Moving at the Speed of Creativity by Wesley Fryer

Talking about the need for digital literacy

I have shared three seminars with school administrators this week in Oklahoma focusing on E-Rate and free digital curriculum. In the conversations which followed these workshops, I was again struck by the vital importance of engaging educational leaders at all levels in conversations about the importance of digital literacy. One of our most pressing needs today is to change predominant practices of teaching and learning– which traditionally focus on content transmission and regurgitation rather than student engagement and student creation of knowledge products that reflect authentic learning (which cannot be faked.)

“Joyce Valenza’s chart in Meme: “How School changed since I left library school” (referenced by Joe Poletti) and Scott McLeod’s PDF file of quotations relating to digital kids and analog teachers are both great conversation starters along these lines. The more I work in schools, the more need I see for educational leaders to further refine and develop their own visions of what it means (or should mean) to teach and learn in the 21st century.

Next term, in the spring, I hope to help facilitate several seminars here in Oklahoma relating to technology leadership issues for administrators. I am thinking a title like “Technology, Teaching and Learning” might be appropriate. I am also going to work on a Moodle course for technology directors which would have a variety of resources related to network security, technology asset management and maintenance, network monitoring, etc. The first will be a visioning project, the second much more of a technical knowledge sharing project. Both vitally important. If I was going to pick which is MOST important, however, I’d say the technology leadership piece. We have GOT to help our educational leaders understand the need to change and the ways we can change teaching practices.

Changing people, and changing perceptions about teaching and learning. Tall orders, and very challenging goals. Thank goodness for the edu-blogosophere, which we can all use as a support network as well as a collaborative resource! 🙂

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On this day..


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