A Book for the School Administrators in Your Life

I've known about this for quite a while, but wasn't sure that I could share it with the world. Now I know for sure that I can, Scott McLeod and Chris Lehmann invited me to contribute to a book they're editing about digital technologies and social media. I accepted their invitation, of course, and with Carl Anderson wrote a chapter about online mind mapping tools. This evening I'm happy to share, as Scott did earlier today, that What School Administrators Need to Know About Digital Technologies and Social Media is on its way to the publisher. I encourage you to check out the list of chapter titles and contributors. I hope when the book is available you'll share it with the school administrators in your life.

Social Media and Education

Yesterday, I wrote a post regarding Chris Lehmann's talk at the 140 Characters Conference in New York. Thanks to a few people that commented on that post and some others on Twitter, I found the full video of Chris's talk. If you've never heard Chris speak before, I highly recommend taking the time to watch it now. The video is embedded below. If you cannot see the video, click here.

Beat the Drum Until Everyone Listens

Earlier this morning Chris Lehmann took the stage at the 140 Characters Conference in New York. I've heard Chris speak in-person and via the web about a dozen times over the last couple of years. Although his delivery might change for different audiences, his message has remained the same. I'm paraphrasing but the message is generally, "technology in schools needs to be like oygen" and "In the age of Google, we need to teach wisdom."

As I was watching the live stream this morning I thought, "I've heard this before, why am I watching?" I continue to watch Chris give his message because he's a dynamic speaker and because I now enjoy watching the audience's reaction to his message. Today's audience, both live and on the web, seemed to really embrace Chris's message. The significant thing about today's 140 Character Conference audience is that it was not an audience of educators only. In fact, I'd hazard a guess to say that the audience contained very few professional educators.

So then why do we need people like Chris Lehmann to continue to deliver the same message? Because more people need to hear it. It's easy for those of us who spend a lot of time in the edu-blog-o-sphere to forget that we are the minority of educators, there are millions of educators and other stake-holders who have not heard the message yet. If change is to happen, all stake-holders need to hear the message that Chris is delivering.

Here's the Twitter stream that was going on while Chris was speaking today. It was amazing how fast it was updating. I'm looking for the archived video of his presentation, if anyone finds it, please leave a comment with a link.


Here's the video in which I first saw Chris Lehmann speak.

Chris Lehmann Talks to the FCC

In his latest blog post, Will Richardson links to Chris Lehmann's recent presentation to the FCC. If you're not familiar with Chris Lehmann, I encourage you to read his blog or watch this presentation he gave for Ignite Philly. In this video as in all other presentations I've seen him give both live and on the web, Chris raises some excellent points about the changes that schools need to make in order to best serve today's students. You can watch the video below, but I encourage you to read Chris's own notes about the presentation on his blog.

Ignite Philly Slideshow - Chris Lehmann Presentation

Yesterday, I posted the video of Chris Lehmann's Ignite Philly presentation. Later in the day two people sent me the link to the slideshow that Chris was playing behind him which you cannot see in the video. The slide show is embedded below.
If you're reading this in RSS you may need to click through to view the slideshow.

IgnitePhilly

View more documents from Chris Lehmann.

Technology Needs to be Like Oxygen

Next week is the MLTI Summer Institute. The keynote speaker for the conference is Chris Lehmann. If you're attending the conference and you're not familiar with his work, please watch this video. This video has been around for almost a year now so many of you have probably seen it once. In that case, watch it again, it's worth a second, third, or fourth viewing.


Here are some of things Chris Lehmann said that caught my attention.
1. "Technology needs to be like oxygen."
2. "Good data costs a lot more than we want to spend. Good data is the work kids do every single day, it's not the answers they get on a test."
3. "We teach kids, not subjects."
4. "You want to see what kids have learned, give them a project."
5. "We have one thing left to teach and that is... wisdom."

What are your thoughts about Mr. Lehmann's presentation? Leave a comment on this blog or better yet, register for a Viddler account and comment directly on the video for the whole world to see (as opposed to just the visitors to this blog).

The Best Video on Viddler

Today, I found the best video on Viddler. I actually didn't find it on Viddler, it's hosted on Viddler, I found it on Blogging on the Bay. This is a video of an awesome presentation given by Chris Lehmann about the things that schools need to change in order to help students learn in today's world. I strongly encourage you to watch this five minute video and comment on the things that Mr. Lehmann has to say. I've already inserted a comment and I would love to see what other teachers have to say. (In case you're unfamiliar with Viddler, Viddler's comment system allows you to insert comments directly into the video stream). Below the video are my five favorite quotes from Mr. Lehmann's presentation.



Here are some of things Mr. Lehmann said that caught my attention.
1. "Technology needs to be like oxygen."
2. "Good data costs a lot more than we want to spend. Good data is the work kids do every single day, it's not the answers they get on a test."
3. "We teach kids, not subjects."
4. "You want to see what kids have learned, give them a project."
5. "We have one thing left to teach and that is... wisdom."

What are your thoughts about Mr. Lehmann's presentation? Leave a comment on this blog or better yet, register for a Viddler account and comment directly on the video for the whole world to see (as opposed to just the visitors to this blog). I want to see that video loaded with comments from teachers.