Feedback on “Cultivating Digital Educators”

Frieda Foxworth, Ron Bosch, and John Geanangel collaborated to present the session on “Cultivating Digital Educators” for K-12 Online 2006 in the Overcoming Obstacles strand. I was able to watch and reflect on their excellent presentation this afternoon as I flew from Dallas to Los Angeles enroute to a conference, and I really enjoyed their presentation. I have uploaded some video feedback for them to YouTube as well.

I appreciated their question about “how effective is “spray and pray” for you when it comes to helping teachers with technology?” I think often we do use this method when it comes to technology-related professional development in schools, and we’d be better served to take a collaborative and one on one model they suggest in their presentation instead of our “traditional” PD sessions.

During their session, I was struck by an idea: Instead of testing teachers on competencies in applications like MS Word, we need to assess the quality of instructional materials they create and share with other learners on the planet. In fact, I wrote the following on a cocktail napkin on my flight:

We need a school environment where teachers are empowered and expected to regularly author and share content (under Creative Commons licensing terms) with other learners around the globe. This would operationalize the ethics of open content in the education space, and address the TIME issues which plague all teachers.

I had not heard of Matchware’s Open Mind graphic organizer software they mentioned, I’ll have to check that out. I have just been familiar with Inspiration, CMapTools, and the SmartTech graphic organizer software previously.

“The Global Horizons Technology Initiative of Red Bank Elementary” is a collaborative visioning and planning document that looks great. I applaud Freida, Ron, John and others at their school for involving so many stakeholders in the collaborative visioning of teaching and learning reforms in their school.

I certainly agree with their contention that “it’s not about the technology, it’s about the information and learning to use and manage the information (critical thinking, meaningful evaluation of information)” which takes place in the classroom. Their 2:1 computing model is very innovative, where teachers are partnered together and alternate teaching in classrooms outfitted with a computer for every student, and a more traditional classroom. Their emphasis on shifting from a content delivery to problem solving model is right on target: We need to focus on how to find information, how to find content, and how to use it to create new knowledge much more than we need to focus on pure regurgitation of information today. I was inspired by their story of moving to project based learning as ameans to cultivate problem solving skills as well as address standards / mandates.

Great presentation! The students, parents and administrators in their school are lucky to have such innovative teacher/leaders!

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On this day..

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• Gangnam Style Videos: USNA vs USAFA vs Westpoint – 2012
• iPhoto ’11 First Impressions – 2010
• UNT Socialists Protest Upcoming Speech by former President Bush – 2010
• Amazed by Student Creativity Using Scratch! – 2010
• RockMelt: A Chrome-based Browser for the Facebook Generation – 2010
• Riding the Shanghai Maglev at 267 miles per hour (431 km/hr) – 2009
• Boingo WiFi Charges in China – 2009
• Exploring, Learning and Communicating with Wordle – 2008