Don Tapscott speaks out on education — Keynote for Horizon 2008

a simulpost with TechLearning

Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics and Growing Up Digital agreed to keynote our Horizon Project and has delivered his keynote address on the wiki.

The students will be interacting and communicating their thoughts via the wiki and Ning. I personally appreciate Don's willingness to bring attention to the issues in education. We need broad support from leaders such as him to get the message out about the need for global collaboration and changing system of teaching.

Some points I believe are very important:

1) This generation is different from the students we've had in the past.

2) The education system has remained basically the same although the students have changed.

3) It is time for educational evolution to match today's students needs AND the need to collaborate globally.

4) Having the students envision the future, as they are with the Horizon Project is IMPORTANT!

He applauds their efforts and I DO TO!

What you can do!

I hope you'll share this keynote on your own blog. (please put this tag at the bottom of your post: )

We need volunteers!
Encourage educators and business leaders to volunteer as experts and judgeswe NEED YOU!

A netiquette note
And, when you ask to join the wiki or Ning — state your information to me so I won't have to e-mail you and find out “who” you are. We “check out” the participants we involve in this project. Once you're added to the wiki, add your name to an untaken place!

Peer Review Classroom Sign up going on
We also are actively recruiting sounding boards which are being chaired by

These are classrooms elementary and higher (even college) that take one class period to evaluate videos and provide feedback. Peer review is part of the new ISTE Nets standards! If you hope to do something like this in the future, you should certainly introduce your school to the idea by taking a class day!

What all of this means
We are seeing increasing interaction between business leaders, authors, and education. We saw it with Karl Fisch's project. It seems to be that the teachers who are able to set this sort of thing up are very often the bloggers.

Blogging gives you power and REACH! You are able to link to and reach out to those within your area of expertise and connect them to your classroom like never before.

Blogging makes us better as professionals but it also makes our classrooms better. Connecting and mass collaboration of educational professionals is in its infancy! Join in now! Every day you wait is another day you miss out!

This keynote is for your students too
It is a level playing field. Because this keynote is delivered asychronously via Youtube, your students have the chance to interact and speak out also. Everything that is tagged hz08_keynote in delicious and technorati will be linked to the keynote page today. (I have to have some items in there before I may link to them!)

Your students have equal opportunity to reflect, discuss, impress, and share what they think about this keynote and the changes in education in a way that WILL BE HEARD.

We need to have our students talking about and understanding mass collaboration. Some classes are going to record podcasts of their ‘popcorn” discussions and others will blog — just tag it to delicious (via diigo if you wish) OR technorati and it will come through our aggregation!

Join in! Everyone welcome!

I cannot write this post without a heartfelt thanks to my co-planner and friend, Julie Lindsay in Qatar, without whose common vision this project would not exist.

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Vicki Davis

Vicki Davis

Vicki Davis is a full-time classroom teacher and IT Director in Georgia, USA. She is Mom of three, wife of one, and loves talking about the wise, transformational use of technology for teaching and doing good in the world. She hosts the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast which interviews teachers around the world about remarkable classroom practices to inspire and help teachers. Vicki focuses on what unites us -- a quest for truly remarkable life-changing teaching and learning. The goal of her work is to provide actionable, encouraging, relevant ideas for teachers that are grounded in the truth and shared with love. Vicki has been teaching since 2002 and blogging since 2005. Vicki has spoken around the world to inspire and help teachers reach their students. She is passionate about helping every child find purpose, passion, and meaning in life with a lifelong commitment to the joy and responsibility of learning. If you talk to Vicki for very long, she will encourage you to "Relate to Educate" or "innovate like a turtle" or to be "a remarkable teacher." She loves to talk to teachers who love their students and are trying to do their best. Twitter is her favorite place to share and she loves to make homemade sourdough bread and cinnamon rolls and enjoys running half marathons with her sisters. You can usually find her laughing with her students or digging into a book.

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3 comments

Anonymous April 11, 2008 - 6:13 pm

very well done….!!!!! thats a good article that you posted….

Julie Lindsay April 12, 2008 - 6:21 am

Vicki, I just watched Don’s keynote on the wiki and again on YouTube. As you know I have been ‘unplugged’ for a week as we traveled through Russia and have a lot to catch up from the past week. I look forward to sharing this keynote with my students and others in the world and interacting with the conversations that develop. This is truly amazing that we can foster systemic-changing outcomes. Thank you for being a cutting-edge educator and friend.

Sallie April 14, 2008 - 1:42 pm

I sent this post to my boss (very cool and quickly becoming a convert). He use to be a high school principal and is now the Director of the virtual high school I work for (our students are in 7 different public high schools) and this was his response …

“OK, as I am trying to work through this I am getting both really excited and really frustrated… excited about the possibilities of getting our kids/teachers into this, and frustrated because 2/3 of the links are blocked by (county he is working out of today) – just tried to get to the “Flat Classroom” link and got bounced back – “social networking/dating” site. I bet I’m lighting up the tech office in (said County) today -been blocked at least 10 times so far…sigh.

So here’s a critical point for you and I to work on… selling this stuff to traditional educators. I think we need to look at writing up something that bridges the gaps. Maybe lets work on something this week – an outline/starting point? Think about it , and catch you later”

So excited by this I can’t stand it :) Am meeting with the tech directors of the 7 different counties we work with later this week … will see how it goes :)

Comments are closed.

The Cool Cat Teacher Blog
Vicki Davis writes The Cool Cat Teacher Blog for classroom teachers everywhere
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