Thoughts from METC
January 27, 2009 by mlower
For the past 2 days, I have been at the METC tech conference in St. Louis. The workshops so far have been very beneficial! There has been much discussion on how our students need to become proficient with the social networking tools if they are going to become lifelong learners. It is going to be difficult to be successful in this world if you don’t know how to make connections and develop your own learning networks. On Monday my all day workshop was with Will Richardson talking about Network Literacy. Here are a few thoughts from Will that day:
- As teachers, we must embrace and use these tools before we move them into our classrooms. We have to show students by our use of them how important they are.
- Being able to connect to others is a basic skill like reading and math are.
- We assess our students on their information; we don’t teach them knowledge.
- Definition of network literacy: The ability to create, grow and navigate personal learning networks in a safe, ethical and effective ways.
Besides lots of conversation on how education has to start moving towards helping students create and grow their own learning networks, I have been exposed to many new tools and ideas to use in the classroom. More on those later!
Create a free edublog to get your own comment avatar (and more!)
That sounds like a pretty amazing conference. You probably had to soak in a lot of information (as conferences are like that), but you listed some key points from Will Richardson which was really nice. I’ve found to really agree with a lot of his philosophies on Web 2.0. The key points you listed (especially the last three) would be good to share with students before embarking on a read/write web assignment; they will then understand why they are expected to do the assignment. I’m sure you consider yourself fortunate to have seen him speak!
One of the main benefits of this conference was the motivation it gave me to keep pushing these shifts to my district. Everyone there already knows my feelings about technology, but these workshops reminded me that I have to push harder. The 2 from our district who attended with me are working on a wiki to present to our staff with as much material as we can from what we experienced.
I have found the conferences I have attended over the years to be very inspirational as well. Will Richardson’s definition of “Network Literacy” interests me most. The ability to use personal learning networks will provide new generations of students with an exciting path toward life long learning.