Mar 03

International Convention Center

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It is an honor to be speaking at this international conference in Singapore. This is especially true considering that Singapore is often the scale next to which we (in the U.S.) measure the effectiveness of our own education system — and we do not measure up.

Of course conditions are changing, and the measure — how we go about measuring — is changing. I will suggest in my keynote address, three converging conditions that are forcing us to rethink education and to rethink what it means to be educated in a time of rapid change.

This perfect storm of change is simple, numbers only three, and it is intended to make a clear and compelling story that we can tell to describe the need for retooling the education institution. The conditions are:

  • We are preparing a new generation of learners,
  • Within a new information environment,
  • For a future that we can not clearly describe.

I will also be conducting a breakout sessions about a concept that is frequently referred to as Personal Learning Networks — what I often describe as a gardeners approach to learning. This presentation will describe and demonstrate a variety of techniques that teachers around the world are using to cultivate their own networks for learning.

  • Connecting techniques
  • Techniques for mining the network
  • Techniques for mapping the learning network

I hope that this is a valuable event for you.

Feb 25
ICE 2010 Standing Room Only Presentation

ICE 2010 Standing Room Only Presentation — Not mine!

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What I Just Learned:

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I have already blogged about this presentation on the conference Ning site, but I would like to expand here.  Literacy evolves, as the nature of our information landscape changes.  When we transitioned from Cuneiform tablets to papyrus, to the printing press, to technologies that proliferated printing in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, to the digital and then networked information environment, to the highly managed and connective qualities of our students’ information experiences, what it means to be literate have changed..

I frequently talk about expanding our notions of literacy from the 3Rs to 4Es, expanding:

  • Reading to Exposing what’s true

    A range of skills going beyond simply reading to finding the information within a global network, evaluating the information to determine its value, organizing the information, and decoding the information.

  • Arithmetic to Employing the information

    An appreciation that all information is structured from numbers today, and the skills to work those numbers to add value to the information.

  • Writing to Expressing ideas compellingly

    When technical information doubles every 72 hours, information must compete for our attention.  To produce a message that will attract an audience, literacy includes the ability to communicate effectively with text, sound, images, video, and animation.

  • and adding in Ethics as a critical part of any definition of or conversation about literacy.

Today, I want to explore literacy in a slight more focused way and expand our notions of information skills and experience to understand and crack the code of our students outside-the-classroom experience and perhaps even hack that code — harness those literacies for learning.

The Native information experience of our students:

  • Is fueled by questions
  • Provokes conversation
  • Is responsive
  • Demands personal investment and identity
  • Guided by safely-made mistakes

I hope that you enjoy our exploration of this experience and some ways that we might harness its qualities.

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Feb 22

School Mascot

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Backchannel

What I Just Learned:

Image by Scion Cho from Flickr

Image by Scion Cho from Flickr

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Online Handouts
by David Warlick is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://davidwarlick.com/.

It is an honor to be invited to speak to education administrators from across northwest Texas, and it is a pleasure to be working at the Lubbock Christian University — about which I have heard a great deal. It has been a number of days since I’ve been back home, but this will be the first where I am not scraping ice from my windshield — and that includes Monday in Florida.

This is a technology conference, but one of the most important messages I will be delivering will be that,

“We should stop integrating technology.”

I think that it is one of the mistakes that we are making and actually one of the barriers we are facing in effectively, efficiently, and relevantly modernizing our classrooms.

We have witnessed astounding advances in information and communication technologies (ICT), but the impact has come from how these technologies have changed the very nature of information. It has changed in

  • What it looks like,
  • What we look at to view it,
  • Where we find it,
  • How we find it,
  • What we can do with it, and
  • How we communicate it.

The true effect on instruction today is not in the tools we use, but in our definition of literacy, what the 3Rs evolve into when information is increasingly networked, digital, and abundant. The information and communication technologies that we are using are critical, but only in so much as how useless my schooling would have been without pencil and paper.

We will also take the conversation to the teacher — what does practicing contemporary literacy look like as a professional practice. I will start my keynote by making the point that teachers should be and should be seen as being master learners — and being a master learner today means being a master of today’s networked, digital, and abundant information landscape, a network learner.

My breakout session will be about personal learning networks, networks of people and content sources that we cultivate and that help us do our jobs. Here, I will overview a range of tools and protocols that teachers are using to cultivate their own personal learning networks or learning gardens, to engage in in-time, on-going, and casual professional development, including blogs, micro-blogging, wikis, RSS, and a range of skills and tools for minding and mapping today’s prevailing information landscape — the great conversation.

Feb 19

Convention Site

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What I Just Learned:

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It is a pleasure to be here with you in Saskatoon, Saskatewan, especially after spending the first part of the week on the east coast of Florida. Kidding aside, it wasn’t that terribly much warmer there, waking up to 0°, comparied to only -8°, at this writing.  Saskatoon is far more exotic, and I hope to enjoy some Saskatoon Jam.

This Teachers’ Convention is unique for me, because your focus is so far reaching.  I usually speak at technology and media conferences, but my message, I hope, will resonate along with the chord of other, very fine speakers.  I hope to describe a convergence (a popular techie term) of conditions, what I believe to be a perfect storm that is raging with every school, district, administrator, and classroom teacher.   Each of these converging conditions are forcing us to rethink education and what it means to be educated in a time of rapid change — what it means to be a teacher and what it means to be a learner, and how the line between the two is blurring.

Those conditions are:

  • We are preparing a new generation (species) of learner,
  • Within a new and dynamic information environment,
  • For a future we can not clearly describe.

Each of these situations has profound implications in terms of what and how our children learn, and I hope to make that case, and perhaps even how we might even harness this perfect storm to affect more relevant learning experiences for our students.

Topics will include:

  • Emerging Technologies
  • Globalization
  • Science, Technology, Engineering,  & Mathematics
  • Creativity (Inventiveness)
  • Social Networks
  • Video Games
  • Wikipedia
  • Social Media
  • The ‘Native’ Information Experience
Feb 15

BETC 2010

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What I Just Learned:

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It is an honor to be invited to speak at your Florida conference, especially, I am thankful to escape the winter weather of North Carolina.  My escape is temporary, though, with a gig the end of the week in Saskatoon, Saskatewan, where it is, at the moment of this writing, -13 degrees (Fahrenheit).

Speaking of weather, I will be speaking about a storm, a perfect storm of  converging conditions that are baring down on every school, school, district, administrator, teacher, and learner.  These conditions are new, unavoidable, and the each have profound implications to what and how our children learn.  They have changed the world and curriculum and they have made thing much more interesting.

After my keynote, I will deliver two breakout sessions.  The first will be A Gardener’s Approach to Learning, aimed at professional educators as learners — master learners.  We will explore a new genre of web-based tools that empower educators, and others, to cultivate personal learning networks of ongoing and evolving connections to sources of content and ideas that help us do our jobs.  Expect to get your socks knocked off.

After that, I will deliver an educator’s primer on virtual worlds, exploring the history of the immersive MUSE (multi-user simulated environment) and their implications to learners and to teachers.  This well-established technology will seem fanciful, but it will almost certainly be a part of education in the not-to-distant future.  Come prepared to be amazed.

Feb 05

Ready to Learn

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What I Just Learned:

IMAGE-HERE
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It is a pleasure to be in Worcester, Massachusetts, the home of Abbie Hoffman.  I actually “paid for” his book in 1971 (probably more than you needed to know about me).  I am especially honored to be working with Charter Schools educators in Mass, through the Massachusetts Center for Charter Public School Excellence (MCCPSE).

Today, we are going to explore issues of learning today.  Why has learning changed, you might ask.  There are three reasons:

  1. We are preparing a new generation of learners, coming from a dramatically new cultural (info-based) experieience,
  2. Within a dramatically new information environment,
  3. For a future we can no describe.

Each of these converging conditions has profound implications in terms of what and how our students learn.  But, today, we will be looking most directly at how information has changed and what it means, for instance, to being literate.

Information today is increasingly networked, digital, and abundant, and each of these new qualities affects what it means to be literate.  We must ask the questions:

  • What does it mean to be a reader when more of information we read comes directly from the author?
  • What does it mean to be a processor of information when more of the information we use is digital (ones and zeros)?
  • What does it mean to be a communicator, when there is so much information out there?

After the keynote, I will spend some time talking about and demonstrating techniques for using today’s information landscape for learning.  Most specificially, we will look at professional learning, how teachers can engage in on-going, casual, and self-directed professional development.  But will will also look at how these same techniques can be used to produce learning experiences for our students that are more relevant to a contemporary information environment and to their ‘native’ information experience.

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Feb 01

Ohio eTech 2010

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It’s not normal that I am writing my online handouts at and during the conference where I am presenting.  The open keynote will begin in the next few minutes, but I just learned that eTech Ohio is the third largest state ed tech conference in the country, third to Texas and Florida.  I’m not surprised.  eTech has long been one of those focal point events.

Will Kuln helps his learners become musicians — and it was quite impressive…

I was especially intrigued by the opening entertainment, a high school tech music class.  I do not understand a lot of what they were doing, and I usually think of this type of music being something that you do in a studio (or you bedroom).  But they were performing the music and they had an wonderful presence.

I will only be here for a few hours, wishing now that I could stay for the whole event.  Closing will be David Weinberger, and he always makes me think.  But there are many great presentations happening.  I will be speaking, first, to educators who are being awarded ARRA funding for innovation.  I spoke to this group at their initiation several months ago, and now following up with a framework for innovation in the classroom.  My approach is not to ignore the education theories of the giants.  I simply believe that in this new information environment, we should perhaps be paying attention to how many of our students are using the environment, the pedagogies of their interactions and their learning.  The session is called, “Cracking the ‘Native’ Information Experience.”

My featured address will be a departure from my usual big-picture presentations on literacy and education reform.  What the conference wanted was something more practical, especially with innovation in mind.  The best I can contribute here is the idea that for innovation to be ongoing, not something you do now and then settle into status quo, then teachers must come to define themselves as master learners.  So that’s what I’ll be talking about, is techniques that teachers can use to engage in ongoing, casual, self-directed professional development — “A Gardener’s Approach to Learning.”

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Jan 09

Thompson District Schools

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I’m trilled to be in Fort Collins, Colorado and for a chance to get another peek at the Rockies (picture to come).  It is one of the most magical places in America.  We are here, today, to explore some of the conditions that are forcing us to rethink education as an institution and as an endeavor, and hopefully to discover some of the new and exciting oportunities that have risen out of these conditions.

In short, there are three rapid and dramatic changes that are converging today, a perfect storm, if I may.  They are that…

  • We are preparing a new generation (species) of learner
  • Within a new and dynamic information landscape
  • For a future we can not clearly describe.

You will likely be exploring each of these conditions during the day and as a general function of your profession over then next years and decades — because change isn’t going to stop soon.  Most focus, however, according to the aggenda that I have at this moment, will be on the new information environment — what is often called, “Web 2.0.”  But the changes in today’s information landscape are even more fundamental than blogs and wikis.  The information that we use, on a daily basis, to accomplish our goas, is increasingly and sometimes exclusively digital, networked, and abundant.  Each of these qualities has a profound effect on our traditional model of literacy, the 3Rs.

My keynote address will hopefully define and illustrate some of these changes:

  • What happens to reading, when what we read is networked?
  • What happens to arithmetic when all information is digital?
  • What happens to writing when information is so abundant, that our messages must compete for the attention of their audience?

I will also be talking about Personal Learning Networks, where educators are utilizing these new literacy skills to cultivate networks of dynamic knowledge and knowledge generators in order to continue learning.  Teachers, as much as any profession, must keep up.  Our students, as they enter their classrooms, should not be walking into the past.

There will also be a number opportunities for conversation during the day.  I will be utilizing a number of techniques to cast some of those conversations into other dimensions, and one element will be backchanneling.  We’ll be using a Twitter-like chat tool, called Todaysmeet, and the transcript of these subterranean conversations will be available on a wiki page.  Here, you and I will be able to insert more ideas and responses into the conversation after it has taken place.  New dimensions of learning.

Jan 04

Home of the Bearcats

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What I just Learned



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by David Warlick is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://davidwarlick.com/.

It is a pleasure and a privaledge to be working in Beckville, Texas. It is my first time her, my first experience with the Shreveport Airport, and my first presentation in 2010 — and I am excited to be here.

We will explore three topics today, three conditions that have become part of our world both inside and outside of our classrooms. They are a perfect storm of change that is impacting nearly every aspect of our society and culture.

  • We can no longer describe the future for which we are preparing our children
  • Our children are a new and different generation of learners
  • The information environment within which they work, play, and learn is changed — radically

A Concept map for today’s work. You can click the map to see a more interactive version of the flow.

These three converging conditions will be the basis for today’s conversations, as we look for the unique learning skills that our digital native students are entering our classrooms with, and ways that we might harness them. As we examine today’s prevailing information landscape and what it means to use as teachers and as professional learners. And what exactly our students need to be learn, in order to be ready for an unpredictable future.

I hope that you enjoy todays tour of today!

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Dec 09

We’re just about to get underway

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by David Warlick is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 United States License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://davidwarlick.com/.

It is truly a privaledge to be back in the Pittsburgh area, working with educators in Pennsylvania.  We are all trying desperately to retool our classrooms, our teaching styles, and the learning experiences of our students, but few places have higher expectations and are being watched more than Pennsylvania.

We find ourselves in a perfect storm of converging conditions.  We are, for the first time in history, preparing our students for a future we can not clearly describe.  Our students are walking into our classrooms out of an information experience and with learning skills that many of us can barely identify with or even imagine.  ..and we are working within a brand new and dynamic information environment based not on the innovations of the 15th century, but on the very latest in technologies and techniques that are, sometimes, only months old.

The Concept Map I used to plan this workshop (xMind).

It is a tough time to be an educator.  It is also, perhaps, the most exciting time ever to be a teacher.  We are being pressured, not be new boundaries, but by opportunities.  We’re rethinking what our students need to be learning and how they need to learn it.  We’re working with students who are already more (not fully) information literate than any gen ever, and this new information environment seems engineered for learning.

May hat’s off to you for attending this workshop.

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