Educating the Dragon

As I have been asked to talk to the staff at school on Learningatschools 07 I have taken some time to reflect on David Warlick and Jennifer Corriero’s message along with Owen Alexander’s thoughts on the trends of youth today. We need to tell a new story, the old one is just that. We need to give our kids the best possible start for if we don’t we’re in trouble, regardless of which way you cut it.

1. Let’s assume that all our kids are hot-wired like so many of the kids today are. They are having to ‘power-down’ as the cliché goes when they have to come to school. Their 1000 decisions a minute has turned into 3 per hour. Not good. Are we challenging their thinking? No Are we directing their learning to engage in the digital economy or simply to sit on the fringe, on the dole watch sky sports and playing Halo4. why can’t our kids be ones designing the game, creating that alternate universe? With our sit down, listen up, follow the rules attitude we setting them up to be fruit pickers Watties packers, mashers or mincers. What happened to shooting for the stars and landing on the moon? Lets take a long hard look at these kids futures. The jobs that many of them could potentially get have not even been created. The kids in my class will retire in 2065. Its gonna be whole different world out there then.
2. Ok take lets take a different tack. Let’s assume they are not wired. Some of these kids don’t get access to breakfast at home let alone internet. If they don’t know stuff about the possibilities we can view it in two different lights. Firstly we could say “Hey let’s give them a basic education cover the 3 R’s tick the boxes and move them out Boy’s /Girl’s High let them worry about the future. Or we could say, if these kids are going to get any step up, assistance, helping hand, its going to be from us, the school. We have a primary responsibility for preparing these kids for a their future. Its not a future that we can see right now, not like back in the day, when  I could look at my dad going to work and see my life.  Theirs is future of possibility and wonderment, if they are prepared for it.

So many kids want out. They see the rugby players and the netballers and the movie stars and they think that’s the route to a brighter future. They don’t see the couple of geeks having sold Youtube for $1.65 billion US.

I was born in 1975, graduated in 1993. Back then the world was full of boomers- The boom went from 1945 through to 1968. That’s children being born. By the time I graduated all the jobs were gone. Even the teaching profession had a glut of staff. I remember going for several interviews where they had 65 job applicants per place. I was a baby bust- Tail end of the boom. All the jobs are take.

Well let’s go on 30 years the Net-Generation peaked in 1991.  Since then the birth rate globally has fluctuated. Our kids today could well be looking for a job in the Net-Bust era. What’s going to be the impact on them? Few jobs. They are a going to have to work smarter AND harder to beat those Net Generation kids with years of experience under their belts.

Whichever is the scenario 1 or 2 for our kids we have to act. How we go about it will look very different depending on those children’s access to the Net. The Net is opening up a whole world of possibilities out their, gaming and chat rooms is only the beginning. What are we going to do about it?

These figures are correct to the best of my ability. If you know better please comment.

Latest update from the world of ICTPD Flaxmere…..

• Flaxmere ICT conference will be held on the 1 Nov so put it in your diary now. Not sure yet as to how it will run, and the breadth of the audience (geographically now) so if you want to come leave a comment and I’ll find out more.
• Flaxmere is having a kids conference, where the children will have opportunity to share some of the things they have been doing this year with the interactive whiteboards, skype, wikis, blogs, digital movie making, etc etc. Not sure who the keynote speakers will be for that, but again you’ll know when I know.

Well done Russell, if it were your idea, the kids conference is genius because at the end of the day its all about what they are learning and their educational journey. Good on you.

I bet David Warlick or Vicki Davies would think this is a great idea. I wonder where in the world something like a ‘kids ICT conference’ has happened and what it looked like.

Listen to this cast here

I was reading David Warlick’s School 2.0 blog yesterday and as I cycled through the streets of
Hastings I began to give it some more thought. He states that Web 2.0 is old hat and that everyone knows about it. Well know he only just visited NZ but I’ve only heard about Web 2.0 six months ago, and the vast majority of people I speak to don’t really know much about it even if they have heard of it at all.

School 2.0 is the really the implementation of Web 2.0 within the classroom and school community. Its taking a serious look at technology teaching and gearing to what is happening now. Gone are the days of the formal technology lesson. As Don Tapscott discusses in his book ‘technology is only technology to those born before its invention’. Today’s young people don’t need to learn technology they simply need meaningful context in which to apply it.

Global information is available at the push of a few keys. In fact you don’t even have to push any keys at all, some smart programmer has come up with a way of the relevant feeds coming to you. I’m looking forward to watching a video of David Warlick’s presentation on RSS/Aggravators.

I’m still catching up with some as Chrissy, just the other day taught me how Google reader works. And I’m loving it. All my favourite bloggers are writing direct to me now. Well that’s what it feels like. I even got an invite to a live podcast thanks to coolcatteacher and my Google Reader. 

Still lots to learn. I’m hoping to set up my flikr account soon and I already have one for audio but I’d be blowed if I can remember the name of the site, let alone the password I created at the time. Hey Ho.

This was so cool! I just have to blog about it.

Chrissy and I had meeting tonight. We skyped each other because we were trying to get our talk and write wiki up and running. So we had that page open to as we discussed how to embed RSS feeds into our Wiki. It was the session I missed at Learning@schools with David Warlick so I was a little non-plussed. But as I added and made amendments to one part of the site chrissy was on another and then we discussed our changes as we went along. I managed to capture some of that conversation but homelife encroaches. Help required to upload .wav…anyone

Skyping on Vimeo

Thanks Rachel for your assistance. if I’ve stuffed it up… let me know.

I’ve begun to read ‘Growing up digital by Don Tapscott, as recommended by both David Warlick and Jennifer Correiro. But I must confess that even as I read the first few paragraphs my mind hit overdrive, and as is my way I began processing all over again the thoughts and ideas I had heard about telling a new story and the Net Generation. I thought about the kids in my school, in my class. I thought about the trouble John Key got himself into over the ‘underclass’. In
New Zealand, you see there is no class system. It is a classless democracy with the shining bright lie that, in fact there is a class system, doesn’t work in the conventional sense but it is there all the same.

I digress….

“…there is a dirct relationship between family income and access to computers and the Net. This correlation also exists between the higher- and lower-income schools… our research shows that the digital divide is actually widening, not disappearing. As the new technology trickles into poorer neighbourhoods and schools, the better of children are leapfrogging others- getting not only better access, but a wider range of services, faster access, ther best technology, and, most importantly, increasing motivation, skills and knowledge. This not only exacerbates the fluency gap but also the gap in different economic classes’ capacity to learn and have successful lives. Have-not become know-nots and do-nots.”

David spoke of his schooling and how 80% ish of his class went to work in the mill to do repetitive work, closely supervised. It got me thinking about what are we preparing our students for, are we assuming, and grooming them accordingly, they will be working at Watties. Yes these are Net Gen kids but to be honest, because of their socio-economic position are we not in danger of ‘writing them off’ in a “Look at their dad to see their future” sort of way.

Funding is different for decile 1 schools, and rightly so. But I ask the question, is it enough? If we are hoping against hope for these kids to be ‘successful’, whatever that looks like in the future, we’d better be supporting them in their learning Web 2.0. For whatever their future holds, straight up, it’ll be measured in gigabytes.

Those key competencies are great, and they have their place, just like the subjects, but there is a whole lot of digital literacy et al. out there that needs to be grasped and utilised if these kids are to be Life-long learners.