Success for Clay in creating authentic learning where passionate learning takes place:

A student interviewed Clay as a minority person living in Korea. It was recorded for a podcast. It ended up being newsworthy and drew the community in to access the student’s blog and continue the discussion.

Barriers for Clay in helping his school make the shift:

Students in our high schools are often so trained in a ways that get in the way of thinking laterally and making connections that we have to “unteach” them. To create their own projects and follow their own ideas doesn’t come easy. “Give me something I can do quickly and get out of the way” is often the way our high school students operate. They often are not willing to take risks. Conclusion: We really need to start in the elementary to build a learning environment that doesn’t take the passion away.

Clay’s PLN class involves each student completing a project of personal interest that they research and then blog/podcast/vodcast about weekly. They connect to Twitter to build out their network finding people who can help them with their research. Clay finds this process to really support his hope that his students will become networked learners.

Take Away from the discussion:

One approach to shift a school is for your instructional technologist to start the year working with early adopters the first third of the year and to then move to the middle range adopters the next third of the year and to focus on the laggard group at end of the year.

It is imperative to have the instructional technologists work with groups of teachers during the school day to get buy in from the teachers. After school doesn’t work due to scheduling problems. Think about bringing in subs for a whole day. This really validates the process. Get the technical lessons (e.g., how to run a blog, use Skype, etc.) in first to remove those barriers. You can them focus on the curriculum and adapting the instruction and assessments to meet 21st century learning goals.

Teachers looking to start blogging should think about using them as their portfolios and as a

I see that you are in Maine. I am in South China for the month of July loving the fresh air and time on the lake. Thanks for your support. We will continue the conversation starting in September.

This is a podcast every aspiring administrator should hear. Change is such a common philosophy in education but the system lacks the training to support it. Thank you for the great conversation!

Thanks for the comments on Thursday evening. I thought that I should write a brief post to explain why I was suggesting to Andy that moving to a supportive school was not such an easy task. They are quite hard to find, especially if you are tied to a city as your spouse is not a teacher. (Quite common in Hong Kong.)

Posted a few words under Not all International Schools are the Same

Best wishes to all and especially hoping the relocation goes smoothly for you Jeff.

I look forward to seeing you both in Shanghai in September.

Paul

Technology to create, communicate, collaborate, find out, measure, calculate, think, entertain, purchase, navigate etc.

The test is testing for 20th century learners in 20th century dimensions many of our new 21st century skills needed are not able to be tested by these tests.

This is happening in many areas of education and the thinkers know but the governments are still going along the 20th century path. How can we get the governments to see what is happening with these standardised tests?

Cheers from Jenny Ashby

ICT
Epsom Primary
Victoria
Australia