Passing the Torch and A Whole New Mind
Passing the Torch
Barton Creek Elementary welcomes Janice Friesen, our new CTC.
I have been the CTC at Barton Creek since 1998. During the past 2 years of 2005 and 2006, I served as CTC at 2 schools, Valley View and Barton Creek, due to cuts in funding generated by the Robin Hood School Funding plan that Texas adopted many, many years ago. After some legislative work this past session on school funding, and an ever diligent and hard working Eanes Education Foundation, our district is beginning to see some glimmers of daylight and is able to fund full time CTCs for every elementary school.
And… we were lucky enough to find Janice for Barton Creek. She brings a wonderful expertise in professional development, global learning, and web 2.0 tools to the staff at BCE and to our group of EISD CTCS and Information Services.
Janice, I look forward to working with you and I know you will enjoy the staff at BCE. They are some of the best teachers you will ever work with, and zany… fun…creative… caring….I could go on. But safe to say, you will be a great fit. They have been my family since 1991, when the school first opened, and I was a 2nd grade teacher. Now, I pass the torch to you to carry on. Enjoy!!!
A Whole New Mind
One of the many reasons I knew we were going to love Janice, is that at our first meeting she held up a copy of A Whole New Mind, by Daniel Pink and asked if I had read it. This was on my summer reading list and it was perfect timing when she gave it to me.
It’s a quick read but full of lots of food for thought for educators. Even though he only makes a few direct references to education, the whole book describes how we need to think in order to educate our students to be successful in the Conceptual Age. He characterizes the type of learner and worker that will be needed in the very near future. He very clearly and enjoyably explains the shift from the Information Age to the Conceptual Age.
As educators, it’s our job to look at these characteristics and think of how we, even in elementary school, can remodel our learning environments and expectations to generate these, or to provide a fertile environment in which they can grow.
I found myself thinking, after I completed the book, that our good old (since the 80’s) solid theories of Higher Order Thinking Skills, working at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy, and the LOTI, are some of the ways we can maximize opportunities for our elementary students to begin thinking in Conceptual Age terms.
These exerpts from pages 2 -3 are a good peek at the basic concept of the book and of why these educational theories came to mind:
“Ours has been the age of the “knowledge worker,” the well- educated manipulator of information and deployer of expertise. But that is changing……..we are entering a new age. It is an age animated by a different form of thinking and a new approach to life…..the “right brain” qualities of inventiveness, empathy, joyfulness and meaning- increasingly will determine who flourishes and who flounders.”
His premise is that survival will depend on doing something that can’t be done overseas cheaper by a knowledge worker, can’t be done by a computer, and that satisfies society’s needs for the more meaningful, empathetic, and artistic experiences.
I believe that keeping these solid, basic, higher order thinking skills as the basis of what we offer our kids in the classroom, will promote the develpment of the skills it will take to survive in the Conceptual Age.
But here’s the fun part…we can do this now with a whole new, evolving, fun, set of technology tools- from document cameras and projectors, to Google Maps, to wikis, to Multiple User Virtual Environments, to interactive flash websites, etc.
What kinds of new tech tools can we use to do this? It pretty much goes without saying that in order to keep the students engaged (and ourselves), and in order to create an effective learning environment, we need to be using materials that are relevant and meaningful to them (possibly not a textbook, but maybe an Aggregator, as Will Richardson suggests?)
I have an idea or two for a starter, and am hoping to hear from others, your ideas would very vaulable to me ( and hopefully others) for the upcoming schoolyear.
Bernie Dodge’s webquests have long been recognized as activities that keep the students engaged on the highest levels of Bloom’s taxonomy. These can now be combined with tools like global learning experiences, wikis, and Google Maps to enhance the experience.
Tellecollaborative and Global learning activities,provide meaningful experiences for our students in our classrooms as well as enable them to compare these with experiences of others around the world. There are a growing number of these out there, but the few that come to mind are:
Dr. Judi Harris Virtual Architecture
More ideas on meshing our new tech tools with higher order thinking skills?
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