Summary of November 11, 2005 Meeting

On November 10, 2005 the Alabama Best Practices Center’s Powerful Conversation Quarterly Meeting took place at the Junior League building in Birmingham. One hundred seventy educators representing fifty-six schools were present for the official launch of the program funded by Microsoft’s Partners in Learning Grant. Allyson Knox, from Microsoft’s Partners in Learning Program attended the meeting and spoke to the attendees about Microsoft’s role in promoting the learning skills needed by students in the 21st century. She also gave a brief overview of the grant itself and how schools in the state can participate.

The facilitator for the meeting was Sheryl Nessbaum-Beach, one of the key consultants managing the ABPC’s 21st Century Schools Project in Alabama. She gave an intense and interesting presentation, sharing information about some of the new, cutting-edge technology tools that schools and teachers will be using in the very near future. One of the main ideas in her presentation, called “Keeping Up With the Net Generation,” is that educators need to face the fact that the students they are teaching are for the most part using technology daily that schools are just now learning about. She stressed the need to teach students the skills they need even though the jobs they will have haven’t even been invented yet. The challenge is to equip students with the skills to handle the information and the technology safely, appropriatelyand ethically—all while we learn how to use it ourselves. She defined the terms ‘digital natives’ and ‘digital immigrants’ and then asked us to consider which category we might fall in.

Sheryl then discussed the characteristics of 21st Century Learning and the Net Generation and talked about how students’ ability to “multi-task” and fearlessly and routinely perform operate all sorts of technological operations impacts schools’ instructional programs. She highlighted the digital disconnect between students and the technology typically offered in schools and discussed how this impacts student achievement.

Sheryl then demonstrated to the participants some of the new technologies being used by students and detailed the educational applications and benefits of each. She covered everything from the use of iPods in the classroom and how they allow students to create their own methods of organizing and storing information, to the use of blogs and how they encourage students to write and share information. She demonstrated the use of RSS feeds and how they can help teachers sort through and access the incredible amount of information on the web and collect only what they need. She also demonstrated how a math teacher in Canada is using blogs and other new tech tools. She talked to him using Skype, a free, online telephone service. We were able to listen to him in real time while viewing his blog, which is maintained by his math students and used to demonstrate their understanding of concepts being taught in class. Sheryl demonstrated web-based social bookmarking tools such as del.icio.us and FURL, which are used to help organize web page bookmarks and web research. She also discussed other web sites such as flickr and mappr, which are interactive social networking sites where users can store and access photos and information.

Sheryl then discussed the timetable for implementation of the 21st Century Learning Grant and how schools and teachers will be involved. She pointed out that many sorts of activities would be taking place ranging from a series of on-line learning experiences, to actual on-line workshops with scheduled follow-up sessions, to the 21st Century Learning e-newsletter that will be sent to all participating schools. Sheryl concluded with a challenge to all those in attendance to try some of the tools that were demonstrated with the idea of making instruction more meaningful and relevant to all students. For more information about the tools and ideas presented, visit Sheryl’s Resource