I finally read Will Richardson's book, Why School? It was the first book I read on my iPhone which I think is appropriate since it's a book that inspires us to transform the way we teach and learn. Every educator should read this book.I had the opportunity to meet Will Richardson briefly at Educon 2.4 as he and Gary Stager engaged in a lively education debate. Later, through a Tweet exchange, Richardson and Mary Ann O'Reilly opened my eyes to Google algortithms during a challenging chat a couple of years ago--one that led me forward. Since then, I've had the chance to follow Richardson's work through the words of many via Twitter chats, blogs, YouTube, conferences and more--his impact has served to move education forward by challenging all educators and citizens to better serve students.
As I read, I admired Richardson's ease, precision, and directness--I literally breezed through the book noting multiple ideas that affirm, inspire, challenge, and inform my work.
Rather than restate Richardson's work, I opted to think about how I will embed his words into my practice with greater depth and conviction as I read.
Tony Wagner's words quoted in Why School? serve as an umbrella to how I'll utilize Richardson's ideas in our upcoming spring project. Wagner states, "The world doesn't care what you know. What the world cares about is what you do with what you know." I'll use those words with students as we begin our spring project/problem base learning event.
Next, I'll work with students as I encourage them to, as Richardson promotes, ask big questions, and plan their path." As Larry Rosenstock's quote states, "We have to stop delivering the curriculum to kids; we have to start discovering it with them."
As students and I entertain multiple questions at the start of the unit, I'll work with each child or collaborative group to help them identify one or two real world problems or questions they're interested in for critical analysis. Then I'll help the children plan a path of discovery. Students' paths will include technology, audience, guided social media outreach, maker stations, presentation/portfolio, critique, reflection, assessment, analysis, and more.
I'll query the school system once again about BYOD for tools that matter with regard to students' investigations keeping in mind Richardson's point that schools are the only place where students' own tech equipment is not welcomed.
I will, as Richardson suggests, "transfer power" to the students in guided, developmentally appropriate ways and encourage children to reach out to local and global communities as needed to research and share. I'll learn a bit more about Mozilla Badges and replicate those badges for students' learning gains and mastery. I will also encourage collaboration, and require multimedia approaches for all stages of the project.
I'll steer clear from "delivering old curriculum through new tools" by focusing on students' questions, interests, and passion, and the multiple new tools, strategies, and processes available to us thus replicating real life learning situations. I'll also review and embed many of the strategies I've learned about in my recent work with the Deeper Learning MOOC.
Tomorrow, as a system-wide faculty, we'll watch Richardson's Ted Talk, and then Richardson will skype in to answer questions and share his thoughts. I'm excited to share this learning with my colleagues, leaders, and community members. I'm sure once I listen to Will Richardson, I'll add more thoughts, ideas, and actions to this spring PBL project outline. I'm delighted that this event will bring the world of my PLN into the realm of my school community--an event I look forward to with excitement, and an event that I hope will spur new ideas, innovation, and enthusiasm for the work we do to teach children well.
Note: As I work with colleagues to grow our PBL effort related to this post, I'll add important posts and quotes below:
Holistic Education
"Efficient Knowledge Workers. Learners need to understand how to "locate, access, analyze, evaluate and create knowledge." As children learn, they need to be able to transfer the learning from the school environment to the real world, and this transfer requires the "use of technology at every level.""
