I’m thrilled to say that Will Richardson is coming to our campus for the day tomorrow to share with our staff.
One of the reasons I am excited about this opportunity is because of what he calls butterflies. He’s interested in those possibilities about teaching that get you so enthused that you have butterflies in your stomach as the ideas start flowing and connecting. When working with students, aren’t those the best moments, too–when students start connecting ideas together and the class just flows?
A couple of months ago, Will directed readers of his blog to this quote from Chris Lehman, principal of the Science Leadership Academy in Philadelphia:
It’s really not about the computers. School 2.0 is older than that. School 2.0 is the tradition of Dewey. School 2.0 is born out of the idea that active, engaged, constructivist learning will lead to active, engaged students and people.
That is what gives me butterflies–thinking about how we can help students become more active and empowered participants in their own education. It feels like we are moving as a campus towards some important conversations.
I’ll be interested to see what the day brings.
2 responses so far ↓
Carolyn,
I came across this post while reading Scott McLeod’s Dangerously Irrelevant. I had the opportunity to hear Will speak at Chris Lehmann’s school two weeks ago, and I can attest to the butterflies. Leaving the school, which I unfortunately had to do after only one day, my colleague and I spoke the entire ride back to New Jersey about how we could implement and when we begin.
Between the timeliness of Will’s ideas and the nature in which they apply to us first as learners and second as teachers, I came away ready to begin helping my staff decipher the myriad content available to them on the web. Plus, I better understood the need to teach my students how to begin to decode the information they are presented with.
Hope everything goes/went well.
Cheers.
Patrick,
I have to say that the day’s session was definitely galvanizing.
Surprisingly to me, the thing that has really taken off is that people here got fascinated by RSS and the possibilities of using that themselves as learners, and also of using it with students.
Hope your efforts go well also!
Leave a Comment