NECC 2009 Day 2 Sunday June 28

These are my notes form the sessions I attended today:

    Charting a Course For the future of education

Sunday Morning 830 am – 1130 am

Doug Levin – national boards of (NASB) and Dave Moore from knowledgeworks and the foundation

came from cable in the classroom – planning for strategy for futures of ed

created a roadmap – 2020 map for future of education

website: http://www.futureofed.org/
This is a really deep website has lots of resources that support their future trends and give him some votes of data and examples as well as interesting scenarios and pieces to reflect on

we started with a question to group – what will school be like in 2020?
we talked about a range of issues/thoughts

what will drive change?

they have developed six forces that they have identified as shapers of the future of education.
In order: altered bodies,, platforms for resilience, a new civil discourse, the maker economy, pattern recognition

the bottom line is that each of these developments will affect in some way how schools can or must change.

marks thoughts – which of will succeed in leading our schools to change in ways that will help children into their future?

gotta think about clay’s book about disruptive innovation – how will this affect school’s development? All of these forces have disruptive majors in them — some positive, some negative

#1 altered bodies

thought of the day – if you could take a drug that would improve your intellectual performance without side effect would you?

this brings up an issue I think about – dichotomy – there will be 2 societies – those that have gets…will some technologies level the playing field or increase the divide? clearly given our past history, many of the technologies and forces we are talking about will act as dividers, not unifier’s. This is a shame, but reality.

do we teach kids ways of focusing – things like mediattion/focus strategies?
We know there is lots of research (stress/cortisol levels for instance) and yet we do very little in a formal way to help students understand how to create the best conditions psychologically and physically for learning — this is a shame.

interesting observation (me) – he mentioned harvard study about coping mechanism – mark’s thought – prayer is one example of this – the power of church may be drawing on this …
community of schools (think MET) – if stronger connections, better dealing with stress
As we move from elementary to middle to high school, we typically move further and further away from community, and this seems a shame as that sense of community that supports the stress on them During the day students deal with.

#2 amplified orgs
clay shirky – ted lecture – groabnies example
he used a TED video about Josh Grobin and how a community formed both around supporting his career, and a nonprofit to raise money for needy causes. Technology was an enabler that allowed these groups to form.

in our sotf – how to take our amplified organization and make it do more…
is rapid beta testing in ed going to be possible

one of the big ideas – if we can change the isolation of teaching through these amplified networks – then education might be transformed – internet access is pretty ubiquitous, so the ability for teachers to connect pretty much anywhere has become a nonissue

we really need to redefine rigor – need to memorize littky’s definition of this…all of us need to take on the domains we can change and take ownership of them…

littky – “ Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi – rigour is “the opportunity for young people to experience intense concentration in any activity that requires skill and discipline, regardless of content

#3 platforms for resilience
showed a video of Jamais Cascio talking about autoimmune responses in education

we had a bit of a discussion here about schools reaction to banning devices to limit what students can do. The subject came up about the analogy of schools being devoid of tools that students feel comfortable with and therefore becoming less relevant.
discussion around internet access and the reaction little relevance to a world where kids will have their own always on access in the next few years

need to blog on: if most students soon will have data access through their own devices and schools can’t filter, how will schools react
research – grunwald and associates – gap between admin and student perception of tech use and appropriate use. Whereas administrators look at worst-case scenario, the self reporting by teenagers indicated much lower levels of inappropriate technology use than adults assume.

#4 new civil discourse
example of melboune wiki – the city of Melbourne has created a wiki for city planning that allows all members of its community, even from outside their community, to help in urban planning.
and curriwiki – what happens when a community can build knowledge
involvement of parents in school another example — we have a true opportunity here to use technology to create transparency that hasn’t existed in schools before.

#5 Maker economy
see notes – instructables, etc
He gave examples here — plenty on their website — of services and trends that indicate moving away from mass merchandising, and tailoring to individual design, localize products, and green technologies

#6 pattern recognition
how to sift, filter
this is reminiscent of shirky’s filter failure comment on web20 conference

how to make meaning of data
is web 3.0 going to help? mark’s a comment here — the promise and potential of Web 3.0 (symantic) is one of the future trends of the think is a powerfully understood well enough yet. As meta-data and personal information merge in the cloud, the common experience of the web will be a personalized pattern experience that will take into account our preferences, tendencies, and needs. This won’t address all the problems with making meaning, but it should help.

the future is
local
digital
personalized
stressed
vibrant
collaborative

Arthur Levin oped in edweek feb 20 2009 – the change of schools and learning… Although Arthur has been a fairly conservative voice in education, Dave’s point was that this piece even from a conservative voice indicated both the recognition and need for schools to do more than they are old mission of preparing standardized assembly line workers.

    SIGTC – The 21St Tech Leader

Sunday afternoon 1-4pm
(mark left at 3 pm)
background context – ms tech person, moved to writing book for tc fr dissertation

goal – past work
goal – he is an incrementalist

video of doug skinner – day in the life of a tech coordinator (for google teacher academy)

21st tech coordinator – leader in the middle

refers to David Morusund – his 87 book on tech go To coord is the first

dm: need for long term commitment… tough to look at volatile tech
pd
budget
curriculum analysis
transitional period – think long haul (reminiscent of Jukes Digital Diet)

research – even though we look typically at yr1&2 , the substantive work happens into yr 3&4 and beyond…
interesting point here — one of the things in our schools of the future grant was a recognition that the transformation process for schools is a multiyear effort to need support from more than just the first year or two and he agrees with this.

things mark needs to work into his sphere of influence: phones, data, security..others?

slide of Edward De Bono – hats worn by execs

frazier – same idea 0- hats worn by tech coord

teaching & learning
desktop support
administrative computing
network issues
budgeting and planning

new themes for 21st century tech leaders
digital citizenship
convergence
connectivity
data

the data crunch is a reality – how do you manage the amount we deal with

his question – either you need to be a transformational leader (take the early adopters and move on) or a progress leader – incremental change…

here’s a big question (my dissertation)_ what style of leadership will schools use and what success?
give the early adopters resources and go, or support incremental change as an institution… I believe most of us support both of these groups — I suspect how we decide where we put our energies is our higher yield activity. Here’s the big question — if we use the Moretti rule we know that 20% of our effort would give us 80% of our yield – which group is our high-heeled group?

two questions
what is the most pressing issue for us?

what advice to a friend about to become a tech coord?

topics that came up – cell phones, funding and control, data management (forced externally) – getting things to talk to each other (ex email – the way people share information)
amplifying of issues over the internet (cyber bullying, posting inappropriate)
not always control over own money, access to real time data that teacher can use,
gap between admin lack of tech use and need for better understanding, filtering issues…infrastructure and budget during crunch times

digital media – old school texts trying to bring new media

organizational structure and impact on edtech and security concerns (filter, etc)

what does success really mean? target/scapegoat of decisions.

interesting issue

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