Podcast Reflection #3: Moving at the Speed of Creativity

   The particular podcast (Moving at the Speed of Creativity #368) I listened to and subscribed to, presented by Wesley A. Fryer, actually consisted entirely of Will Richardson's seminar Learning in a Networked World - for our Students and for Ourselves which was a part of the Teaching the 21st Century Student conference at the Education Service Center Region 16 in Amarillo, TX which was held Jan. 17, 2011. Fryer speaks very highly of Will Richardson and all that he is doing with technology for the field of education and explains that Richardson undoubtedly is a leader in the adaptation and "transformation of learning along with technology in the education system."
  Richardson, who is an incredible speaker, is highly devoted to complete student immersion into technology in the hopes that it can educate them in ways we have never seen before. He asks the question, how much technology usage in the coming years is going to be driven by teachers? Which, to me, seems like a direct challenge to teachers to stay ahead of their students in the technological race and stay caught up with the leading innovations that pose so many diverse possibilities in the classroom.
  "It's about connections. It's about networks." Richardson wants to know how can we, as educators, help students use the internet, use networks, to their advantage? He explains that, basically, there is nothing our students can't know if they know how to utilize computers. This completely exposes the differences of what you can do face-to-face. He goes on to say, "Change has to happen." It is imminent. "We have to begin thinking about different learning environments. Different ways to learn for our kids...ourselves as well."
  Richardson would like to see 8 Shifts take place which will propel us into what he thinks a more highly evolved technology-based education for students. His ideas are progressive, yet not without their price; loss of privacy being the biggest. It goes beyond that, however. He wants to see more networking and broader communication outside of our "physical space." Sometimes those that are across the globe or country share our passions and we certainly should not rule out the possibility of learning from those people through blogging, twittering, all those internet communication vehicles that are available.
   Last, but not least, we "cannot have a fixed mindset." "No big problems can be solved by big solutions; it is a series of small solutions" which lead to answers. We all have a part in Richardson's ideas, as well as in the system of how we move our students. To reiterate Richardson's thoughts, we must stop making our students wait for their lessons, but let them go out and find resources for what their passionate about online. Schools need to begin encouraging students to do this, as well and begin moving away from what has worked for so long but is now becoming an archaic style of learning, which is textbooks, handouts; the feeding of information at a time convenient for the school. I highly suggest checking out Richardson's notes as well as the full recording of the seminar. It's very eye-opening.

                                                                                       -Joseph Turner