DAVID WARLICK

Resources: Harnessing the Perfect Storm Wiki Handouts Session Bibliography Presentation Visuals Post Presentation Narrative Cracking the Native Information Experience Wiki Handouts Session Bibliography Presentation Visuals Concept Map used for planning this presentation BackChannel Transcript

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It’s a pleasure to be back in Nebraska, and to be back in the U.S., where I can watch Netflix or Hulu on my computer at night. In my life, that’s a biggy ;-)

I’ve been asked to share some vision with you on teaching and learning in 2010 — entering the second decade of the 21st century. First of all, and I don’t say this enough. There is little that we are doing today in our classrooms that is bad. We’re still teachers, our students are learners, and some things you simply have to teach, they have to listen, and learn. But if that’s all we’re doing, then we are shortchanging not only our students but our own future.

There are three incontrovertible reasons why we need to be doing more with our teaching (and learning):

1. We are preparing our children for an unpredictable future — we can not clearly describe the future workplace or even lifestyles our children will inherit or invent.
2. We are preparing a new generation of learner — because of their ‘native’ information experience, our students look at, use, and value information in a new way. For them, writing is already a working tool.
3. We are preparing our children within a new information environment — information is networked, digital, and abundant. Each of these qualities has implications on what it means to be literate in this time.

I’m also going to ask the question, “To reach these children, as learners, do we need to be where they are? Do we need to integrate video games and social networking into our classrooms? My answer is, “No!” What we need to do is to figure out what it is about that “native” information experience that make it so compelling and effective for learning, and how might we integrate those qualities into their learning experiences.

We will examine some of these qualities and talk about what they might look like as an enhancement to what we are already doing.