Shift to the Future

Many of us resist change.  We like our comfort zone.  However we are changing constantly as that is just part of living.  One of my co-speakers at the symposium Moving Educational Technology from Enhancement to Transformation held yesterday said that as soon as we speak, we change.  How true.  Change is inevitable so why do so many of us try to resist it? At the symposium I spoke about Transformative Change .  We crowd sourced ideas from the participants on what they can stop, continue, and start doing to increase success in shifting to majority adoption of innovations in their classroom, school, or district.  Y ou can view the audience contribution here along with my co-speakers audience feedback on What Transformation and Ecologies of Learning . Organizations and individuals have a choice to embrace change, grow, and become more than they are today.  Alternatively, they can fear and resist change and ultimately become less useful and potent...

I remember the good old days when I used to have ample time to learn something new.  Back in the late 80’s I was working for the Dept. of Fisheries and Oceans Canada as a Systems Analyst in the data centre of a fishery research facility.  I remember being given a project to plan for and execute, wait for it… upgrading the Fortran programming language on the mainframe.  Wow, how exciting is that.  I took a couple of months to learn about, research, and plan for this change.  Learning and change back then was glacial compared to now.  I remember worrying about a lot of details I didn’t completely understand and made sure to learn everything possible before acting.  Things have certainly changed…  Those of us engaged in the digital world are having to adapt, learn, unlearn, relearn constantly.  Essentially, I now subscribe to the “ fearless learner ” philosophy. A few weeks ago I was asked by the professional development rep for one of our sec...

Back in September I wrote Presentation Dilemma – Powerpoint or Prezi where I wrestled with the art of presentation and the challenge I gave myself to use Prezi.com for one of my next presentations.  After much blood, sweat, and tears (okay, I’m being a little over dramatic…), I did it.  I had a blast delivering “ The Social Networking Experience ” on Oct. 21, 2011 at the Computer Using Educators of British Columbia ( #CueBC ) annual conference. CueBC Social Networking Experience on Prezi I had created a version of this presentation using PowerPoint earlier this year and used it at the BC ASBO annual meeting in May.  Unfortunately SlideShare ( where you can access that version ) doesn’t do justice to the dynamic aspects of PowerPoint but you can get the sense of that version compared to the Prezi version. Using Prezi to present is actually a pretty interesting experience.  The essential nature of Prezi is that presentations zoom in and out, and...

I’m pretty sure that we all have experienced that painful phenomenon “death by Power Point”.  Endless slides filled with bullets of text that the presenter proceeds to read for us because for some reason they think we can’t read it ourselves.  Oh right, the presenter used a 12 or 14 point font because they had to fit all the text on the slide, so actually we really can’t read it!  Yes they may add some multimedia affect by using every one of the slide transitions available at least once to impress their audience.  They may fill their slides with creative animations, as well as funky sound effects, and blinking icons.  Anyone experienced this?  Anyone stayed awake through to the end?  If you’ve done or still do this to others, please read on…  there is a better way! Yes I’m guilty of doing this to others in my presentations early on in my career.  I have been using Microsoft’s Power Point since it was invented. I used to do the typical thing...

We often talk about the importance of parent involvement in their child’s education and in their school.  I’ve heard statistics that suggest about 10% of parents participate in school parent advisory councils.  I wonder what the statistics are for parents being deeply involved in their child’s learning?  From personal experience, my wife Shelley and I were quite involved in our kids (now 23, 22, and 18) learning but that this declined as they grew through the system – they were selective as teenagers in wanting our help and to varying degrees, resistant in sharing how they were doing.  We felt informed and involved when they were young but somewhat in the dark about their progress as they became older.  Well, okay, there were the report card events… Wouldn’t it be great to be quietly and electronically plugged into your child’s school and their learning progress? I presented last week at a District Parent event where about 30 parents attended.  My talk w...

I have never done this before - open source a presentation.  I was invited by our District Parent Advisory Council (DPAC) to present in January to parents on educational technology, the future, and digital responsibility.  Seems like a pretty straight-forward topic hey. So, I am thinking of an outline something like this: Comparing / contrasting of school before technology and school today to show how things have already changed Talk about some interesting technologies that are available today but not necessarily existing in schools, yet Share some possible future scenarios of how technology could change education and create a wow effect Talk about what is happening today in our classrooms and show some interesting short clips that I’ve gathered from classroom visits this past fall of students and teachers using educational technology today Provide some context to digital responsibility and emphasize the importance for parents to know and be involved wit...