Beyond Cut-and-Paste: Engaging Students in Making Good New Ideas
In this presentation Jamie outlines the prime strategies suggested in his new book by the same title. He begins with the need to replace topical research with inquiry that matters, challenges that require students to make answers instead of just finding them. He stresses the value of original thinking and proposes ways to grow the synthesis skills of students so they are capable of making up their own minds and inventing smart solutions to irksome issues and problems.
Managing the Hands-on Laptop Classroom
Many schools have underfunded professional development to support teachers as they consider the best ways to use new technologies with students. The PD they do offer is usually about driving the software and equipment rather than effective instruction. In this session, Jamie outlines many of the moves, tactics, tricks and strategies required to win attention and student success in hands-on laptop classrooms. He argues that pedagogy does matter and that PD should focus on how to manage such learning environments.
Teaching Media Literacy in an Age of Wikilobbying, Spin, Tabloid Journalism & the Photoshopping of Reality
How do young people learn what is happening in their world when the media has turned dramatically from the reporting of news to a focus on scandal, celebrity gossip and disasters of various kinds? In this presentation Jamie gives examples of spin, Wikilobbying and the photoshopping of reality while providing an overview of how schools might make media literacy an important element in the curriculum.
Skills for this Century
Many groups have put forth documents outlining skills they see as especially important during this new century characterized by new technologies and many pressing social and ecological challenges. Jamie presents an overview of key documents such as the New Zealand Curriculum and curriculum statements from Australia, Canada and the United States to highlight the most promising and the most difficult of these new century skills. He also points out important skills and attitudes missed by these documents. Finally, he calls upon the audience to consider the professional development required to help all teachers address such goals successfully.
Flickring Heights - Using Digital Photography to Spark Student Invention
Jamie shows how the taking and the editing of photographs with digital tools and software can help students clarify what it means to see, to capture and to report things with a fresh perspective. He suggests engaging students in taking a daily photograph similar to the 365 projects on Flickr and shows how such a daily challenge can transfer benefits into other domains such as writing, thinking and research.
Designing Great, Quick, Demanding Lessons Mining Digital Riches
Jamie shows the group how to build wonderful lessons that require a blend of synthesis, evaluation and analysis but are quick and easy to construct.
Studying Complex Concepts such as Beauty, Truth and Courage in Depth
Students are rarely challenged to dig down deep in order to create rich definitions of complex ideas. In this session Jamie shows how teachers can use a series of digital explorations to deepen students' understanding of such concepts. Students learn that dictionaries usually pay short shrift to complex ideas, and they even learn to improve the definitions they encounter.
Why We Still Need Libraries and Librarians
Many school leaders around the globe who rarely do research themselves are busily disarming schools by laying off trained librarians and replacing them with aides or simply shutting down the school library. In an Age of Information, this kind of staffing amounts to intellectual disarmament, but many have been seduced by vendors to think that information literacy is a minor matter in what they call a "Digital Age." Quick to embrace the false claims of artificial intelligence, these leaders are doing the young a big disservice, as Jamie illustrates in this hard hitting presentation that will please some and anger others.