Return to Landmark Notes
title for ThinkQuest event: "Leading through Learning • Learning through Leading"
E-mailed to Helen Wong on May 7, 2008
What I'm thinking for the keynote is starting with my early days with ThinkQuest, focusing on how those experiences shaped much of the education philosophy that I hold and share today (student centered and directed learning, authentic work, empowerment to learner and teacher, and respecting the perspective and skills of our students, and potency of their outside-the-classroom information experiences). Then go on to how those philosophies have manifest themselves in today's information landscape of social networks, immersing gaming, Google in our pockets, and globalization). What do you think?
For the afternoon workshop, here's what I'm teaching most often today. It may be old-hat for your folks:
- The spirit of the read/write web
- Classroom Blogging
- Wikis for teaching and learning
- RSS (guaranteed to have teachers on the edges of their seats)
- Podcasting
- Introduction to the Video Game experience
What do you think, any two of these could be done in an afteroon hands-on. However, all could be covered pretty compellingly in seminar setting.
E-mail from Barbara Dacho Regarding Sept 16 Day at Canadian International School of Hong Kong
Two major initiatives...
- IB - We are in the process of becoming an IB school. We are facing the daunting task of teaching two curriculums at the same time (IB and Ontario).
- LTT (Learning and Teaching Technology) - We are entering the third year of this program. It has involved the implementation of a one to one laptop program (as of last week, all grades 5 to 10, have their own MacBooks) and extensive training of teachers in LTT.
Presentations:
- Parents - First, John and I both agreed that David's presentation does not need to be preceded by LTT speaking. As for the content, I think it is important for parents to understand the role that technology(and those laptops) are playing in terms of learning and literacy. It is important for them to understand that they should not expect their child's learning experience to be the same as it was for them because the world has and is changing like never before. At the same time, the future is a huge unknown and this fact has implications for our children's learning. David speaks of these issues in his book, "Redefining Literacy for the 21s Century" and I think it would be valuable for our parents to hear about them.
- All Staff presentation - I would like this session to be more of an overview of the changes information and literacy are undergoing and the implications these changes have for education, learning and teaching. To provide a practical aspect, I think the idea of making assignments authentic would be an important idea for the whole staff to hear. I would hope that overall, the presentation generates a lot of discussion about these topics. I'd like to see teachers leave feeling challenged, stimulated and at the same time inspired rather than overwhelmed.
- Small teacher groups - There will be two groups - one will be Lower School teachers and the other Upper School teachers. I would like to see these sessions be as practical as possible without being technical (LTT provides this support). With reference to "Redefining Literacy for the 21s Century", possible topics could be similar to those discussed in chap. 2 (The SEARCH Process/SEARCH cycle and the analogy of searching online similar to being a reporter), chap. 3 - how software can be used to employ information, chap. 4 - communicating authentically (inventing an authentic assignment and how different media can be used to communicate compellingly), Chap 5. (again, authentic assignments as well why we need to be concerned about ethics).
Note from Miriam @ CNDIS:
Many parents are concerned with the following issue and I wonder if David can spend some time addressing it.
With all the emphasis being placed on IB and LTT, many parents fear this may undermine the importance of conventional didactic teaching where students will become deficient in their knowledge base. While IB and LTT can teach a student how to learn by research, it is didactic teaching that builds the foundation of knowledge. How can we ensure to strike a balance between the former and the latter as they are not mutually exclusive.
One parent who is a physician gave me a very good illustration. When he went to medical school back in the 1980's, medical educators in North America were concerned that the conventional method of didactic teaching was inadequate given the explosion in medical knowledge. So they came up with a paradigm shift in teaching where medical students are divided up into problem-based learning (PBL) groups. Each PBL group were given clinical cases, which they have to research and solve on their own as a group. While this appeared to be a sound idea initially as it promotes "learning", what many faculties realized after a few years was that the majority of the students taught under this new system actually were deficient in their knowledge base when compared with their peers from the old system. Since then, medical schools have abandoned the problem-based approach and gone back to the old system of didactic teaching.
Another frustration that the parents have when the teachers gave the students some research to do and they would be all over the place and not able to know when to stop in further digging. I would like to know whether the teachers are aware of each students' progress now with internet usage as a norm with research.
I think many parents will appreciate any discussion that addresses the above. Thanks.