An+Educational+Vision+Worth+Sustaining

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 * Critical Conversations: An Educational Vision Worth Sustaining**

//Conversation Thought Leader: Gary Stager, Consultant, Executive Director of the Constructivst Consortium// //Moderated by Anytime, Anywhere Learning Foundation

Resources at http://www.stager.org/aalf Summer event - Constructing Modern Knowledge - July 28th-31st in NH Reading - Pappert,//

Good ideas are the ones that are hard to sustain - Things need not be as they seem

Three types of laptop schools:
1: The Pioneers 2: The Marketeers (to get in paper) 3: Their Neighbors

Myths
Cost is an obstacle to doing the right thing Cool Technolgy does not always pay off educationally Laptops should be immobile Changing OS represents educational change There is a hierarchy of software Fluency is possible when we keep changing software Kids are incompetent or evil Teachers should get computers a year early 10 year olds need secretarial schools PD works Online textbooks personalize represent progress School should be like a video game Web 2.0 will revolutionalize education The focus should be on language arts learning about access to information
 * Free is the reason for doing something
 * Laptops can cost less than wiring a room to put in desktops
 * Time
 * done in artificial settings, this does not work (GenYes)
 * see what you can do with out an internet connection, use internet for sharing resources.
 * Online collaboration is the magic bullet
 * The power is online
 * Nothing else should change

Kids can do more Create video games - www.microworlds.com, scratch, squeak, toontalk, turtle art, stagecast creator, starlogo TNG, netLogo

Instead of playing sim city, kids can create sim-middle ages Create your own Sketchpad - provides more real background than having Geometer's Sketchpad do it for you.

A good prompt is worth 1,000 words
 * A good prompt, challenge, problem or motivation
 * Appropriate materials
 * Sufficient time

Four ways to use materials
Teach concept (gears, friction, multiplication of fractions) thematic project (factory, amusement park, airport) curricular theme (Identify a problem in...) Freestyle

Monumental vs. Substantial work
Exemplary should be exemplary!
 * Verbal inflation - excited about very little
 * Genre study and variety - the autobiography
 * The Digital video rule (watch it and edit it one more time)

Computer as Prop - Google Earth - Why be excited?

Some things will have to go to make this happen

Start with the kid and build up from there. (Not network down) Less us, more them

Laptops make learning personal, democratizes knowledge. The more we do to take ourselves out of the process, the more we can benefit the kids.

10 ten things to do with a computer

 * 1) write a novel
 * 2) share your knowledge
 * 3) answer tough questions
 * 4) make sense of data
 * 5) design a video game
 * 6) build a killer robot
 * 7) lose weight
 * 8) direct a blockbuster
 * 9) compose a symphony
 * 10) change the world
 * 11) be a mathematician, or scientist, or engineer, or luthier, or...

Articulate the value in what you're doing! What is the benefit of any given technology - even the classroom? Reduce the focus on what doesn't need to go on in the same room.