Genesee ISD/Alan November - October 22, 2004
I spent Friday at the Genesee ISD attending and presenting at their administrators conference. I enjoyed both parts of the day. First I got to hear Alan November speak. http://www.anovember.com.com. I’ve heard Alan speak several times and he always motivates me to examine what I am doing. The second part of the day was a presentation I did with Arnie Comer on distance learning.
These are my notes from Alan’s presentation. Remember these are my notes not a summary of his presentation. I am placing them here for reflection and perhaps the interest of others.
Providing instantaneous feedback to students.
In many classrooms it may be days if not weeks until students learn how they have done on an assignment. Good on-line courses can increase the feedback students receive and improve the timeliness of the feedback.
How can we help kids become independent and able to move out of their parents’ home before they turn 30. (Boomerang Generation – Goes away but comes back.)
Site: epgy.standford.edu – K-12 curriculum on-line.
Reference: Check out Chris Dede’s web site. I heard him present once and was overly impressed. Maybe I missed something. I need to review his material again.
Three things we need to move towards
1. Students becoming independent
2. Information Literacy – knowing how to handle new information sources.
3. Fearless learners – motivated – self sufficient – develop community
Are we using computers as $2000 pencils?
Site: Check out the new Stormfront Blog. http://www.stormfront.org Is the dark side moving forward faster than we are? ( I went to the Stormfront web site. Terrible content, but great technology. It shows what we have to compete with when we share information. Will a boring web site or an interactive site attract our students. Related link from Alan http://easywhois.com/
Teach teachers info lit.
Now that kids have access to Internet resources, teachers need to develop new types of lessons to fit the new media. What would my lesson look like. My opinion – if we just move what we are doing to the web, we won't make much progress.
1. teachers need to be involved in the process of learning, writing and research so that plagiarism isn’t an option.
2. moving the curriculum to the web – if we take what we are currently doing and put it on a web site we won’t see a large change in what we are doing with students.
Questions for Info Lit
1. What search engine did the student use?
2. What do the forward links tell you?
3. What are the external or invisible links?
Use of the link and host command in searching.
Structural change not just bolting on technology
Automation – little return on investment. ( electronic grades books help teachers speed up the process – giving parents and students instant access to grades could be significant
Infomate – more return for your dollar
Access to information
Building relationships
How are you empowering people to take responsibility for the quality of work? (How can we do this at all levels?)
1. Ask teachers what they love to teach and then show them how they can apply technology to help them improve their lesson.
2. Where do students have problems in the curriculum and how can technology help?
3. Writing across the curriculum is the best way to improve test scores (Doug Reeves)
4. Bring two students with each teacher coming to staff development
5. 10 things to look for when kids are using technology (I need to follow up on this with Alan.) This would be a great list to have.
6. Staff development for teachers.
Global Collaboration
Authentic Audience
Professional Communities