Ulearn Key Message

ARE WE PREPARING OUR STUDENTS FOR THE FUTURE OR THE PAST

Digital Citizenship - Lee Crockett

•     Take knowledge and make it wisdom

·         Educentric problem – paradigm paralysis – specific way to do school – not preparing students for their future

·         Screen is a place to project your identity

• Images and video are powerful enough to learn

Our student's are:
• Visually literate

• Visual right brain society developing, mix colour and sound

• Learners do better in multi sensory environment

I liked this phrase:

·         Tyranny of the Urgent takes us away from things that are important

I see this often happening in my workplace.  I wonder how will National Standards make this phrase so true.
I am begining to understand how instant gratification is important to my students, and how just in time learning is important to them rather than just in case.
The test for me is to ensure that the "Tyranny of the Urgent" does not overwhelm me.
 
Social Media: Steve Wheeler
Education is about teaching students not subjects


Can we blend the formal and informal learning?

Lifelong learning against the odds

All too often we are giving students flowers rather than teaching them to grow plants

• Generating content, sharing content, organizing content 0 blog, wiki, mashup, e portfolio, tagging


• Personal learning environment – personal web tools (web 2), personal learning network – where to connect to to find out, personal learning environment (social media landscape)

• With access to social media everyone has a voice – the architecture of participation

I am not sure I understood totally about social media.  This is probably because I am still not a fully willing participant in things like Twitter and Facebook, and am not sure whether I want to be.  I do recognise that because I don't want to do something that this should not limit the opportunities for children.  Maybe by teaching students who are not of an age to be on Facebook is useful at this time.  Yesterday, I was in a workshop which included Superclubs which I think will be good rather than Facebook.

Learning to Learn - Lane Clark
I really enjoyed how Lane talked about rigor in planning and preparation and in what students are learning.

"How we educate – not what we educate."

I also liked how her students get to celebrate and share their learning. It is interesting how it is a stage of her inquiry journey for students.  More recently, I have realised that we share our learning in class, sometimes we upload it to the blog and very rarely share with the rest of the school.

I had this "aha" moment as Lane talked about being at the end of the immersion learning and then "So What."  What can we do with this information?   In her example, the students decided to make books for other children.

Usually at the end of our Hook (immersion) we say, what questions can we come up with to learn more?  No wonder students often turn off.  I have the opportunity next week to put this into practise.  I am most interested in the outcome.

Other thoughts from Lane I liked were:

• You don’t grow you brain if you don’t use part that is difficult
•  Colour the inquiry stage so they know where they are (the students have a blackline of the journey.

I have a student who avoids the difficult, and colouring the stages would help them recognise where they are in our learning journey.