Some assorted reflections on a busy first full workshop day in Boston where giving two presentations in three sessions left little time for blogging. I’ve had to resort to reading the HitchHikr feed to catch up on what’s been going on at a conference I’m attending. Sad, I know.
- The keynote by Marco Torres was phenomenal I thought. And I loved the message, which was basically to tell educators that we have tools now that just about every type of learner can flourish with, and we need only to find the creativity within us to make it happen. The examples of student work he showed were nothing short of amazing, and worth sharing to every educator audience out there. His kids come from the most undereducated and poverty stricken areas of LA and yet they are succeeding in multimedia. The big question that we’re going to have to deal with is whether we can teach the fundamental literacies through the media that kids are most motivated and driven by. Steve Dembo blogged the session in full.
- Got to meet Darren Kuropatwa, finally, but didn’t get to see either of his sessions. (And we’re presenting opposite each other tomorrow, so I’m going to miss out totally. Bummer.) Looking forward to spending time with he and Steve and Tim Stahmer and the rest of the blogging contingent on the Boston Harbor cruise tonight.
- At the end of the day wrapup, Alan handed out “clickers” to the audience and then got some quick responses to some meta questions. The majority of the crowd answered that governments and schools “own the learning” right now, but when asked who should, it was almost unanimous that students should. We also found out that there were quite a number of bloggers in attendance, and that there actually are some schools that don’t block IM, filter Wikipedia, or frown on blogs. What a concept.
One last little tidbit of shameless self-promotion. Sara Kajder who is here presenting on literacy and digital storytelling (see Steve’s blog) came up to tell me that the state of Kentucky (where she teaches) has purchased 2,000 copies of my book, one for every technology integrator in the state. How cool is that?
More “meaningful” blogging today, I hope…
Will-Those student projects from Marco Torres are GREAT! When you get a moment, can you leave a note about how these were made (the animations) they’re fantastic!
I concur with Curtis – those samples are outrageously good! Yes, the tech is cool (and I too want to know how the animations were created), but what’s best about the movies are the story lines. The stories kids need and want to tell make the piece. When I teach digital storytelling 60-70% of the time and effort goes into working through the writing process, 10% is presentation skills, the rest is tech – there are the fundamental literacies!
Will, congrats on the book sales! It’s the best Ed Tech book I’ve read in 5 years! My web site linked off of blogs will soon be a blog! Thanks.
I bought and read your book. Kentucky has made a very smart move ;->
Hi –
I attended an addtional session with Marco “Turning Classrooms into Learning Studios”
he show a video “digital students @ analog
schools” His students had graduated and made a movie about their colleges experience, they are teaching in 20th century fomat (lecture, notes, not engaging students). So, they met online an put togeter a movie. Marco did not have the link in class but I found it http://homepage.mac.com/dvchelo/page1/page3/page3.html
The level of creativity is amazing, notice the credits at the end using iChat the students (Jim, John, Juan, Chung and Chaim)
This movie summed up the message at the conference and what Marc Presensky stated “its all about engaging the student”. Watch the video! Marco did not plan on presenting the video but realized at the conference it was important to get the message out!