“Teach students to teach themselves…”

I think the most powerful and quote I got from last weeks NCDL Alliance conference came fro David Warlick. He said in his keynote address, “Educators must start teaching student HOW to teach themselves”. How to sift through the tons of information generated every minute around the world and harness that content to succeed in this digital (global) economy.
How do we prepare our students for a future we as teachers can’t describe nor conceptualize? Technology is evolving and changing at an incredible rapid rate. The future is unpredictable and we have no concrete idea what the work environments will be like in 5 years, 10, 15…, and how to prepare our students for them. One thing is certain…digital technology, the internet and globalization have impacted the work and educational environments dramatically. Unfortunately our schools and colleges have not kept pace with the technological shift and are in many instances not preparing students for this unpredictable and highly fluid global economy.

We must teach our students to adapt and literally teach themselves. Teach them to be problem solvers, innovators and creative entrepreneurs We must all be life long learners and not rely on archaic instructional models for learning and teaching. The internet has changed all the rules in every sphere of human interaction and educational systems and global economies are having to change, adapt and evolve rapidly in order to remain viable. We as educators must be teaching our students HOW to make good decision about harnessing and using all the new communications tools at their disposal. We must break away from outdated educational systems and models and invent new ones that will help students function and excel in the future – a future that is already here.

Instructional delivery is now mobile and fluid. Students can take educational content anywhere they want and use it on their time not on ours. Ipods, MP3 players, cell phones, jump drives, etc., enable learners to carry instructional content anywhere they like and use it on their terms and on their schedule. Are teachers creating learning environments that are receptive to this new type of learning and student? The fixed time classroom in a box with a sage on the stage is fast becoming obsolete and in my opinion is a dinosaur. Web 2.0 is turning the internet into a giant global conversation. How do we get involved in that conversation? Who do we use it to create jobs? How do we use it to teach our students and prepare them for this unpredictable future that none of us in education truly has any idea of what will be like and what skills our students will need to compete and succeed.

Web 2.0 Presentation by David Warlick

I am sitting in David Warlick’s presentation here at the 2007 DL Alliance Conference and blogging as he presents. This is his last session. He was also the Keynote speaker and as I mentioned in my DL Blog and earlier presentation on ITunes U and Podcasting David truly inspired me to start using web 2.0 technology, blogs and producing podcasts.

David has shown us how to access his online handouts and now telling us about a conference called a bloggercon - an unconference. One thing that David does so well is he is able to articulate the future of education and the digital landscape in a very user friendly manner. David is telling a story about how we can create blogs on the fly - during a presentation and publishing notes from the conference.

According to David…“The shape of information is changing - it is trainable - it comes to us instead of us going to find it. We must teach our students HOW to teach themsleves with these new tools”

The new web is all about SHARING. Sharing the KNOWLEDGE. It is more than just a library - it is a place to collaborate. Anybody can have an audience now. Anyone can publish content now. We have to rethink what it is to be literate. Text, media, images are all made out of numbers and it is all digital. Information can be overwhelming. How do we manage all this information. How do I get my message through the storm of data? We must teach our students how to be gatekeepers. How to access and process all this digital information. How do we teach the ethical use of information. Information is now coming out of conversations. There is VALUE out of our content and anyone can access it and even modify it with wiki’s for example.

David is now explaining to the audience how a blog works (what blogging is) as I blog him telling them HOW blog. Blogging, wiki’s and web 2.0 is a giant conversation and anyone can participate and add to the conversation. Information flows in different non-linear ways. We have this global conversation going on - the blogesphere. It is interactive and fluid. David was asked what Web 2.0 is. Web 1.0 was like a library. You used it to find information. Now anyone can publish and is like a giant conversation on the internet. It is participatory - read it and comment on it. It is a new family of tools to fascilitate this giant global conversation and anyone can get involved sharing their stories, ideas, thoughts, ect., in that conversation.We learn better when we have to teach it - blogging is about giving voice to our students and empowering to express themselves to an audience. Blogging is essentially about communication. Writing in a blog students and anyone for that matter has a real audience and that audience can respond back to that students and/or person’s blog. Blogging has the potential to teach students to write and that awareness forces them to articulate their thoughts in a more thoughtful way.

What blows me away about all this stuff IS…in reality Web 2.0 is very user friendly once you work through the initial shallow learning curve. Like david says…it is nothing more than an ongoing conversation that anyone can jump into and add their 2 cents. Our job is to teach our students how to make desision about where to go for the content and when to use an encyclopedia for example or when wikipedia is more appropriate.

We must prepare oursleves for being on the edge of our seats. David is explaining RSS and Aggregators. RSS is written in xml. This is a language we most likely don’t understand. Aggrigators brings the blogs (the information) to us - we don’t have to go get it once we subscribe to the blogs and feeds. We can keep track the type of content that we are interested and want to read and keep up with. Again…”Cool Beans” - “ready for the next level” - this is the new shape of information. We are seeing a major shift in how we get information - a new way of thinking about information - we can train it and it can empower us to be better more dynamic educators.

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Sicily Travel Journal with Photos

Click Here for Sicily Web Slide Show

May 10, 2007 11:00 am

I’m on the flight from Rome heading to Newark. Six more hours to go. I just killed a few hours resizing my photos for the Blog, and now I am running out of battery on my laptop. This has been an absolutely fabulous trip. I couldn’t have asked for a better overall travel experience. The painting workshop led by Sparky Lebold was excellent, very informative, and the participants were charming people.

Sparky Lebold - Workshop Coordinator and Instructor

I primarily came on this trip to Sicily to spend some time with Andei and I must say that worked out beautifully. Stacy, Robert and Andei drove 2 hours from Catania to pick me up at the hotel in Cefalu. Stacy wanted to see the historic town so they decided to spend the night. We had a great time strolling through the narrow streets of Cefalu Friday evening and then they drove me back to their city of Catania, Saturday morning. We also enjoyed a great dinner with excellent local wine. Andei was upbeat and happy to spend time with me, in addition to being my tour guide and translator most of the weekend.

Andei and I (and Mojo) in Cefalu

It had been almost ten months since I’ve seen my daughter and I must admit I was incredibly happy to spend time with her. It is also a good feeling to see how much she is maturing and I can’t get over how well she is thriving in Italy, learning the language and doing well in school. She continues to amaze us all with her creativity and resourcefulness.

Andei and her best friend Fredrica in Catania

I’m excited about Andei spending a month with me this summer - she will be in North Carolina in mid-July. I am really cramped in this window seat - Uhgg…I still have 5 1/2 hours to go until we land and then board another plane to Charlotte and then New Bern. It has been a fantastic trip and now it is time to get home and back to work. I must get caught back up on my internet classes and prepare myself for the summer semester.

Andei posing for some photos

Stay tuned for some excerpts from my travel journal with more photos in the next day or so………

Painting the Landscape in Cefalu