A Norwegian educator visits ISTE 2010 part 3

Last day of the conference!

Had really high hopes for the last day. Was very much looking forward to hearing Chris Lehmann, Science Leadership Academy again. Here is school’s web-page. Was not at all disappointed. Same points as last time (sometimes you need to hear it often!).  Here are some questions he asked us:

What is worst consequence of your best ideas?  How can you mitigate them?  What are the obstacles to this change?  How can you overcome them? He had us talking with the person sitting next to us and that was also very interesting. Other questions to answer are: Who are the stakeholders?  How can they be brought into this vision  What fears do you need to address? How will the student voice be part of the discussion? What I really like is this: We have to be humble by the task – don’t say “i know the answer to this”. Also ideas must live in practice. If you say your school is about innovation or life long learning and you don’t have a policy that shows it. Then you probably only have some teachers who are doing it. Then it probably is happening by luck. We need common language of teaching and learning. I was able to meet Chris Lehman after the presentation and asked about visiting his school. I think it would be a great school to visit for Norwegian educators. Perhaps during ISTE 2011?

Next up was Howard Rheingold, Stanford University with crap detection 101. He promised that we would leave inspired, informed, and ready to both develop and share best practices for Internet literacy and critical thinking with our students. He reminded us of the importance of teaching the students how to search the web and how to find trustworthy websites. He recommended triangulation,saying that by all means start your research with Wikepedia, but check 2 more sources. Take the challenge and join join Howard Rheingold and other noted educators in creating a world-class resource for teaching critical thinking and Internet literacies.

Last presentation Personal Learning Networks: Untangling the Secrets of Getting Connected, my motivation for joining this last presentation was not to learn how to establish a PLN, but to finally see some of the people I really enjoy following on Twitter. Beth Still,  Steven Anderson, Richard Byrne, Cory Plough, Jason Schrage and Brenda Smith.  If you are not following them on twitter I suggest you do so! Fun hearing them today! I tried to cooperate with Richard Byrne last year, perhaps we will manage something next year. Certainly hope so.

That’s it folks. Now I will hit the road and hope to see some great sights like Grand Canyon. Hope to be back! ISTE is worth the trip! Anyone want to join me?