TIES09+32

=Featured Speaker Session=

Turning Up the H.E.A.T.: Learning, Thinking and Communicating in a Digital Age
//1:00pm - 2:00pm | Monday, December 14// What are we pretending not to know? Even knowing that the future aches for a new kind of learner, thinker, and problem-solver, all the dollars and time spent on techno gadgets still have changed little more than pockets of classrooms for kids. We need to seek higher ground for our visions and our results. “Turning UP the H.E.A.T.” (Higher Order Thinking - Engaged Students - Authentic Tasks and added-value Technology Uses) can bcome a robust catalyst in accelerating new cultures of learning that will serve the highest interest of our students' capacity to step successfully into a global economy. Going from knowing facts to enduring understandings is not something that can be memorized – it needs to be rehearsed regularly with rigorous inquiry tasks, driving questions, authentic audiences, collaborative problem-solving tools, inventive thinking, and effective 21 Century communication skills. What if rather than trying to teach students problem solving, we actually encouraged them to take on problems that needed solving? Consider a whole-school challenge of playing a modern day “Extreme MakeOver" game developing engagingly H.O.T. use of technology with kids as the winners!


 * Reactions**

Wendy Brown -- This session by Bernajean Porter reminded me to look at the purpose of using technology with my students. She spoke about Being producers, not consumers. She said we tend to use technology to make glorified book reports, rather than using the tools to foster deeper learning. She spoke about having better questions for our projects/units. She also spoke of teaching with JOY! That's my favorite word!

Jennifer Kotsmith-Kraus -- I agree here... even though I pulled lots of ideas out of the conference along with some frustrations for not having the technology at present, I was reminded and humbled with the theme of not letting the technology drive the lesson. It is one of the means for getting the message across, but it is still the teacher that needs to engage and monitor the learning and discovery process.

Greg VonRuden -- I was there as well - I was disappointed. I liked seeing what products they had made, but they didn't get into the nuts and bolts of how they actually did anything. I liked the idea of using a moodle for lesson planning but they didn't show us any of how it worked and didn't even know a lot about what they were doing...