Notes on Dr. Scott McLeod’s follow up session at OU K20 MidWinter

These are my notes from Dr. Scott McLeod’s follow up session during the OU K-20 Center’s MidWinter Conference in Norman, Oklahoma, on 29 January 2009. MY REFLECTIONS ARE IN ALL CAPS. The conference Ning is http://k20center.ning.com, and is open to anyone. I got to this session late, and did audio record the latter part.

1st topic: Money and Funding

We need to have community meetings and forums to raise support for 21st century skills

student showcases are a great way to mobilize parent and community interest
– anything you can do that showcases great student work, makes it accessible outside the walls of the classroom

Example: Mabry Film Festival (Cobb County, Georgia)
– visionary principal Tim Tyson
– film festival is like a big Oscars-type event

When you open up the walls of the classroom to the community, everyone benefits
– student creative work needs to be showcased
– meaningful, authentic, real ways digital technologies are being used
– this is a way to build the groundswell of support we need for the educational changes we’re talking about

APA report
– data does not support fears of online predation
– Scott just linked to another new report on dangerouslyirrelevant.org

Swimming analogy
– driving a car
– both are very dangerous activities, we help students learn to

Most schools treat kids as if they were Athena
– story of Athena’s birth: popped right out of Zeus’ head fully form
– when you magically turn 18 you are going to be able to function well in this highly complex enviornment

When the school doesn’t help students how to negotiate an unfiltered Internet, who does that?
– faith institutions don’t
– parents don’t
– libraries do a little bit, if you can get the kids to come

CIPA requires what to be blocked?
– that is your homework
– schools vastly overblock and they blame it on CIPA

blocking is an educational issue, not a technical issue

Scott’s article in School Administrator Magazine “Blocking the Future”
– question is: where are you in all of this? you are abdicating your responsibility to make decisions in this. Admins would never do this when it comes to school finance. Giving tech admins carte blanche

2 good resources on assessment
– book “Global Achievement Gap” by
– also an article in the Phi Delta Kappa by Linda Darling Hammond about assessment that is great

the tools always outpace our social structures
– we are in the midst of that transition, perhaps the beginning of it
– it will take place much faster than the industrial revolution did
– and we have to prepare kids for that world

Will Richardson focuses on preparing students to be adaptive learners, because so few

personalized learning is the learning revolution
– we need to push on the disruptive levers that facilitate our movement in that direction
— create a parallel system via online learning that puts pressure on the old system
— put digital devices into the hands of all learners

I REALLY QUESTION WHAT IMPACT THE FLORIDA VIRTUAL SCHOOL HAS HAD ON FLORIDA CLASSROOMS

Richard Elmore: this system has been defeating attempts to change it for decades
– so we stop trying to

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On this day..

Comments

One response to “Notes on Dr. Scott McLeod’s follow up session at OU K20 MidWinter”

Joshua Williams

January 30, 2009

Wes,

Thanks for the notes! It filled in a couple of the things I missed and really wanted. The session after lunch with you and Scott was really good. I wish it could have gone much longer.