MEC 2007, ASU Tempe, AZ
Posted by achayefsky on March 14, 2007
MEC My District has sent me to this conference for a number of years and the outcome remains the same! My batteries are recharged, my flame reignited. After the usual year of the usual tech support questions about how to setup voice mail (it is March!), how to safely save documents to the network drive (still March!), how to unjam a printer… it is reassuring to know that out there somewhere – there is a heart of brilliant and talented and purposeful people who have the same goal in mind – educating our students, developing lifelong learners, making students take responsibility (active participation) in their learning!
The students are the easy sell. Podcasts from their cell phones to report current events to their teacher or to complete a homework assignment from the field? Create video or digital stories instead of typing a document or creating a slideshow – the same thing they have been doing since their primary grades – they could do it in a heartbeat – can we? They would become, no doubt, copious producers of content – Web 2.0!! Could we? Is it really any wonder that they are not engaged?
These ideas are not new anymore – just still not in the mainstream consciousness – but they need to be: Digital Immigrant/Digital Native; 21st Century Learning – be not afraid of the brave new things coming our way OH! Brave Fellow Digital Immigrants! They can teach us, we can teach them – COLLABORATION! WEB 2.0!
Here are some quotes on fear that I believe speak to what holds us back from performing at our highest level enabling students to perform at theirs! We must overcome it before we can embrace and move forward – for the kids, it’s all for the kids, it’s always for the kids – so who could say NO!
- Fear isn’t an excuse to come to a standstill. It’s the impetus to step up and strike.
- Every time you win, it diminishes the fear a little bit. You never really cancel the fear of losing; you keep challenging it.
- The first duty of man is to conquer fear; he must get rid of it, he cannot act till then.
