I had the distinct pleasure of sitting next to Marco Torres at dinner last night here in the beautiful Poconos (where the leaves are at their peak color). We’re at an event for Region 4 schools in New York City where Alan November gave the keynote yesterday afternoon, I got my turn this morning, and Marco is up tomorrow. Both Marco and I are working with small cohorts of teachers over the three days to immerse them in digital storytelling and blogging respectively, and it’s already been a great learning experience for me.
Our dinner conversation with members of the Region 4 leadership spanned a wide scope that included everything from the political roadblocks to real school reform to standardized tests to the challenges of inner city schooling. Really interesting stuff.
At one point, Marco said that we need to help our students become “Judge Judys” of information. And he also mentioned that over 50% of teachers in this world are under the age of 17. Amazing.
Looking forward to some live blogging tomorrow morning.
technorati tags:marcotorres, alannovember
Interesting stats about teacher age, as one of the side conversations here in NZ is one possible barrier to bringing our schools into the 21st C is the aging teacher population 63% 40+ age groups. I guess for all the reasons you talk about in your recent post Teaching what we don’t know.
Having said that just as many young teachers i know who are “digital natives” are just as reluctant to integrate ICTs in the classroom as their older colleagues. Where are these 17 year old teachers??? I know they must be our own students – i know the kids i work with teach me something new everyday 🙂
Probably our greatest untapped educational resource is our students. When teachers allow themselves to and be taught by the students both profit from it.
‘To teach is to learn twice.’
Maybe I misunderstood, but I took that to mean that 50% of kids don’t have teachers, therefore they’re educating themselves. Not really a stat on teacher age.
I do agree that we have much to learn from our students and teachers need to be less afraid to admit they can learn from them.
I too was at the Poconos Conference, and it was the mot exhilarating experience I’ve had in a while. I like Will’s clickability factor. I went online and plugged in my name. On the firt page (1-10 hits) I didn’t see anything. But then I added an old school where I worked and had created a website, and sure enough it came up, and under that (hit 11) my resume came up. My resume was posted on Monster a year or two ago. Hahaha, I’m glad to know I too am clickable. Thanks to Will, Marco and Alan for a great Region 4 Tech Conference. Bless you guys.