ACTEM07 Will Richardson's Opening

This is the 20th year for the ACTEM technology educators workshop.

Listening to Will Richardson's keynote.

Technology:

changes in politics with YouTube, myspace, blogs as social networks

changes in journalism, the world has instant connection with their cell phone and cameras.

75% of media is shared peer to peer

Prince gave out 100,000 copies of his new CD.

Read Wikinomics!

Not about competition in business about collaboration and cooperation.

Looking at Clustr map, and why do all these folks come and visit Will's blog. All have some connection to the thoughts, the conversations and the thinking. Humbled by the fact that after 18 years in a high school, and then looking at the map, why?

The past 6 years of blogging has provided more growth, than all his course work in all the years.Kids are figuring this out. Look at the size of their classroom.

TakingITGlobal- online community for youth about world issues.

Fanfiction- you can add to the book.

Where kids write and have reviews and connections. doing this on their own. Kids make networks of people who are passionate about their favorite topic.

Who is teaching kids myspace?

Someone needs to model and teach myspace/online presence.

We need to build social spaces and model how to do this.

Clarance Fischer is building spaces for his students.

He has them start at Nata Village in South Africa, ravaged by AIDS and HIV. Clarance has his students blog about this. Nnow they are having students from Nata Village commenting on her blog, one of Clarance's students.

44645, text for google, way to get an answer to every question you need an answer to.

MIT Opencourseware- http://ocw.mit.edu

Need to find the information when you need it, need to know the ways to find the information, all information.

Go to Wikipedia and spend a couple hours digging deep.

How many teach Wikipedia? We have to think differently about what if we need kids to memorize the content.

If we as educators, can not find who owns a website and publishes it, then we are illiterate. We need to teach students how to do this, we need to do this.

How to get teachers to connect to experts from outside the the classroom.

Will's project with Secret Life Of Bees. http://weblogs.hcrhs.k12.nj.us/bees

Sue Monks Kidd, joined his clasroom blog and she answered questions. She taught Will's class more about SLB than he ever could.

YesIcanscience.com Great science project where kids interact with scientists.

Vicki's Flat Classroom Project, exceptional Flat Classroom project.



Radio WillowWeb elementary kids podcasting the classroom news.

Our kids are not waiting for us to catch up. We need to go there with the students.

We need to learn to model the safe, ethical ways to use these tools.Most teachers haven't put the new tools in their own practice. Teachers are just digitizing the old worksheets and putting into the same ole same ole into technology. We need to support teachers in finding new ways for students to collaborate creatively and safely.