collaboration per term
- project deadlines
- regular meetings with international partners
11- SCRATCH: After school Scratch club