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Tom Kennedy - Instructional Technology Specialist
I am watching David's keynote from home and have taken the opportunity to set up a wiki page so that I can keep notes and particpate in the conference. I, too, will be attending CECA next week where David will be the keynote. Emil, I will look you up. I first saw David in February or March 2001 at the Classroom Connect Conference in Boston where he was touting his Citation Maker.
The keynote itself was a combination of inspiration and metaphor along with some very practical information. The inspiration consisted of David's use of the rails metahpor and how our standard's based curriculum puts students on a rail heading toward a single destination. His vision for education would inlcude sidetrips to interesting places where important learning could take place.
This reminded me a great deal of Expeditionary Learning Schools description of a learning expedition. Ron Berger describes learning in much the same way, namely that while we have to be on the train traveling from one destination to another, it is important to stop the train once in a while, get off, and become more deeply involved with a topic or subject. This is not possible while chugging on along on the curriculum track heading for that NCLB-mandated exam. It is the depth versus breadth debate with a nod to a bit of depth interspersed at strategic times.
As for the practical suggestions, David alerted me to a number of new tools: his wiki, the HitchHikr site, and the Technorati updater that is linked from the wiki. Great tools.
Tom, I'm looking forward to the CECA conference next week. The address will be about telling a new story for teaching and learning in this world of new information and new tools -- and a huge part of that is the kinds of conversations we are having here.