Lee Crockett

Featured Keynote Programs

Carl Sagan once said that our society is deserving of citizens with an acute awareness of how their world works, and that is more necessary than ever in today’s interconnected world. InfoWhelm and the rise of social media have given us online environments that can be exciting and entertaining, but also unpredictable and sometimes even dangerous. As such, today’s digital citizen must be guided by the principles of leadership, accountability, fiscal and personal responsibility, environmental awareness, and global citizenship. In Digital Citizenship, we take an in-depth look at the model citizen in the age of social networking. You’ll learn what the defining characteristics of the digital citizen are, the 6 primary tenets of effective digital citizenry, and how students can develop a code of ethics that will help them learn mindsets of conscientious and responsible behavior, and ensure their safety and security in the online world. This session is based on the book The Digital Diet: Today’s Digital Tools in Small Bytes, and the upcoming book, Literacy is Not Enough: 21st Century Fluencies for the Digital Age, from the 21st Century Fluency Project.

The vast expanse of the online Information Age has presented us with a powerful range of new digital media that have become as common as traditional text, and far more impacting and thought-provoking. The chronic bombardment of digitization in our everyday lives has called for a whole new thought process geared towards harnessing its unlimited potential, and decoding its often complex messages. Beyond Text to Media Fluency is all about the fluency skill needed to become proficient at both. Businesses are continuing to make efficient use of digital platforms to enhance sales and reach new levels of clientele, as are students to boost the experience of learning from an ordinary task to an exciting and meaningful journey. Using the two facets of media fluency defined by the 2 L’s of Listening to decode messages and extract and analyze their significance, and Leveraging the most appropriate media for a message by considering many crucial factors, we can benefit from today’s digital media in our schools and workforce in ways never before dreamed of. This presentation is based on the upcoming book, Literacy is Not Enough, from the 21st Century Fluency Project.

Our society has been irreversibly affected by a new phenomenon in InfoWhelm—an unparalleled access to a wealth of online information, never before seen or heard of. Learning has truly become a lifelong pursuit, and it can happen anytime and anywhere in our Information age. But how do we determine good from the bad, interpret right from wrong, and distinguish complete, accurate, and usable data from a sea of irrelevance and digital inundation? The skills to help us best understand and make use of the wealth of knowledge at our fingertips is essential to life and success both in the classrooms and workforces of the 21st century. The presentation InfoWhelm and Information Fluency looks at the fluency skill that helps us to extract essential knowledge, verify its authenticity, and to perceive its meaning and significance. You’ll learn about the aptitudes that help to discover and collect data and to explore it thoroughly, using the 5A’s—Ask, Acquire, Analyze, Apply, and Assess. This presentation is based on the upcoming book, Literacy is Not Enough, from the 21st Century Fluency Project.

Powerful technologies and information systems have caused facts to become obsolete faster, and knowledge built on these facts to become less durable. InfoWhelm is breaking down the boundaries between conventional disciplines, altering the very fabric of our society, and affecting the way we work, play, communicate, view our fellow citizens, 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. In 21st Century Fluencies for the Digital Age, you’ll learn why it's important that students develop essential 21st-century fluency skills to operate in the new living, working, and learning environments of the 21st century, and how these skills can be taught in a structured manner at every grade level and in every subject area, and be the responsibility of every teacher throughout the entire school experience. Based on the upcoming book Literacy is Not Enough: 21st Century Fluencies for the Digital Age, from the 21st Century Fluency Project

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 think, search, and discover—and still have those students excel at the tests. The New Learning Process covers a fundamental shift in the basic paradigm of teaching that is required to prepare digital students for 21st century life. It looks at current teacher practices, and explains 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. You’ll come away with a clear understanding of how to address learning standards and improve test scores to meet both curricular goals, and strategies that will prepare students to meet the new realities of the 21st century. This session is based on the books Understanding the Digital Generation: Teaching and Learning in the New Digital Landscape, and The Digital Diet: Today's Digital Tools in Small Bytes, from the 21st Century Fluency Project.

Because of digital bombardment and the emergence of the new digital landscape, today’s youth process information, interact, and communicate in fundamentally different ways than any previous generation before them. Meanwhile many of us, having grown up in a relatively low-tech, stable, and predictable world, are constantly struggling with the speed of change, technological innovation, and the freedom to access the overwhelming sea of information online—all defining characteristics of the digital world of both today, and the swiftly-approaching future. Strategies That Work provides a comprehensive profile of several core learning attributes of digital learners, and the core teaching, learning, and assessment strategies that can be used to appeal to their digital lifestyle and learning preferences. You’ll gain a clear understanding of various research-based strategies to optimize learning for the digital generation in the new digital landscape. This session is based on the books Understanding the Digital Generation: Teaching and Learning in the New Digital Landscape, and The Digital Diet: Today's Digital Tools in Small Bytes, from the 21st Century Fluency Project.

The world is no longer the stable and predictable place that it once was even just a few short years ago. There are many who say that the changes in the next five years will absolutely dwarf those of the last 50 years. What impact will this have on education? What will learning look like, and how will it 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? This presentation takes you on a time machine 13 years into the future to explore 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. The Emerging and the Extreme will show you just how schools can prepare students to be effective learners, and educators to be more effective teachers, in a fundamentally different world than the one we grew up in. Based on the new book, Living on the Future Edge: Windows on Tomorrow from the 21st Century Fluency Project, this presentation examines what learning, teaching, and assessment will look like in the new digital landscape.

In today’s digital world, we are witnessing the evolution of an incredible and turbulent new age. It’s the age of disruptive innovation—an age where every part of society is experiencing a complete upheaval due to the chronic and pervasive nature of change. Our schools, like our businesses, communities, and families, must constantly adapt to such conditions to thrive. The Age of Disruptive Innovation examines disruptive innovation, the changing nature of the workforce, identifies the critical 21st-century skills that are not being addressed by our current educational model, and outlines how we can effectively engage learners so that they can perform exceptionally well on exams, while simultaneously learning the critical 21st-century fluencies needed to excel in both school and life. This presentation, based on our new book, Living on the Future Edge: Windows on Tomorrow from the 21st Century Fluency Project, provides a sense of how education can come to realize the long-term benefits of adapting to our current state of societal progress, and how our students will ultimately benefit.