Bit By Bit

(Note: I will be posting reflections on the k12Online Conference in order to continue the conversation, and also to post for assignments connected to the k12Online Course Univ. Credits. The first assignment involves a reflection on David Warlick’s keynote, “Derailing Education: Taking Sidetrips for Learning”).

David Warlick’s keynote really hit home with me: the side conversations are where the learning happens. The “rail” is important, but I’m putting my money on the sidetrips.

I appreciated how Warlick pulled off the road on his way to the University and took us for a walk in the woods. It made me think of Walden and also caused me to make a mental note to try and get off my own “beaten path” soon, go take a walk in the woods, lie down in some leaves, watch some clouds make shapes… take time for reflection.

The k12Online Conference allows for such reflection. It is an elongated conversation that we, the learners, can take at our own pace, help build, and later revisit. Even though there has been much controversy around this conference (see S. Downes), to me it exemplifies the power of Web 2.0 in being a transformational tool: allowing people to learn from each other. Allowing many voices to be published and be heard and allowing for the conversation to guide us… allowing for flexibility and evolution of thought and idea. This “conference” (Warlick says he’s not even sure it should be called a “conference”) is radically different than the traditional conference as it allows for the participants to influence its direction.

When Warlick talks about students “all facing the same way… all being taught to think the same way,” it gives me a chill. How could this possibly work when we really have no idea which way to have the students face? In other words, we are preparing our students for an unknown future… for jobs that we can’t even imagine. If we try to “cookie-cut” our curriculum, and hope that all students fit into it, we are gambling with their future. We must help students to be in charge of their own learning and become individual thinkers rather than process them through learning with a “one size fits all”. I fear that we are allowing for less opportunities for students to direct their own learning through discovering their own interests and being able to take those sidetrips. We work for the standard, in a content-assessed climate, where the value of the process seems to be less important than the end result of test scores.

I’ve been showing my 3rd and 4th graders a picture from the early 1900s of men working in a factory. I’m using it to compare and contrast with what jobs of the future might be like (more on that later when I describe my final project). What startled me was that in several different classes, when I asked students to tell what they thought the picture was of, the answer was a school. Now… why would a picture of an early 20th Century factory evoke the feeling of school for early 21st Century students?

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