Student+as+Contributor+The+Digital+Learning+Farm

1:00 AM session
Before the days of tractors and combines, farming was a way of life for more than 60% of the population in North America. Today that number is less than 2%. Children who grew up in rural areas made vital economic contributions to their families and communities by engaging in real farm chores. Now it is time to restore the dignity of real student work in our schools. Our students can now easily create collaborative content that contributes to a library of learning resources. Six learning jobs will be outlined: Tutorial Designers, Official Scribes, Researchers, Global Communicators, Learning Documentary Producers, "Real" Problem Solvers. Explore ways to make student work meaningful, highly motivating, and consequential to the world around them.

Presenters: Alan November - November Learning

 * Very cool site!! **http://wiffiti.com**
 * "You could add technology all day long without improving learning."
 * "Instead of asking what technology we should have, instead we should ask What job should we have?"
 * Most teachers do not have the right information to teach well; students don't have the right information to learn well; teachers and students do not have the right relationships to be the best they can be
 * **Information and relationships!** These are key to transforming education.
 * Harvard: Project 0 (http://pzweb.harvard.edu/): Project Zero is an educational research group at the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University. Project Zero's mission is to understand and enhance learning, thinking, and creativity in the arts, as well as humanistic and scientific disciplines, at the individual and institutional levels.
 * Have to get past memorization and on to understanding!
 * Teachers must have the right information right activity and use the right feedback style to help students learn
 * **Any delay between doing work and getting it back will not improve learning**
 * Physics teacher (award winning, MIT retired prof, teaching in Newark) gives 15 problems every day **in class** using an immediate feedback system; NO HOMEWORK; has 25 times the state average in AP B students. **Clean information flow.** Youtube video of this prof: From Questions to Concepts: Interactive Teaching in Physics http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lBYrKPoVFwg&feature=PlayList&p=EB6CA4285B43B56A&index=0
 * **ALL LEARNING IS SOCIAL!**
 * This is a control issue, not a learning issue
 * **Every teacher is a learner, and every learner is a teacher**
 * **End technology planning; change to information and relationship planning; what is teaching, what is learning?**
 * We have grossly underestimated what kids can do
 * High Tech HS in San Diego (with highest standardized test scores in CA): What are the most difficult to learn concepts in your curriculum area? Kids get this list the first day of class; ask them to find and put together resources to help teach these concepts
 * http://jingproject.com Free download
 * **In tech, pedagogy trumps technical training! You MUST have kids there!**


 * **We need to:**
 * 1) Globalize the curriculum! Starting in K, every teacher finds a classroom in another country to work with. Students come out of elementary with experience with 8-12 different cultures. First tool to give to elementary teachers: Skype.
 * 2) Have several students as notetakers in every class; take them on a Google doc and provide them to all students
 * 3) Engage kids in coming up with solutions
 * 4) Reconsider CONTROL!


 * Math: http://www.wolframalpha.com/** Will show solution and steps to the solution for any problem!!!

**Go to the ning for more info: http://njfearless.ning.com/**