Our Children are Not the Students Our Schools Were Designed For: Understanding Digital Kids

Today's world is not the world we grew up in; and today's world is certainly not the world our children will live in. Because of the dramatic changes our world has undergone, today's digital kids are not the students our schools were designed for; and our students are not the students today's teachers were trained to teach.

This keynote examines the effect digital bombardment from constant exposure to digital media has on digital kids in the new digital landscape and considers the profound implications this holds for the future of education. What does the latest neuroscientific and psychological research tell us about the role of intense and frequent experiences on the brain, particularly the young and impressionable brain?

Based on the research, what inferences can we make about kids' digital experiences and how these experiences are re-wiring and re-shaping their cognitive processes? More importantly, what are the implications for teaching, learning and assessment in the new digital landscape?

How can we reconcile these new developments with current instructional practices particularly in a climate of standards and accountability driven by high stakes testing for all? What strategies can we use to appeal to the learning preferences and communication needs of digital learners while at the same time honoring our traditional assumptions and practices related to teaching, learning and assessment?
Participants should prepare to have their assumptions about children and how they learn seriously challenged.

Literacy Isn't Enough: Digital Fluency in the Age of InfoWhelm

Powerful technologies and information systems have precipitated a parallel change in the knowledge base. Facts become obsolete faster and knowledge built on these facts become less durable. InfoWhelm is causing societies to reorganize their knowledge and breaking down the boundaries between conventional disciplines; and is fundamentally altering the very fabric of our society - affecting the way we work, play, communicate, how we learn, and what's important for us to know. Yet schools in their structure, operation, curriculum, pedagogy and assessment models remain largely the same as they have for decades.
This presentation outlines exactly what InfoWhelm is, and why it's essential that students develop the essential 21st Century skills - to be Informationally, Technologically and Media fluent, not just Literate. Being fluent involves learning a transparent, unconscious, internalized process that's as natural as riding a bike. A focus on fluency rather than literacy requires educators to fundamentally rethink current assumptions about teaching, learning and assessment.

Learn how Informational, Technological and Media Fluency can be taught in the same structured manner that Mathematics, the Sciences, Social Studies/History and Languages are taught - embedded at every grade level, in every subject area, the responsibility of every teacher throughout the entire school experience.

Participants will be introduced to a number of tools, techniques and strategies that promote Informational, Technological and Media Fluency, including the 5As. - being able to ASK good questions; ACCESSING data from a wide range of high tech and low tech sources; ANALYZING and AUTHENTICATING data in order to turn it into knowledge; APPLYING that knowledge within the context of real time, real life tasks or simulations of those task; and finally being able to ASSESS both the process and the product.

Born To Be Wired: NetSavvy & Communication Literacy for an Information Age

The Information Age is upon us! The development of the World Wide Web as a research tool has brought the Internet with all its flavors of information- text, photos, audio and motion video - into the public consciousness overnight. As the Web has exploded into our consciousness as a full-fledged information medium, telecommunications has suddenly gone from being a specialized thing done by propeller heads to something that is taken for granted. While the sheer magnitude of available resources is beyond our comprehension, we ain't seen nuthin' yet!

But at the same time, just because this multitude of resources is widely available doesn't mean that we are more knowledgeable or any the wiser. It simply tells us that there is more information available everywhere for everyone. As a result, people of all ages are beginning to suffer from InfoWhelm, which is leading to widespread informational dysfunction.

This presentation carefully examines IDD (information dysfunction disorder) and proposes a remedy - InfoSavvy. InfoSavvy is a multi-level, integrated and interdisciplinary, problem solving information literacy framework based on the 5As of information fluency - ASKING questions, ACCESSING data, ANALYZING & Authenticating information, APPLYING that knowledge to solve real-life problems; and ASSESSING both product and process. Participants will come away from this session with a clear understanding of how to teach information processing skills in a structured, organized and progressive manner. This presentation is based on the new book Net.Savvy: Building Information Literacy for the Classroom published by Corwin Press and co-written with Anita Dosaj and Bruce Macdonald.

Change is Hard, You Go First

Are you feeling overwhelmed with the challenge of change? Are you or your organization spinning your tires? Are you convinced that you'll never be able to help move your colleagues or institution from here to there? Why is it so difficult to change personal habits, to modify long-standing professional practices, or to help individuals and organizations beyond a fixation with the here and now? And how in the world can we possibly address the future needs of our children if we can't even get ourselves out of first gear?

This entertaining presentation explains, in very simple terms, why as individuals, so many of us are white knuckle about change. It then outlines five practical strategies that you can use to jump-start the process of getting you and your organization beyond your existing paradigm of life to where you and they need to be. Whether you're inside or outside education, whether you're early on in your career or already counting down to retirement, if you are frustrated with the challenge of facilitating change on a personal or professional level, this session is definitely for you.

The Future Ain't What It Used To Be: 15 Ways to Be a Smarter Teacher

Have you noticed that education has become a full contact sport? For examle, when is the last time they took something OUT of the curriculum? How do we cope with a world in which teachers are expected to do more and more with less and less? How do we, in the Age of Standards and High Stakes Testing, provide ALL students with the essential skills and knowledge and habits of mind that they will need to survive, let alone thrive in the age characterized by the tyranny of the urgent?

This presentation outlines 15 simple strategies that educators can use to transform the learning experience while at the same time addressing the new emphasis on teacher and administrator accountability.

Into Tomorrow: Moving the Educational Debate

In the digital age, why do children continue to be herded into large buildings? Why are subjects fragmented into "periods" lasting from 45 to 60 minutes, regardless of whether the topic is simple or complex? Why are learning activities often unrelated to student interests, purposes and meaning? Why is testing still primarily limited to paper/pencil tests that largely ignore genuine performance? It's time for us to carefully examine the assumptions that underpin schools today and move the educational debate. It's time to reinvent schools and move education to a deeper level.

This presentation examines the real education reform that will not succeed until the adults in charge of education create a new mental model for learning that embraces the future. The answers are already there. But educators need to carefully reconsider how to reinvent teaching, rethink learning, and refocus assessment and evaluation in order to better engage students in the meaningful, complex learning experiences. they will need to operate in the new digital landscape.

Beyond TTWWADI (That's the Way We've Always Done It)

It's amazing how we can embrace doing things the way they have always been done without examining where the original decisions came from. We just accept a pre-existing mind-set because it's the path of least resistance. For example, the mind-set for the structure of our schools is based on decisions that were made in the days of the horse, buggy, kerosene lamp, factory floor, and production line. It's a system in which most students are still released for 3 months each summer so that they can harvest the crops based on some European agricultural cycle. This is classic TTWWADI (That's The Way We've Always Done It).

Accepting this preexisting mind-set of what schools look like is easy because they haven't changed that much in a long time. Most educators embrace the entrenched ideas about schools and learning without thinking. However, the world is no longer the stable and predictable place it once was. Technology is fueling an engine of change that is making the world a moving target. What is startling is that the rate of change is picking up speed with each passing day. Radical new developments in technology are having increasingly profound implications for life as we know it. In this environment of change, it is critical that we begin to question the rationale behind TTWWADI in our schools.

This presentation examines the development of our current mind-set for what schools look like. It traces the source of many of the foundational assumptions we take for granted in public education. It then looks at some of the key areas of technological development that are putting pressure on schools to change and explore the implications these developments have for what new skills and habits-of-mind we should be emphasizing in our schools to prepare students for life in the 21st century.

We will examine the power of TTWWADI and discuss the difficulties we face in shifting people's ideas to a new vision for schools and learning. Finally, we will suggest a number of ways educators must change in order to keep up with a world on the move, a world that is forcing us to face a fundamental question about the nature of education: Do we prepare them for the world of tomorrow, or the farms and factories of yesterday?

From Gutenberg to Gates to Google and Beyond: .EDU meets .COM

As Gutenberg's printing press ignited the Renaissance, computers, the Internet, networking and now Google are igniting the Digital Renaissance. Emerging technologies will have a profound effect on the near and distant future of education. Fundamental change will happen whether schools, as learning institutions, embrace it or not because kids, teachers and parents will be using digital tools and accessing the Internet from home, at night, and outside of the purview of the school. They, rather than our traditions and traditional assumptions about learning and assessment will ultimately influence the direction of schools and learning.

What happens when the people outside of education who are building information infrastructures start effectively leveraging the immense power of new technologies to deliver instructional opportunities to the YouTube and MySpace generation? What will education look like as we make a major shift in the who, what, when, where, why and how of teaching and learning which will be a direct result of the emergence of the Internet of a full-fledged commercial medium? And where is Google taking us?

This presentation asks participants to reconsider the future of education as we move from Gutenberg to Gates to Google and beyond. Co-developed with Ted McCain.

Into Tomorrow: Looking at the Extreme Future

It is said that those who live by the crystal ball shall eat crushed glass. Invariably when futurists make predictions we can be certain of two things. First, in many cases it will longer than we predict for some things to happen. But conversely, when they happen the impact will be far more pervasive than any of us can imagine.
This presentation is about the extreme future 10, 15, 20 or more years out. This is not a crystal ball, Ouija board future, but an educated and informed look ahead at the good, the bad, the ugly, the scary, the beautiful, the terrifying and the sublime.

Participants will be given an overview of the Extreme Future: the new Energy Age, the new Innovation Economy, the future of globalization, Moore's Law revisited, the new Age of Communication, Biotechnology, Nanotechnology, Neurotechnology, the new workforce, longevity medicine, tomorrow's climate, weird science and the future of the individual - and then be asked what the Extreme Future holds for the way we work, the way we play, the way we communicate, the way we learn and the way we view our fellow citizens.

Windows on the Future Revisited: New Schools For the New World

By now, most people have realized that the world is no longer the stable and predictable place that it once even just a few short years ago.There are many who say that the changes in the next 5 years will absolutely dwarf those of the last 50 years.

What impact will this changing world have on education? What will learning look like? How will learning be assessed? What skills in learners and educators will be most highly valued? And how can educators design effective learning environments in a world of accelerating change?

By taking a time machine 13 years into the future, this presentation explores the shift in curriculum and thinking that will be necessary to equip learners for success in the 21st century, and identifies what this signifies for education and educators. In a time when the primary focus increasingly seems to be on accountability, standards and high stakes testing, how can schools prepare students to be effective learners and educators to be more more effective teachers in a fundamentally different world than the one we grew up in?

Participants should come prepared to have many of their present assumptions about education challenged. Counseling will be provided. This presentation is based on the award-winning book, Windows on the Future, written by Ted McCain & Ian Jukes and published by Corwin Press.

Teaching For Tomorrow: New Visions For Teaching and Learning

In an education system that emphasizes standards and high-stakes tests, is it realistic or even possible to encourage students to think, explore and develop their own understanding? Learn how schools can develop a research-based constructivist model to encourage students to search for understandings - while at the same time still have student excel at the tests. This presentation focuses on a fundamental shift in the basic paradigm of teaching that is required to prepare digital students for the Communication and Information Age. It provides a pragmatic look at current teacher practices and explains why they are becoming increasingly out of synch with our rapidly changing world. It then asks how we can teach effectively in an age when new technologies cascade onto the new digital landscape at an astonishing rate and identifies the principles and processes that transcend these new technologies.

Participants will come away from the presentation with a clear understanding of how to address learning standards and improve test scores to meet both curricular goals, as well as strategies that will prepare students to meet the new realities of the 21st Century. Included is an overview of the 7-layered curriculum model (content, process, tools, school to career, school to community, school to home, and contiguous assessment),the 5A's as well as a variety of inexpensive and free resources that can be used to to support the transition to this new model. Participants should come prepared to have many of their present assumptions about education challenged. Counseling will be provided. Co-developed with Ted McCain.