A friend steered me to the following viral video below. As I watched it, the premise was no great shock, but the numbers were pretty staggering. Being the cynical sort, I decided to track down the source, so as to be able to get at their motivation. I shouldn’t have been surprised. But I was…..
He’s a classroom teacher. Just like me. And his purpose was to wake up his colleagues to the point that we need to re-think how we’re teaching kids…
Some of his comments when he created the site follow:
My administration asked me if I wanted to speak at one of our beginning of the year faculty meetings. I often provide updates on what’s new and different with technology in our building and what teachers need to know to get the year started. But this year I’m really focused on staff development and the “vision” of where we should be headed, so I wanted to do something different. I don’t know for sure how it is in your schools, but I imagine they are like mine – a faculty meeting is a horrible place to have the conversations we need to have. In addition, since 49 of my teachers are involved in the staff development described elsewhere on this blog, I felt it would be a waste of time – and possibly counterproductive – to try to discuss anything of substance in the faculty meeting.
So, instead, I decided to take David Warlick up on his idea of telling the new story. I put together a PowerPoint presentation with some (hopefully) thought-provoking ideas. I was hoping by telling some of these “stories” to our faculty, I could get them thinking about – and discussing with each other – the world our students are entering. To get them to really think about what our students are going to need to be successful in the 21st century, and then how that might impact what they do in their classrooms. It would also help the faculty that are not currently participating in my staff development join the conversation.
So I basically said most of the above to the faculty, and then told them that even though I would usually argue that just showing something and not discussing it afterward was a bad idea, that this time – since a meaningful conversation at the end of a long faculty meeting was unlikely – that’s what I was going to do. But that I wanted them to hopefully think about this for their own classrooms, and then hold the conversation with each other over the next few days (and hopefully weeks and months and . . .).
Yeah. Not a commission. Not a think tank.
A high school teacher. You can find him here.
Posted on January 31st, 2010 by jack-of-all-thumbs
Filed under: Rants and Musings
Jack, you continue to educate and surprise me here; I never go away disappointed. This is excellent. My problem is the population of folks I want to send it to: they are growing exponentially and I’m having trouble deciding which of the digital venues at my disposal will be the most efficient.
Love that video, it has been floating around for a while. We use it as a training tool at work.
Hi Jack,
I’ve been wondering about the effect of the internet on my abilities to think. Grasping any information I want, when I want – is it really gaining knowledge or simply bits and pieces that my brain tries to assemble into something of value. One of the amazing abilities the brain is to filter what is valuable from all our sensory inputs and assimilate but is that actually happening?
In respect to your article and video about teaching children in our IT world and for the future, the link is an article from Newsweek 1/18/2010 where the author tries to illustrate what’s happening to “Your Brain Online” > “less sustained thought” vs. “illusion of knowledge” and so on. I can see the internet as an external virtual brain wrapped around our own; the synapses are firing by a click of the mouse; commitment to memory is on a hard drive, brain networking analysis is artificial; possibly contributing to our real brains to degenerate.
http://www.newsweek.com/id/229843 – Article “Your Brain Online” by Sharon Begley
w/r j
I echo the other comments; you present the most fascinating and relevant information. I see this new age of seemingly infinite access to information as a challenge to teach in a manner that encourages students to become more than information receptacles but interactive participants in evaluating the input of info and determining the most useful application of that info. Unfortunately, I don’t see a lot of evidence that our public schools are even close to doing so.