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Unleash the turkey cheaters
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Location: Blogs Dan Maas, CIO |
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| Posted by: Dan Maas |
1/31/2007 8:52 PM |
Alan November's keynote speech made me think about the following items:
- What boundaries are we maintaining that are artificial and unnecessary?
- Is it our role as leaders to drag people toward our vision of the future or should we find ways to open the flood gates and let the current drive the change?
- How can we get more students involved in the leadership for our district technology direction?
- Could we shift our professional development efforts from after school to during school? Could those efforts serve the dual purpose of preparing the teachers and the students at the same time?
- How can we make the best use of student-owned technology? What about equity?
- How can we become more process oriented? Which processes should we target first?
Attendees, please post a reply... Thanks for coming along today! |
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Comments (12)
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Re: Unleash the turkey cheaters |
By Lori Kinney on
2/1/2007 8:57 AM |
| I'll byte...what does "Unleash the turkey cheaters" mean? |
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Re: Unleash the turkey cheaters |
By Renee Howell on
2/1/2007 8:58 AM |
| Yes, please post! I'm anxious to know your thoughts, excitement and concerns! |
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Skype: Unleash the turkey 'chatters' |
By Mason Gregg - Euclid on
2/1/2007 9:24 AM |
I've been harping for over two years about getting teachers & students to safely use webcams and chat in our school. During a break at the workshop I bumped into Mike, our Network Manager, and he mentioned that yes Skype is turned on and ready to go. Yeah Mike! I can't wait to share this medium with our staff to "flatten" our classrooms!
We have classrooms that already communicate overseas using ePals. If we can add Skype to provide voice and video betwen our classrooms and the contacts they've made, we will have made real progress towards a 21st Century school. |
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Re: Unleash the turkey cheaters |
By Mike Porter on
2/1/2007 1:34 PM |
Well, I think the term Alan November quoted was "turkey-eater," and it was in reference to a derogatory term a British professor used to refer to the American rebels, err Patriots. Alan's point, I believe, was that we have the ability to import all of the world's digital documents into the classroom (In this case a English viewpoint on the American Revolution), but do our students (and teachers) ((and administrators)) have the information literacy skills to make judgments on that information? Knowing the syntax of the Internet is one skill that allows for more informed decisions about information.
As for the other points--to blend them together somewhat artificially--we need to measure the effectiveness of the professional development that we deliver. It wouldn't be hard to measure the level of success in integrating new technologies between two different training models: one with students involved and one without. That would be our benchmark on that particular process.
In Alan's book he says the best way to teach the teachers is to teach the students...
Mike
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Re: Unleash the turkey cheaters |
By Dan Maas on
2/1/2007 2:27 PM |
Nice summary, Mike. The "cheaters" piece, Lori, is merging in a later segment when Alan was showing how to find great information and not only that, but the citation was perfectly formatted on the screen for you. When a teacher in the group saw that, she exclaimed "That's cheating!" She of course meant that in the positive sense that she sure wished she had that when she was a kid... but it made the point for Alan that we have to totally rethink everything... even what cheating is! When I taught science, I didn't require students to memorize the periodic table. I posted it in my classroom and one student, who had memorized the chart the year before in another class told me I was helping others cheat.
Cheating is too often defined by someone else finding a way to produce the same product you can without going through the difficult and skillful ways you do.
So, unleash those turkey cheaters! [;-) |
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Re: Unleash the turkey cheaters |
By Neil Heimbigner on
2/1/2007 4:39 PM |
| Great Conference! It was refreshing to hear Alan November's ideas on technology. He certainly thinks "outside of the box", and forced me to think of technology in new and innovative ways. I'm looking forward to working with people like Mike to put some of this new technology to use!! |
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Re: Unleash the turkey cheaters |
By Deb Shiflet on
2/2/2007 10:15 AM |
| It was wonderful to hear Alan November after having read and hearing about him so much through workshops, classes, etc. I find his energy and vision invigorating. One major point that I find myself pondering over and over is how can we as educators, especially at the elementary level, overcome being fearful and move towards becoming "fearless learners and courageous leaders"? I am eager to work with our tech support staff and others and get our kids involved with us as teachers/facilitators in working together for the most optimal authentic experiences to maximize learning. |
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Re: Unleash the turkey cheaters |
By Randy Stall on
2/2/2007 11:15 AM |
Reflections on CASE PreConference
As usual, I thoroughly enjoyed hearing Alan November. I appreciate how he challenges his listeners to adapt our methods to the needs of the students we teach. The world they will inherit from us is changing almost faster than we have the ability to keep up with. That means we have to utilize every option and tool we have at our disposal to meet the challenge. We also need to become “fearless” learners ourselves so we can instill that philosophy in our students.
The most thought provoking part of the day, for me, was a combination of Dr. Grayson’s lunch discussion of developing processes in education and the afternoon breakout, with Keith Krueger of CoSN, on Hot Technologies for K-12. The afternoon breakout did not deal as much with products as it did trends in technologies that will affect our classrooms in the future (near and far). As we discussed those technologies and their implications, my mind kept wandering back to Dr. Grayson’s discussion of processes. As Littleton moves forward with evaluating and implementing new technologies to improve our students education, what processes do we have in place (or should we have in place) to insure that the technology is valuable, meaningful and effective for both the teachers and students. How do we avoid “solutions looking for a problem”?
I am not sure I know the answers to those questions, but I do know that I am excited with the prospect of evaluating the tools that will be coming out and assessing how they will make our instruction more valuable and meaningful for our students as they venture into their 21st century environment.
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Re: Unleash the turkey cheaters |
By Heidi Dudley on
2/2/2007 12:22 PM |
I, too, am excited to hear that Skype is available to us within Littleton Public Schools. Several months ago I had to help my husband set this up on our home computer so that he could communicate with clients and co-workers on "conference calls" from home. It was fun to see him talking with people in Houston, Denver, Littleton, and Dubai -- all at the same time. I think he told me that there is a Yahoo equivalent available to people. I don't know what it is called.
Concerning the rest of Alan's talk -- it was fantastic! I was jotting down notes right and left during his opening session. I especially liked his idea of sharing math problems (or any other type of course work) with people from all over the world-- we create (and solve) a problem in our Calculus class and share it with a class in China. They do the same for us. What a fantastic way to "cheat" and what a great way to enable students to see that learning extends beyond the traditional four walls of a classroom.
Another idea that I thought was interesting was that every school should have a podcasting team -- a group of students who are the resident experts on setting up and managing podcasts -- so that teachers have a group of people they can learn from and rely on to help with their own podcasts and videocasts. It's so true that kids today are naturals with today's technology, so what better people to learn from than our students??? Teachers need to learn to give up the idea that if they don't know how to use technology really well, they can't do it in the classroom. They can -- they just need to be willing to say "help me learn" to their students. (This comes from a person who has to have her children show her how to use some of the basic functions on her cell phone. Sign!) |
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Re: Unleash the turkey cheaters |
By Dan Maas on
2/2/2007 2:28 PM |
Deb, I really appreciate how you've jumped in here! Way to go! I think the best way I can summarize the paradigm shift is to let go of control and begin to manage risk.
If you think about it, that's just what the shift from Monarchy to Democracy was all about. In a Monarchy, the government defines your rights as a citizen. In a Democracy, the government defines the limitations of your freedom.
We are the old Monarchy of human knowledge and the revolution is at the gate! It is time to shift gracefully to Democracy and instead of defining what kids can do at school, focus only on preventing what they shouldn't... and then let them fly! |
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Re: Unleash the turkey cheaters |
By Lisa Sutterer on
2/7/2007 9:20 AM |
| Heidi - I appreciate your comments about students being resident experts. We, here at Euclid tested these waters out last year when we had the enormous task of training all staff members how to effectively/efficiently use their new SMARTboard. Each teacher was assigned to bring a student to two after school training sessions. After SMARTboard skills were modeled by our trainer, teachers and their students were assigned to practice them at a SMARTboard station. At the end of our first training, one 6th grade student looked at his teacher and said, "This is fun Mrs. Kreeger. I can't wait to help you teach!" Ahhhhh...priceless! |
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Re: Unleash the turkey cheaters |
By Donna Murphy on
2/8/2007 1:11 PM |
I really enjoyed hearing Alan November. I read his book last summer but this was my first experience hearing him speak. What a visionary. It filled me full of ideas to come back and talk to the teachers about. The podcasting team idea made a lot of sense to me. I have been podcasting 1st grade and wanted to get student council involved. Now I have a new team to train and let them help teach.
I, too, am excited to hear about Skype being available. I will be encouraging this type of global learning to be used in the classroom or in our technology lab. I'm really excited to put some of this technology to use! |
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