Monday, April 7, 2008
Dr. Tim Tyson - Monday morning keynote at TIE08
Dr. Tyson's presentation was rich in story, and his stories reflected our current point in time. From his great grandfather to his current students, Dr. Tyson challenged us to think about our perspective of school. One resource he mentioned is Daniel Pink's book, "A Whole New Mind" and how that book makes the point that our schools are preparing students for work and workplaces that no longer exist. He also shared some intriguing statistics like one-third of the U.S. workforce is made up of independent contractors. While Dr. Tyson shared his vision of school and what students should be doing, I was wondering how the student products of his project-based learning might look. I was happy he shared several of his students' two-minute videos. (These can be viewed at MabryOnline.org and iTunes.) The films showed the students' questions about the issues they were studying...including child slave labor in the Ivory Coast and stem cell research. The questions posed in the videos were rich and deep. And showed the students had grappled with REAL and COMPLEX issues. What I'm left wondering is where the learning went from there...I will check out the videos when I'm not rushing to my next TIE Conference session to find out the answer to that question!
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2 comments:
I come to TIE for the classes but I stay for the speakers. Last year with Will Richarson and this year with Dr. Tyson, it keeps me hopeful that education will change eventually! I am also glad that innovators like these two didn't give up in disgust at some point in their careers. School districts don't make it easy to use the technology we know our kids need, but with voices like Dr. Tyson and Will Richardson talking to Boards and Adminstrators we can be hopeful it will get better.
Throughout his keynote and breakout session, Dr. Tyson referred to podcasts teachers and students were developing at Mabry and other schools. He also directed the breakout session audience to check out what's happening on iTunes U where 900 different universities are offering podcasts of their courses for FREE. Dr. Tyson said that this is revolutionizing education as we know it. I am so excited to check out iTunes U (and take some podcast courses!), but I'm also excited that podcasting is not difficult to do at all! I learned this at the Podcasting for Educators In-Depth Session I attended. Anyone can do it. Check out the Podcasting 101 Breakout session, if you're interested in learning how to podcast.
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