Ian recommends for all of us to take the digital diet challenge. He has the challenge here at his handouts page.
We have to learn to teach to the whole new mind, from Daniel Pink.
He says many, kids in school learn in spite of what we do. The top one third do this with ease. We need to direct our teaching to the other two thirds of our students.
These are our students! This is our audience!
Think of the language in the tests, identify, describe, these are the verbs from the lower end of Bloom's Taxonomy. We are not testing analyze, synthesize, the higher order verbs and activities.
We are not preparing kids for the world they are graduating into.
Everyone in our society needs to be about creativity and problem solving. We need to be teaching 21st Century Literacies.
Math not about equations, students need to understand numeracy.
Reading is not about reading text, but also comprehending text and images.
Writing is not about writing text, but also about communicating with text and images.
If we just learn or teach the 3 R's, we will prepare them for the 20th Century, their past, our comfort. They will not be prepared for the 21st Century.
Difference between literacy and fluency. Fluency is intuitive, unconscious, and internalized skills.
Technological fluency involves transparent use. It is not the pen but what we do with the pen.
It is not about teaching kids excel, it is about teaching kids to be problem solvers. Not about power pointless!
The issue, is critical thinking, time management...
You need to use the camera to get the photo for the assignment! Learn about the technology is the by product.
Media fluency, is not about operating the camera, the audio recorder, but looking at the content and understand how that medium is communicate the message. How is the media shaping our thinking!
First part! more coming.
We need, as teachers, to stop telling the whole story. We can't do this all the time, we need to teach lazy! We need to stop standing in front of kids telling them how smart we are! We need to allow the kids to think outside the lines.
Teachers need to withdraw progressively from being the thinker and teller in the classroom. We need to let our students progressively take charge of their learning so we create independent learners, who know how to find information and solve problems in a creative and new manner. As parents we get this, why can't we as teachers put this into practice?
Why does education rule how students should be learning? Why not put the students in charge of their learning? What would students say about using social networks, cell phones, text messaging in their learning environment?
Oh my, we must let students collaborate, it has to happen! If we are to prepare our students for success we must make environments for our students to collaborate in meaningful ways.
Digital tools for students are not optional! They are part of their culture. There are no boundaries for our students.Students need to create digital products so they can share what they know about the content, the process is as much of value as the product. Digital tools enhance the learning. Choose the better tool to create the product to solve the problem.
Students need guided and supportive feedback with an authentic audience to solve real problems. We need to re-think assessment and evaluation.
Use his handouts you will find the link to many handouts, keep on with the conversation!
Read Teaching for Tomorrow by Ted McCain Corwin Press
Read Here Comes Everybody!
You can email Ian at firstname.lastname@example.org!