Thinking Allowed.

Will Richardson suggests that we need to get educators on board with the read/write web, before we can really hope to make widespread change in education. I commented on his post (as the 100th commenter!!!) that while this is incredibly important, real change can also happen as we continue to engage students in this way.

Of course, a full faculty of web 2.0 fluent teachers is bound to lead to engaged student learners writing and collaborating online, but a growing student group trained in the power of the tools, versed in the possibilities of a world wide audience of readers, writers, and collaborators can also force change.

Secondly, Will also points out that those without a voice online are losing “credibility” with him. His reading is online, his network is online, and he learns online, so if you aren’t online, then do you have something of value? Will is a very smart man, which I’ve said before, but in this case I have to disagree or at least tread lightly. He takes an extreme position to make a point, but in truth there are a lot of educators who don’t blog, wiki, or twitter, but who do in fact engage kids and TEACH. And they get that these tools can be powerful learning devices.

To undersell that voice in a learning network that should include personal contact and professional learning opportunities at our own schools is to miss out on real voices positively influencing children.

On a final note, what I think about most about after reading Will’s post is what to do next?

Will is right…we need to get teachers on board. We need administrators who prioritize this alongside the other priorities of a school, rather than an add-on from the tech guys. But our voices are starting to echo in the spread out, but still small world of the edu-blogosphere.

We blog, therefore we buy-in (for the most part).

The big ideas are good. We agree to complain about the same issues.

Now it’s time to bust out of our discussion of those big ideas that we wonder why people aren’t doing…and start talking about how we are going make it happen.

• What are the best ways to get teachers on board?
• How can administrators be convinced of this need?
• How can curriculum be re-shaped without stepping on the toes of existing content curriculum?

We all agree…let’s start working on the ones who don’t.

Image: Change Direction by Phillie Casablanca, found at Flickr Creative Commons

Will Richardson followed up his request for contributions to his wiki page mentioned in my last post with a thank you and an expression of appreciation for the power of people getting together to offer their ideas and share with others. To that, I left the following as a comment and since it is so closely related to my previous post, I thought I’d share it here.

(apologies to those who read it on Weblogg-ed already.)

The power of the collective intelligence that we can tap into with the web continues to amaze me. But even more so now, I am impressed and encouraged by the willingness of people to do so.

People continue to want to better EVERYONE’S knowledge and understanding through sharing, collaborating, and conversation.

I remember someone telling me (though I can’t remember who) that true collaboration is when educators recognize that they are no longer responsible for the education of their students, but rather they are responsible for the education of ALL students.

While easy for me to say in my tech coordinator role – it’s a tough thing to let go of and acknowledge for a lot of educators.

At the school level, that means a teacher letting go of caring only about the experience that their own students get and sharing ideas and resources with colleagues so that all children at the grade level or school benefit.

At an administrative level, that means letting go of representing only your own building or division and working cooperatively with other administrators to ensure that all students in the district or school can best learn.

What I see daily on the web is that very concept applied to its greatest level. We share ideas and resources not only so that our kids at our schools benefit, but so that ALL kids at ALL schools benefit.

We want EDUCATION to improve, and together, we are collaborating and conversing to make that happen.

Together we are all smart AND sharing.

That’s a pretty powerful combination.

Technorati Tags: web2.0, collaboration, education

Will Richardson, Karl Fisch, and Anne Smith presented outside of Philadelphia on the Read/Write web in a session called, “21st Century Education: 20/20 Vision for Schools”. In preparing for that, they put out a plea to edu-bloggers to chime in with tips, sites, or encouragement for the educators in seeing the direction that we believe education needs to go.

They have a wiki for this which is quickly developing into a fine example of the power of our Web to tap into the collective intelligence/knowledge of people – in this case the edu-bloggers.

As Will suggests in his blog, our contributions prove the very point we try to make about the power of the current and future web.

In essence, we want them to walk away understanding the power of connections that can reach far beyond the classroom.

Today, Justin, Kim, and I were de-briefing after a UStream presentation with the FLNW guys and Justin mentioned how important that online community is for the unconverted in helping them to see that lots of people out there are “getting it” and on board. That online community’s participation – whether through a blog comment, a wiki contribution, or a live chat presence – give credibility to the very tools that we extoll in our presentations. That presence does more for getting teacher buy-in than anything we could say. It’s like seeing the impact of learning happening right before their eyes.

So get on that wiki and add! Prove that the collaborative power of this technology can tap into the intelligence of the many.

I am already adding that single page to my Delicious – it’s going to grow into a fine resource.

Thanks to all of you us.

photo by jurvetson, found on Flickr Creative Commons

Technorati Tags: collectiveintelligence web2.0

It’s a new look for Thinking Allowed (for those 15 regular visitors). No real love for the current theme – simply the old theme was not interacting well with Firefox, which many (most?) of you use. Sidebars were going haywire.

Anyway, let me know what you think of this one. Basically, I like having two columns for the widgets and the text on the left. Maybe I’m a creature of habit – regardless, it limited my choices.

On another note, I haven’t posted in ages – so much for my holiday plans – but I have been out there commenting recently, only I forgot to turn on my CoComment extension, so the comments I made are not appearing on the right in my RSS feed of comments elsewhere.

So, to direct your attention to the posts that drew my attention, check out the post and comments of these two solid posts. In particular, read through the comments (not just because mine is there). Some interesting thinking out there.

• Jeff Utecht’s Thinking Stick post on Interview Questions
• Will Richardson’s Weblogg-ed post on the Curriculum of Politics (which busts into a conversation on media coverage)

Commenting is the stuff that makes the blogsophere work, because it becomes a conversation instead of an article, yet I find often that readers digest a post and leave or even leave a comment without reading the other comments. Not sure why that is.

In a related vein, today, I was talking (in person!) with Jeff and Kim (Always Learning) about how there is a real sense of negativity out there.

Is the holiday season getting on everyone’s nerves?

Is the conversation getting tired and repetitive?

Are techies getting frustrated by lack of action?

Do we need more outside voices, chiming in and questioning?

Is the economy just making us depressed?

No answers, just thinking aloud.

And many of them were in Shanghai this past weekend.

Having returned from the Learning 2.0 Conference hosted in Shanghai, China, I am still feeling the exhaustion/elation of a conference in which my thinking was constantly challenged, stretched, and inspired.

Thinking allowed?

Try thinking expected.

It’s not often that you attend a conference that is truly up your alley – where EVERY session has more than one workshop you wish you could attend. Where you can’t even attend your colleagues’ presentations for support, because you don’t want to miss out on learning something new or being inspired by someone else. (Plus your colleague needs you to go elsewhere, since he/she is missing a session due to presenting!)

Learning 2.0 was one of those.

Learning 2.0 was one of a kind.

(Maybe that’s not fair, I haven’t been to EVERY conference.)

I’ll end the superlatives here, because it won’t take long to do a search of the ed blog world to find others out there celebrating this event. Kudos to the organizers. You didn’t do it for the kudos, but kudos nonetheless.

So on to the details.

Reminded of what matters by McKenzie.

Inspired by Richardson.

Thought-provoked by November.

Reflective with Nussbaum-Beach.

Bummed that I missed any sessions with Fryer.

Had a blast with all of the participants. Ed Tech Geeks, the lot of us. And it was great!

I experimented with different, very-visual way to take notes at each of the sessions, which I will share next post.

Justin and I presented our new literacy curriculum, which we called Curriculum 2.0, which I wrote about in my last post.

More on this to come.

In the meantime, thanks to all who made the Learning 2.0 Conference such a positive experience.

Technorati Tags: learn2cn curriculum2.0 fryer richardson mckenzie nussbaum-beach november edtech learning2.0

This weekend is the Learning 2.0 Conference in Shanghai, China. Featured speakers include: Alan November, Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach, Will Richardson, Jamie McKenzie, Gary Stager, Wes Fryer and Chris Smith.

Are you kidding me?! That’s like a who’s who of Ed Tech RSS feeds! And as exciting as that line-up is, also attending are Always Learning’s Kim Cofino and Medagogy’s Justin Medved (then again I work at the same school – so I see them regularly) and Thinking Stick’s Jeff Utecht (one of our hosts).

How can I not be psyched?!

SHAMELESS PLUG ALERT: Justin and I are presenting one session on our ideas for embedding the new literacy we all talk about into school life and curriculum. We believe that our approach may give it a chance to be successful finally. We’ve seen too many IT scope and sequence documents fail. Our approach, we believe, makes all of this accessible to teachers and their buy-in ultimately seems to determine the success of a program. If you are at the conference we hope to see you there in room C-228, for Session 8.

We are hoping that the minds of fellow Ed Tech people will help us frame our work and improve it as we go. The collaboration in our jobs is just so great.

Can’t wait…it’s going to be fun.

Will Richardson has a much larger readership than I do, so if you find his post through me, something is amiss. I loved what he said at the end of his post on a recent cover story from Business Week on “The Future of Work” which he shares highlights from.

I wonder how many teachers are getting ready for the new school year by developing a deeply collaborative curriculum, one in which they model for their students not just connections with other teacher/learners but co-creation of knowledge, in whatever forms that takes. I wonder how many of them are being supported in that effort. We have the capability to create these types of environments; what we need is to provide more and more opportunities for teachers to connect and learn with other educators and professionals from around the globe.

Amen.

Is anyone someone asking their students to co-create knowledge? Where is the support coming from? When will our curriculum not focus on content knowledge, but rather on the co-creation of new knowledge?

Thanks, Will.

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