home

**From "Hand it In" to "Publish it": Re-envisioning our Classrooms--NECC 2007**

 * Description**: As educators we are facing the increasingly complex reality of a world where knowledge is abundant, where collaboration is the norm, and where students can begin to build networks and communities far beyond our classroom walls. Yet, our teaching and learning spaces are still defined by the traditional ideas that knowledge is scarce and that learning is situated by time and place. That traditional classroom concept must change if we want to remain relevant to our students lives and prepare them for their futures.

This presentation will identify the important, disruptive shifts that are taking place, identify the major obstacles and roadblocks that are being put up in an attempt to contain these changes, give examples of how educators around the world are responding to them, and lay out a path for educators to re-envision what they do in their own classrooms.


 * Homework Today**
 * The Friday Folder
 * Dependent learners


 * The Business World Today**--Internally, IBM has 26,000 internal bloggers, 20,000 wikis with 100,000 users, and a social network that is used by over 400,000 full and part time employees. They own 50 islands in Second Life. (Wall Street Journal, June 18, 2007, as [|summarized here].)


 * The Trends are Clear:**
 * Hyperconnected--their lives will be lived in a world where connections are ubiquitous
 * Hypertransparent--their lives will be lived for everyone else to see
 * Collaborative


 * The Question**: Are our classrooms and our practices preparing kids for the world that they will be facing when they begin their life's work?

The "literacies" that they will require are much more complex.

Our students are entering a world where they will be expected to be:
 * Self-learners
 * The US Dept. of Education estimates that by the time they reach 38, our kids will have changed jobs over a dozen times. [|Source]
 * Are we teaching them to be lifelong learners?
 * Self-starters
 * Passion-based learning
 * "If you are not doing it, someone else will."
 * Are we teaching them to generate their own projects, their own learning?
 * Self-selectors
 * Who can I trust?
 * What does community mean?
 * Social networking
 * [|Business Week survey]
 * Are we teaching them to measure authority in new ways, to find other learning opportunities, to build personal learning networks?
 * Self-editors
 * Wikipedia--[|Tucker]
 * Cult of the Amateur
 * Are we helping them understand editing as a natural part of their interaction with information?
 * Self-organizers
 * Folksonomies
 * Tagging and RSS
 * Are we modeling ways to make sense of information, to archive it and recall it?
 * Self-reflectors
 * Blogging as reflection
 * Are we giving them ways to think about their learning?
 * Self-publishers
 * Can they use the tools?
 * Do they understand the ethics of publishing online?
 * Self-distributors
 * Self-regulators
 * Are we modeling balance?
 * Are we providing strategies for making best use of online time?
 * Self-protectors
 * "[|Most Teens 'Not Bothered' by Cyberbullying]" Totally Wired"
 * "[|Most Teens 'Not Bothered' by Cyberbullying]" Totally Wired"