— Live blogging —
Will Richardson
A Web of Connections: Why the Read/Write Web Changes Everything
Will is not in good health this morning…voice is raspy, but is ready to go anyway…:)
This is an extremely compelling moment for educators, we need to be thinking creatively to prepare our students for their future…
Will brings three viewpoints from which he approaches the conversation…(not-so-happy) parent, educator, edublogger
Will runs his presentation from http://willrichardson.wikispaces.com …starts with stats from Karl Fisch’s “Did You Know” video
Will uses Obama’s website to illustrate…Every candidate has a myspace site for the presidential election…first primary is not in Iowa or NH, but on MySpace next January 2/3…open primary…
Journalism is changing…bloggers and web 2.0 have made traditional journalism tougher…participant journalism…readership is going down…trying to figure out how to manage this new environment…
“businesses are not products, they are conversations” -Wikinomics…think ebay and consumer reviews…
problem – politics, business are changing, but education is not responding…
2/3 of kids have social networking sites…but educators do not…lag in understanding…skills and literacies involved in making sense of information is different from even 10 years ago…
Access is disparity issue…how do we get universal access…
Kids and teachers used to be in parallel…but kids have turned away and they aren’t coming back…so we need to move to join with them again…how do we do that? Need to join together and create networks of learners…number one skill for kids is to be able to create their own personal learning networks …
Blogs are a huge tool for learning…but the shift is not complete…many teachers only digitize previous practice…just another way to hand things in…we need to start looking at the need to shift pedagogies and practice…the start of conversations…responses to posts and feedback…
Imagine a classroom where everyone is passionate about the ideas and topics…hard to replicate in the physical world…we need to be findable…important to sharing ideas and learning….our kids are also beginning to build networks on-line…e.g. fan-fiction…writing chapters to books and movies…etc…others can share with like minded / interest…many are kids,,,and most do this outside of school and just want to connect with others…
Students are building networks using social networking sites, but we need to teach them about how to leverage networks through social networking…e.g. Meg cabot…author…connecting with readers…students need to learn that building networks will be crucial to learning…
Problem is when content shifts (e.g. Pluto)…we need to be teaching our kids to find information… not to memorize information… our curriculum should be shifting to teaching kids to find information…
Open Courseware – building network for any subject that kids have passion for… we are not the only place for kids to learn subject matter…
We need to teach wikipedia…wikis themselves provide other conversations…back channel negotiations in discussions…this will be an important skill for kids to know…how to co-create and collaborate on the fly…who owns what? what is intellectual property? this will be an on-going issue…
How many teach kids to read and write in hypertext environments…there is a literacy to doing this well…links are the key to building networks…if our kids are not writing with links to build networks they are not going to be ready for the 21st century…
Teaching practice needs to change…once we get Internet connection…we are no longer the smartest people in the room…our job is to connect our students to the smartest people available…e.g. Secret Life of Bees…students blogged…open…connected…author collaboration…
Classrooms cannot be four walled any longer….we must get outside the walls…activities must be real…authentic and engaging…why are kids filling out worksheets…why can’t kids be doing something real…e.g. radio willow web…kids as editors, publishers and teachers…real audience… engage people globally…
Marco Torres – students work “must have wings” – needs to have a purpose beyond the classroom…e.g. “Buckle Up” PSA…limitation is connection and willingness to understand they have a global audience and can do real work…
No question the way we live and work is shifting…we can’t continue to teach kids content…we need to teach kids how to build learning networks…ideas of teaching have to change…there are better teachers out there…
Most of the shifts have been around replication of old practice in digital environment…teachers don’t understand the pedagogy possibilities… we need to talk about what is stopping teachers from understanding the shifts that are occuring on a personal level…educators need to understand the changes…suck it up and get it…
Question…who are your teachers? Who are you learning from? There are powerful opportunities out there who you can connect with…how are you building you learning networks? You have to participate in on-line network…how are you modeling your learning? can kids answer the question…how does my teacher learn? We need for kids to see their teachers using and modeling learning…this is the way we do business now…next five or ten years are crucial…if we don’t change…options to opt out are growing…we need to make sure we keep them with us…
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