The Green Cup

Today was Ian Jukes day at the McDowell County Schools 21st Century Learning Expo in Beckley. I experienced a couple of disappointments. One was that the lighting in the arena at the Beckley-Raleigh County Convention Center was pretty bad – and that lowered the quality of the video below. The other was that Ian was quite as irritating as I expected him to be…

Those were my only real disappoints of the day. And to be honest, I probably didn’t find Ian as irritating as most people. After all, with me he’s preaching to the choir. Sure, I have plenty of room to improve technology use in my classrooms. But I understand (and accept) the need for change, and I get that the scope of the change that is coming is probably beyond my grasp to comprehend.

Ian took us through a number of the handouts available at his website. He walked over some of the same ground that I heard covered by Steven G. Feifer at the WV Reading Research Conference back in March. Neuropsychology, brain plasticity, and changes in the brain that can result from changes in our experience. It was nice to hear it confirmed from a second source.

I won’t rehash for you in this post things Ian said today. (He was in front of us for over four hours.) I may revisit his ideas down the road in my blog here.

Ian did something I found reassuring. He placed traditional literacy skills and math skills on equal footing with the need to develop technology fluency and critical thinking skills in students. In my personal experience, it’s not always clear to me that people who speak on 21st Century Learning have that commitment. I was in a discussion someplace else recently on the subject of “digital literacy” and I said that the sue of that term concerns me because I think it confuses the issue – make people think that reading skills will be replaced somehow by technology. I’m not sure I ever heard Ian use that term: digital literacy. I like his use of the concept of digital fluency. And I appreciated the clarity with which he asserted on a coupe of occasions that technology fluency needs to be taught side by side with the traditional skills of math and reading because those traditional skills remain essential.

The video here is of fairly poor quality. I need to invest in a new camera. I lost 10 to 15 minutes of footage to a corrupted disk. The lighting, I couldn’t help…

The title: Ian used the term “full frontal lecture” a couple of times today in a disparraging manner. It’s true that Lecture is not long a style of presentation that is generally effective with the digital generation we’re education now. But with the images and the sort of engagement that Ian had, I not sure that what he did today really qualified. And, of course, most of us there were digital immigrants…

I need to be committed…

When Ian Jukes spoke in New York City back in February to a corowd of about 500 at the National Association of Independent Schools he said this:

“My job is not to educate you, it’s my job to irritate you.”

They say he succeeded….

You can watch a video of Ian Jukes here…

Next week my wife and I will spend the week at the McDowell County Schools 21st Century Learning Expo in Beckley, WV.

Kicking off the week: Ian Jukes.

The week looks heavy on technology issues – intorductions to Blogger, Wikispaces, Google Tools, electronic student responders, the Thinkfinity site (that replaced Marco Polo), and much more.

In the past this week has been aimed at elementary educators from the county. I think this is the first time that it’s open to everyone.

After seven or eight weeks of vacation, the week serves as something like a wake up call. Beckley is about a 90 minute drive from my house. We need to be there at about 8am — five days in a row. Dressed and with our teeth brushed and all. I guess summer’s mostly over…