NECC 2007: Reinventing Education for the 21st Century (Designing School 2.0)

Wes Fryer and Katie Beedon were presenters for this session. See http://teachdigital.pbwiki.com
I was very eager to hear this presentation because I've intermittently followed Wes' blog/podcast for over a year now.

• It's easy to teach and lead poorly.
• Before you can deal with change, however, you have to see it. Then you have to accept it. Sometimes that's the hardest part--acknowledging and then accepting that the way you've always done business or lived your life just won't work anymore." Lee Iacocca, "Where Have All the Leaders Gone?" (2007)
• This is a challenging world where we need to embrace change.
• There are no "silver bullets" in education.
• Wes showed the video "Teacher Video" and then we discussed in pairs why we thought this was an important video to show to teachers and pre-service teachers. The video challenges us to question the status quo and accepting that it's okay to be different.
• Wes encouraged us to all attend the K12Online Conference in October 2007. It's free and online.
• Web 2.0 allows students to create for an authentic audience.
• "The best way to predict the future is to invent it." Alan Kay
• Levels of change: 1st (requires a little "tweak"), 2nd (requires several "tweaks"), and 3rd (requires transformative change). Unknown author
• Innovative school districts are innovative because they have great leaders.
• We need to ask "what's best for kids," not "what's convenient"?
• Ask "Who are your Yodas?" and "To whom are you a Yoda?" We are no longer limited to having Yodas who are geographically in similar locations.
• We also showed the following video about administrators:
  

I thoroughly enjoyed hearing Wes speak; he is as dynamic in person as he is on his podcast. That said, I didn't gain any new information from his presentation. It was a way of re-addressing the need for disruptive technologies and transformational learning that he's covered well in his podcast.

Katie Beedon worked to assist AT&T-using organizations to collaborate with one another.

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