Are you ready to grow? What's holding you back?

Are you ready to grow?    What's holding you back?

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

What is our 20/20 Vision?

I had the opportunity to listen to keynote speaker Will Richardson at the Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference today. Having read his book, I was anxious to meet him in person and learn from his experiences. As I listened I found myself jotting down some quotes that spoke to me. I thought I would share those.

First is my title, 20/20 vision, did you realize that our current kindergartners will be the class of 2020? What is our vision for them, what should their education look like?

"Own it for yourself before you can give it away." How true, when we get teachers to experience technology themselves, like creating their own eportfolio, podcast, or participating in a wiki or blog, they will understand the value and will be more inclined to use these technologies with their students.

"Give everything a purpose beyond the classroom, it has to have wings." Do you need to memorize the names of all the countries in Africa, or do you need to know how to find them? Which will give you wings outside of the classroom?

"Real work for real audiences in the real world." So much more meaningful for our students!

"Interaction is where we learn, blogs become classrooms."

"When we break away from cubicles, everyone gets smarter."

"24/7/365" That's when we learn, not 6th period on a Monday!

"Everything is shifting, but education, the kids aren't waiting for us!"

Let's catch up!

3 comments:

Pat said...

Bravo for you that you had the opportunity to hear Will Richardson. I was very tempted to go but couldn't come up with the time or the money. Thanks for sharing some of his quotes. All good points and thought provoking. How was the conference overall?

Jeff said...

Great quotes! Will's a good friend of mine....and the quotes that you took away from his preso are spot on. 2020..what will THEIR world look like and what are we doing to prepare them for that world? It's scary when you think about it in terms like that and really stop to realize that education has not kept up with our changes in society. That most students in our classrooms still only have one teacher...the teacher that stands in front of them everyday. But in a new networked world we have many teachers from many parts of the world. Look at your Google Reader...you have access to 'teachers' when you need them. How do we bring this network teaching into our classrooms? What do teachers need to understand? How does Pedagogy have to change?

All questions I continue to ask myself.

Nirupama said...

great post! It’s something I have never thought about, really, but it makes a whole lot of sense. Thanks for sharin
HRM 531 Entire Course