NCCE 2007 - Keynote speaker William Richardson

Last week I went to the Northwest Council for Computer Education conference in Spokane, where a number of teacher geeks convened to talk about how they're integrating technology in their classrooms. It was thought provoking and inspiring. Here are some of the ideas I'm left thinking about after the experience. I'm going to start with one of our keynote speakers, William Richardson, who spoke to us at the tired end of the conference, Friday at 3:00.

William Richardson runs a site (www.weblogg-ed.com) where he posts all of his thoughts about teaching, education and the world. (I'll have to start reading it.) His talk focused on how much the world has changed and that in order for people to function in it, they have to be learners. Learning today means making connections with people and building a community of learners. If we are teachers of students, then we have to teach students how to be learning in that environment and model that to them. That means we've got to be doing it. Here are some interesting points he made:

• My space would be the 9th biggest country in the world if it were physical space. (I think he's thinking in terms of population.)
• Anyone can take MIT courses on line. All of their classes are posted, syllabus, readings, lectures, everything. Can you imagine? And it's FREE! Search for MIT Open Courseware or go here: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html You can be an astronaut!
• Every kid in Libya will be connected to the internet soon. They have some $100 laptop deal.
• He used the www.martinlutherking.org site as an example of how if you don’t know who’s behind the site, or how to find that information, you are illiterate. (It’s Aryan nation)
• Most of the content has not been edited, so we have to edit. We have to teach students to edit.
• We don’t know what the top 20 jobs will be in the future. It’s not about content, it’s about learning. We don’t know what content they will need. The technologies are not that difficult. It’s understanding the pedagogy.
He ended with these final questions for us:
o Who are your teachers? (He's broadening this term beyond Mr. Huff, my 5th grade teacher. He's giving everyone who networks with him the distinction of being his teacher because they offer new ideas to him.)
o Are you building those networks and learning within those networks?
o Are you modeling your learning for your students? -We’re not modeling it in the way that our kids need to see it. We need to be transparent about our learning.

This was a powerful talk, because he basically changed the way I saw teachers and their roles. There is no question that we can see where the world is headed. It is our job to teach our students to be able to function successfully in that world. That means that teachers to need to learn how to do that for themselves. No longer is there an argument for them to learn in an old fashioned way. The Dewey Decimal system? Ancient. Maybe even writing on paper is approaching ancient status. Kids need to learn to read, write, they need to understand science, history, they need understand how government works, their role as citizens and they need to know math. We are teaching that. Whew… But, they aren’t learning how to be discriminatory in choosing where they get their information. They’re not learning how to collaborate with others. With our literacy program, I’ve been working hard to get my kids to communicate their thinking. Usually about what they’re reading or what we’re learning about. This has important value and will be a life skill in the world that is evolving. More emphasis should be placed here. It also seems obvious that kids need to learn how to type. And that one to one ratio of kids to computers does seem powerful. We as teachers, can no longer teach the way we were taught. And, we need to jump into the evolving world and experience it for ourselves so that we can bring it to our students and help them make sense of it. Because, they're already out there doing it, whether they're doing it safely or responsibly or not.