Thoughts from Week Four - Ch. 6-7

It seems that several people had a tough time joining last night's
conference.  I hope that these notes will help in case you had to miss
the chat component.

• Best Buy example from Ch. 6
  • Just changing the language helped the situation
    • As a student, would you rather attend a program called "The Eagle's Nest" or a program called "Afterschool Remediation Program?"
  • Employee involvement and "ownership" of the campaign
    • Let students choose project types
    • Teacher must provide adequate framework and expectations, even if met with resistance for student choice.
    • //globalexplorers.wikispaces.com
    • Some students are so driven by test scores, they are reluctant to use their creativity.
    • Instead
      of trying to change the characteristics of the generation, let them
      work with the tools they know in the style in which they prefer to
      learn.
    • Kids come in and decide immediately whether they want to "buy" what you're teaching that day.
• Facebook example (p. 150 Model innovation and rise to the top)
  • Model the good uses (collaboration)
  • If
    one tool is banned, try others (Diigo toolbar to research and take
    notes,Skype to collaborate with real-world sources, Moodle)
  • Podcasting
    good example:  A teacher worked one to one to help a low-performing
    student record his podcast sentence-by-sentence. The other students
    never knew and it was a huge confidence-booster for the student, who
    became more motivated to improve.
  • Why the reluctance?
    • Clash of work cultures (not just a generational clash)
    • Maybe large companies can be the tipping point to cause sweeping changes in the field of education
• Things all of Net Gen remembers
  • Earth Summitt 1992  www.un.org/geninfo/bp/enviro.html
• Freedom as a Net Gen Norm
  • "Relax into productivity,not stress into it"
  • "Sandbox time" is important
  • http://web.media.mit.edu/~mres/papers/kindergarten-learning-approach.pdf
• Chapter 7 Four P's
  • Pixar Teamwork Model Video http://edtechtalk.com/taxonomy/term/58
  • Learn to Play...Fish Culture  www.youtube.com/watch?v=TbtsfyrEF_c
  • 2 degrees of separation (see LinkedIn connection trees)
  • Categories of influence:  how people balance different types of "friends"
  • Book Disrupting Class
    suggests that the same thing that is happening with the newspapers will
    happen to schools (p. 200:  the classic controllers of content are
    changing--people trust friends and forums more than the company's
    advertisements and websites)
  • See Will Richardson's 2/27/2009 blog entry about personalized learning--not just for students, but also for teachers