Discovery Education Speakers Bureau
Supporting the most effective use of technology in classrooms and schools
Supporting the most effective use of technology in classrooms and schools
What veteran teachers suspected the research has proved: 21st Century students are different. With different attention spans, higher IQ test scores, and social networks, their sophistication comes earlier—with a different skill set. There is a silver lining: We can teach this “New Brain” more effectively, more efficiently, more engagingly. We have the technology! Media has evolved and education must evolve to match.
The rapidly changing needs of the business world demand rapid changes in the way we teach students. Restructuring of teacher workdays and budget cuts reduce professional development time to a minimum. The answer: Enhanced use of forums, blogs, wikis, podcasts, twits, and educational communities for teachers to learn new skills with support from peer experts throughout the world. The model for professional development has changed without many of us realizing it or taking advantage of it. The advancement of Web 2.0 makes the opportunities for professional development easily accessible to even the most basic computer users.
In a time when there has never been a greater discord about instructional methods, student learning processes, and the needs of the business world, it is imperative for administrators to provide an educational environment that is conducive to change and adaptation while addressing the concerns of standardized testing and parents perception of what education should be. Administrators are responsible for providing effective staff development and must provide leadership that is directive, facilitative, and nurturing. Learn how administrators can provide systems of communication that are clear, consistent, easily maintained, and limit the impact on classroom instructional time.
If students could be taught using the skills and tools they have today, and teachers provided instruction that worked to meet the needs of the world tomorrow, what would it look like? This session will give a glimpse of what is taking place in far too few classrooms across the world today. Pulling examples from lessons using digital stories, Google Earth, podcasts, blogs, wikis, and many Web 2.0 resources, educators will get a glimpse of what education can look like. Integrating current technologies with instruction will provide increased student motivation, development and use of higher-order thinking skills, and better connectivity with the needs of the world today.
What's the one thing our classrooms have in common today? They are all very different. Students with many different learning styles. Different interests. Different backgrounds. And, different gadgets. How do we address the needs of today's learners? This session will draw upon real-life examples (including a legendary school duck) as we explore ways that we can use media and other technologies to get students interested in the content and engaged in meaningful learning experiences.
Teachers used to threaten that if students didn't behave, it would go down on their permanent record. While there was no such record in the past, there is now. Students are leaving a trail of their online activities behind them that will last far longer than they ever might expect. This presentation delves into specific actions that students are engaging in now that have long term consequences for them and how we, as educators, can guide them to the right path..
For only a sliver of time in human culture has learning meant decoding the written word. Learning means assimilating information in a way that matches our wiring: responding to the terabits of information in motion and sound. Technology brings education access to the transformative visual tools of an image-based society--- a move closer to the way we truly learn. Follow with a veteran the 30-year path of projects from film to Internet2. Learn what this technology means for your school and what a commitment to simple truths can mean to education.
The cameras in their cell phones make them citizen journalists. The web is their personal library and media center. Social networks give them enormous group expertise. They communicate in real time with the ends of the earth. But can they convince their teachers to let them learn at school with help from such powerful tools? Beyond the "wow," technology provides nearly limitless potential for connectivity and education. See examples of how today's technologies can (and should) engage and teach a new generation of students.
Being part of the "Millennial" generation and the Information/Technology Age is nothing new. It happened before, in the few hundred years surrounding the beginning of the last millennium. This difference now is that our society and educational community are going through that same information upheaval in less than a generation. From the Moors' invasion of Spain to the printing press to Web 2.0, let history help you steer where we might be going.