CoLearners

21st Century Teaching & Learning — Massachusetts Chart Schools

david — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 06:01:55 +0000

Ready to Learn

Resources:

Literacy & Learning
Wiki Handouts
Bibliography
Planning Concept Map
Presentation Visuals
A Gardener’s Approach ot Learning
Wiki Handouts
Presentation Visuals
Planning Concept Map
Gardener’s Approach to Learning, blog entry
Connectivism, by George Siemens

Backchannel Transcript

What I Just Learned:

The State of the Internet
Mashable Blog Post

IMAGE-HERE

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 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:

We are preparing a new generation of learners, coming from a dramatically new cultural (info-based) experieience,
Within a dramatically new information environment,
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.

Ohio eTech Conference: Learning Gardeners

david — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 15:25:07 +0000

Ohio eTech 2010

Resources:

Cracking the ‘Native’ Information Experience
Wiki Handouts
Session Bibliography
Planning Concept Map
Presentation Visuals
A Gardener’s Approach to Learning
Wiki Handouts
Planning Concept Map
Presentation Visuals
A Gardener’s Approach to Learning, blog post

What I Just Learned:

Haiti Relief with Solar Energy
Haiti Relief Efforts Double with Installed Solar Lights

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.”

21st Century Learner in Loveland

david — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 08:00:00 +0000

Thompson District Schools

Resources:

Literacy & Learning
or Redefining Literacy 2.0
Wiki Handouts
Bibliography
Interactive Concept Map
Post Presentation Narrative
Presentation Visuals
Personal Learning Networks
or A Gardener’s Approach to Learning
Wiki Handouts
Presentation Visuals
Planning Concept Map
A Gardener’s Approach to Learning, the blog entry
Connectivism by George Seimens
The Educator’s PLN Social Network

What I Just Learned:

Spacebased Solar Power
Its Official: California to Get Space-Based Solar Power
PG&E Moves to Add Energy from Wind, Space
The Wikipedia Article

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.

Literacy & Learning in Beckville, TX

david — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 06:00:19 +0000

Home of the Bearcats

Resources:

Our Students * Our Worlds
Cracking the Native Information Experience
Contemporary Literacy

What I just Learned

Bio-Printing

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!

Harnessing the Perfect Storm in Pittsburgh

david — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 06:01:41 +0000

We’re just about to get underway

Resources:

The Perfect Storm
Wiki Handouts for Converging Conditions with bibliography, presentation visuals, and narrative.
Wiki Handouts for “‘Native’ Information Experiences “ with bibliography, visuals, and concept map.
Wiki handouts for contemporary literacy, with bibliography, visuals, and narrative.
21st Century Learning
Wiki handouts
Planning Concept Map
A Gardener’s Approach to Learning, a blog entry
Connectivism, from George Seimens

Backchannel Transcript

What I Just Learned:

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.

Rebooting the Basics at Fuquay Varina High School

david — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 13:53:11 +0000

There’s usually a photo here that I took when I visit. Alas it was pouring down rain, so I took this photo from the school’s web site.

Resources:

What I Just Learned:

It’s one of the truly peculiar qualities of our time that things are changing so fast that, when we think about it, we are astounded — but so slowly that we often do not realize it. This is perhaps more true of teachers than any other professional, because the day-to-day experiences of being a teacher are so intensely focused and so densely choreographed by government expectations, that it is easy to ignore just how the world has changed — especially when it comes to our learning environments.

I forgot to mention that a number of FVHS teachers were backchanneling during my presentation using a Twitter-style tool called Backnoise. I’ve posted the transcript of their conversation here and to the right in the gray box. Thanks!

It is a pleasure and a privileged to be able to speak to teachers in my own county. I usually have to travel miles to find an audience. There is something to the bible phrase, “A profit is without honor in his own land.” So I appreciate the invitation to spend some time with you, here at Fuquay-Varina High School.

Today, I am talking about why the how of learning has become as important as the what of our learning through a little activity to explore the future for which we are preparing our students.

I will also be exploring some of the ways that information has changed, which is important since education is an incredibly information-intensive endeavor. Information in my student (and teaching) years was based on 15th century technology — print-published content. Personal computers and the Internet have dramatically changed our information environment. It has become increasingly…

Networked
Digital
Information Abundant

This changes what it means to be literate today…

Re-Booting the Basics in Nebraska

david — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 06:01:14 +0000

La Vista Conference Center in Omaha

Resources:

Contemporary Literacy
Wiki Handouts
Bibliography
Presentation Visuals
Planning Concept Map
Post Presentation Narrative
Professional Literacy for Educators
Wiki Handouts
Presentation Visuals
Planning Concept Map
Gardener’s Approach to Learning, a blog entry

Twitter Messages that came in for School Board Members

What I Just Learned:

DNA to Nano Circuitry
ScienceDaily Article
Wikipedia Article on DNA Origami
YouTube Discussion of DNA Nanotechnology
Teenager Explaining DNA Origami you won’t understand him

Reading through the descriptions for this preconference day, I am astounded by the range of content and ideas that will be shared with you today. From the basics to the opportunities of networked learning, to an emerging community of tool developers who have risen out of a new information landscape that is connected for conversation.

I will kick things off with the basics — re-booting the basics. You see, as technology has advanced over the past couple of decades, what has impacted even more on education and what it means to be educated, is the changing nature of information. Information has shape-shifted in ways that many are only now recognizing (publishing and recording industries to mention only two). Information 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.
How we communicate it.

This all affects what it means to be literate — it respells the 3Rs into a range of skills that address an increasingly:

Networked,
Digital,
Abundant

…information landscape.

I hope to convey some sense today of what this means in terms of what and how our students need to be learning today. In addition, contemporary literacy includes skills that teachers need to embrace and practice — learning literacies for cultivating their own personal learning networks.

Gardener’s Approach to Learning — A Linworth Webinar

david — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:58:32 +0000

The webinar is over and I can relax. I get much more anxious about online sessions than face-to-face.

I would just repeat here, an analogy that I made early on, how textbooks (in the old sense) and lectures are like mainlining learning, and how video, animation, and interactive tutorials are like fast food learning — and that none of this is bad. It’s simply not enough — not nearly enough. We must understand how today’s information landscape works and how to work that landscape and its ecosystem such that we can learn from it what we need to know. It is like cultivating a garden of ideas so that we can learn from it.

Here are some links to resources, some of them I mentioned and some I didn’t:

Wiki Handouts
Chat Transcript from Webinar
A Gardener’s Approach to Learning, a blog entry
Connectivism, a more academic treatment of networked learning by George Seimens
Growing Your Personal Learning Network, by David Warlick, published by ISTE’s Leading & Learning with Technology (PDF)
The Webinar Slides

I mentioned a concept map that I used to plan this webinar and also used for the delivery. I used a tool called xMind, which is a desktop app with versions for Macs, PCs, and Linux. You can get it at http://xmind.net/. The xMind maps can be uploaded to their site. So you can access it here, and there is an embedded version below:

click to access

Exploring the Future of Schooling in Windsor

david — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 06:01:26 +0000

A very impressive venue with great acoustics, I’m told

It is a privilege to be working with the Greater Essex County District School Board again and especially to be engaged, once again, in conversations about the future of schooling — a future that you are attempting to identify and apply to today’s schools.

It is a critical part of this conversation that today’s world, information environment, and students are the reason why we are looking into the future — to realize that we are, too often, looking from the perspective of the past. Our schools are still, in too many ways, a reflection of past notions of what education is and what it looks like.

I hope that one of the main ideas that comes out of this conversation is that education is a verb, not a noun. It is not a goal to be accomplished or a task to be completed. Education is a lifestyle that continues beyond the borders of classrooms and campuses, and beyond the borders of graduation. Learning is lifelong. Learning is a lifestyle.

I will kick off our sessions with a presentation about our students. It is called Cracking the ‘Native’ Information Experience. It looks at how our students use information in their outside the classroom experiences, and seeks to identify some of the qualities of that experience that make is so compelling and potentially educational.

Below are some links to online handout resources related to this talk and to our conversations.

Blooms New Taxonomy
Creating	assemble, construct, create, design, develop, formulate, write.
Evaluating	appraise, argue, defend, judge, select, support, value, evaluate
Analyzing	appraise, compare, contrast, criticize, differentiate, discriminate, distinguish, examine, experiment, question, test.
Applying	choose, demonstrate, dramatize, employ, illustrate, interpret, operate, schedule, sketch, solve, use, write.
Understanding	classify, describe, discuss, explain, identify, locate, recognize, report, select, translate, paraphrase
Remembering	define, duplicate, list, memorize, recall, repeat, reproduce state

Resources:

Cracking the ‘Native’ Information Experience
Wiki Handouts
Bibliography
SUBHEADING1c
Concept Map used to Plan the Presentation
Conversation
Backchannel Transcript
Concept Map of Verbs
What should schools stop doing? What should schools start doing?
Knitter Backchannel Transcript

What I Just Learned:

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/.

Cracking the “Native” Information Experience — Edmonton, Canada

david — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 12:56:59 +0000

Just a Few Edmonton Public Schools Services

This is my third day of teaching in the Edmonton area this week, and the sixth time in the last three weeks (I think.) It is a pleasure to be here, to be working in a province that is so purposefully aiming to invent the future through its education and a district (Edmonton Public Schools) that is so vigorously blazing the trails.

The fact of the mater is that many of our students are already well on their way, though in a less directed and purposeful way. But I believe that their work at playing today’s information landscape can be harnessed by us and our curriculum to help us to shape a new learning experience, a new notion of what it is to be educated, and probably a new definition of the 21st century teacher.

Today’s work will come in four parts. I’ll present a context, a breakdown of three converging conditions that are forming a perfect storm of change. Then we will explore today’s prevailing information environment and what it means in terms of the basic literacy skills of a networked, digital, and abundant information landscape. After that and probably after lunch, we will look at the new sense of literacy in terms of educator skills, learning literacy, self-directed ongoing professional development. Finally, we will look at our students outside the classroom information experiences and the qualities of that experience that might be harnessed for more relevant inside the formal learning environment.

Resources:

Rebooting the Basics
Wiki Handouts
Bibliography
Planning Concept Map
Post Presentation Narrative
Presentation Visual
A Gardener’s Approach to Professional Development
Wiki Handouts
Planning Map
A Gardenter’s Approach to Learning — a blog entry
Cracking the “Native” Information Experience
Wiki Handouts
Bibliography
Presentation Visuals

What I Just Learned:

Organic University
Astronomers Find Organic Molecules Around Gas Planet — Oct 21, 2009
Hubble Findes First Organic Molecules on Extrasolar Planet — Oct 19, 2008
PlanetQuest Exoplanet Count
PlanetQuest Timeline

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/.