Live it to Learn it - The Line in the Sand
July 4th, 2008So I’m home from NECC 2008 - what a huge place of learning it is. My new job asks that I summarize and share my nuggets of truth gained from the conference when turning in my receipts for reimbursement. While most sessions on the big ideas/issues/concepts are not new, I do find that attending updated presentations on some of the same themes not only reinforce the ideas in my mushy brain, but also re-invigorate me to press on in my duties as an instructional technologist. These sessions can be inspiring.
It’s almost like that fateful day at the Alamo when Col. Willam Barrett Travis drew that famous ‘Line in the Sand‘ and said: “Whoever is with me to the end, step over that line.” It seems as though it is coming to that in education. The US now ranks 17th in the world when it comes education. It’s time to draw that line in the sand (deep link to David Thornburg’s Welcome to the Communication Age) and get ourselves going again as world leaders in education, technology, and big ideas.
Do you agree? Do you find yourself sometimes attending sessions you may have already heard before to gain a boost, or do you always choose something new? Many of these ideas have been hashed and rehashed over the past few years - so why do many of the sessions cover the same things? Do we feel a real need to keep reinforcing the ideas over and over — or is it just that enough people have yet to hear the message(s) and we need to keep the trumpet blaring until all have heard? Will these sessions help us to draw the line in the sand for our peers?
I find myself doing a balancing act of sorts — attending some cutting-edge sessions and some big picture/conceptual idea sessions that I might have heard before. What do you do? I’d love to hear your feedback.
Anywho, here’s my very short synopsis of my travels at NECC 2008. The majority of the sessions I focused on dealt with these two broad sub-topics:
- The 21st Century Student: Today’s students learn differently than previous generations.
- Technology integration in the classroom: How to create an engaging learning environment.
These topics go hand-in-hand. In order to start creating an engaging, 21st Century learning environment, we must first understand our students and how they learn. More and more research supports the idea that today’s students don’t learn the same way as previous generations. Today’s students have been bombarded with audio-visual information since they left the womb. This constant bombardment and exposure to TV, multimedia-rich information, and video-gaming has created a different kind of learner than we’ve been teaching for the past 100 years.
In essence, today’s brain research shows a re-wiring of our young people — so much so that the 21st Century student learns much differently than we did. They are not content to sit and consume mass quantities of information from simple lectures and presentations. They crave being a part of their learning — so much so that they almost need to live it to learn it.
Students are now increasingly connected to their world and their peers in so many different ways than before. Cell phones, iPods, and computers have become the de-facto communication hardware amongst our students. Social networking tools like MySpace, Twitter, Skype, and IM are the new airwaves for student communications. Kids no longer tie up the home phone from dusk till dawn, talking with their peers. Instead, they are globally connected via wireless communications - texting their friends, and leaving messages on MySpace or Twitter to stay constantly connected — from anywhere on the planet. We need to recognize these changes and differences, then exploit them to re-engage students in the public K12 learning environment.
If we, as educators, don’t change our methods of teaching/delivery, our students will soon go elsewhere for their learning. (It’s time to draw the line in the sand!)
Here are the sessions I felt most helpful to me:
David Warlick and David Thornburg (SETDA conference on Sunday) - both talked about the current crisis of lack of skilled United States graduates in the math and engineering job arena. The US currently ranks 17th in the world in graduates from these programs - and if the decline keeps up, the US will no longer lead the world when it comes to the creative/design aspects of new and emerging technologies.
Konrad Glogowski, University of Toronto - Blogging Communities in the Classroom:
This session was on how to create an effective learning experience for students by utilizing blogging technology. Great session with real-world examples.
Ian Jukes - Digital Literacy in the Age of InfoWhelm:
Great session on how brain research has confirmed that students today are wired to learn differently than previous generations. Session held out that the students have changed in ways they learn best - so the way we teach these students must also change.
Hall Davidson - Teaching with Cell Phones:
Incredible look at how cell phones can be utilized in today’s classrooms. Real world examples, audience participation - Hall rocked the house!
Will Richardson - Live Web TV for the Classroom:
This highlighted several ways of live-broadcasting video technologies for use in the classroom. He also partnered with D. Jakes, E. McIntosh, and S. Dembo in this presentation. A bit more cutting-edge than most. It prompted me to get more excited for my first attempt at Ustreaming. All in all, my first attempt was a good go of it.
Gail Soriano - Interactive Lesson on the Rainforest:
Great model lesson on using interactive white boards to engage students in their learning. I’m going to model this for our teachers and instructional technology integrators.
So all in all I found NECC 2008 to be a great mix of new ideas and reinforcement of many ongoing educational conversations. I’d suggest that if you get the chance to attend next year, do so. Definitely use the Planner before hand to get a grasp on what your battle plan will be. Hopefully next years session layout won’t have me running back and forth between the Convention Center and a Hotel (Grand Hyatt) like a madman.
And one more thing: Did you get to stop by the Alamo? If not, I hear there is a kickin’ re-creation built in Second Life (when I’m done with this post, I’ll be visiting!) The website also has some nice educational materials and if you need photos or addtionals resources, the folks at the Alamo told me: “just email us and we’ll get you what you need.” What a nice bunch of folks they have over there! Thanks Sherri! 
