Executive Perspective
Harnessing Kids’ Tech
Fascination
by DANIEL A.
DOMENECH
I
am intimidated by people like Alan November whose fingers glide over
their
computer keys and in the process go to
websites that offer the answers to all
the
questions that would otherwise go unanswered.
I do e-mail
and an
occasional PowerPoint presentation. I am
proud of the fact I now can do e-mail
on my
BlackBerry as well. That’s the extent of my prowess in technology.
Daniel A. Domenech
Jillian, my 17-year-old high school
senior, is another story. She sleeps with
her iPhone
under her pillow. If it were waterproof, I am sure that she would
bathe with
it. She does incredible things with her MacBook, from videos to post
on
YouTube to the content of her Facebook pages. Getting her to do her
homework
is a challenge, but getting her to turn
off her tech tools and go to sleep is an
even bigger
challenge.
This is the message that November, Keith
Krueger
and other presenters at our AASA Seattle
Summit in midsummer conveyed: Education
is missing
the boat by not taking advantage of the love affair between our kids
and
technology.
Personal Panic
I was a
young
superintendent
on Long Island,
N.Y., when, in 1978, I bought the first set of Commodore PET computers for our
schools. You could play Space Invaders on it, but mostly you had to learn to
program the darn thing to get it to do anything. High school courses focused
primarily on learning programming language. Few could afford to buy a Commodore
for home use and the power of the Internet had yet to be
unleashed.
Marge Runkle on 11 Dec 09Cloudworks is a social networking site for finding, sharing and discussing learning and teaching ideas and designs. A Cloud can be anything to do with learning and teaching. Each Cloud is 'social' in that it is possible to have a conversation around the Cloud. A Cloud could be: a short description of a learning and teaching idea, information about resources or tools for learning and teaching, detailed learning designs or case studies of practice or a question as a starting point for a discussion. Clouds can be aggregated into 'Cloudscapes' associated with a particular event, purpose or interest. For example you can have Cloudscapes associated with a conference aggregating Clouds about conference presentations or tools and resources referenced. A Cloudscape can be set up for a workshop where Clouds might include workshop resources, tools or activities. Cloudscapes can also be more general for example to stimulate debate about a particular teaching approach. Clouds can be associated with more than one Cloudscape.