The Building Learning Communities Conference (Alan November's Project) has a number of great videos. For you fans of the Kansas State University Professor Michael Wesch, here is one of his 2010 presentations. Wesch presented at the fall WASDA conference in 2009. It was awesome.
Ok, this post is big-time. I'm not only socially bookmarking this, but it's going into my Chrome web browser too. I'm also emailing this guy for the policies. I agree with him in that none of us have a sustainable way to instate 1 to1 environments. Yes, we have projects, and yes we could do a one-time investment for one to one. But, sustainably? No. The only way to go one to one in a sustainable way that does not place too much burden on the tech department is to allow students to bring their own computers into school. We are already seriously considering cell phones.
Agreed. One question: how will you deal with the limited access students have to the Internet? Will students who bring their laptops to school have more access? For example, I know that I cannot show TED talks unless I arrange with the tech folks to grant access. Same issue with 3G, I think. I admit I don't completely understand how all of this works, but it seems that if I am using my cell phone, I can access sites the school computers can't access.
I am concerned about the way schools currently limit access to the Internet. I know we are trying to ensure our students don't access troubling sites, and at the same time we are limiting them from finding good stuff, like TED.
It's ridiculous that we block TED talks, I know. But that may be a bandwidth issue, not a content issue. Streaming video takes up an inordinate amount of bandwidth, and at times slows down other internet-based programming. As access increases (3G and bandwidth), we will have to embrace filters and firewalls that are more pedagogically constructivist calibrated. McLeod does a great bit on the absurdness of how we block content on the internet. He did this at the WASDA fall conference. The link for all the stuff he did at the fall conference is http://dangerouslyirrelevant.org/wasda
For those of us at the WASDA Leadership and Visioning Workshop, the 1:1 initiative was talked about a lot, not to mention the TED video from Sugata Mitra (Hole in the Wall).
This is the report published by the Wisconsin School Administrators' Alliance in the summer of 2010 (I think). Check out the part on A Visionary Tale on page 9. Hat-tip to Mary Bowen-Eggebraaten for forwarding this piece on to me.
Very nice. AND, as the report indicates, leadership and community need to be included. This means you need the school board to play a role. They are the conduit to the community.
Public education has been down the transformation road before. In some ways we are not inventing anything new here. John Dewey championed experiential learning as the public education system developed a century ago. Progressive educators tried in the 1930s and 1960s to introduce experiential learning into the system.
The grammar of schooling, the deep structure, the notion of "real school" all pull the system back into the status quo. We need to remain cognizant of these dynamics and consider how to address them if we want to see the promise of the ideas contained in this report become a reality.
You have to connect the ideas outlined in this report to the notion of collective impact. I think this idea is key to seeing a different outcome: http://www.ssireview.org/articles/entry/2197/
I want to be clear: I am a supporter of the ideas contained in the Wisconsin Vision report. I also want to be sure we take a realists view of how to make it happen. I do not want to see this effort and the ideas of CESAs 1 and 6, wind up in the history books like past transformation efforts.