Telling the Computer What to Do

1. Telling the Computer What to Do A brief for student agency in our digital world by Fred Mindlin, Associate Director for Technology Integration, Central California Writing Project, UCSC Presentation to CUE October 26, 2012

2. Words matter

3. What is school for?If you’re not asking that, you’re wasting time and money.Here’s a hint: learning is not done to you. Learning is something you choose to do. – Seth Godin, Stealing Dreams http://www.squidoo.com/stop-stealing-dreams

4. Whatever happened to progressive education?

5. Whatever happened to progressive education?

6. How much time do your students spend with computers? ...and when they’re using the computer, how much of their time is spent creating, and how much of the time do they spend responding?

7. We invest thousands of hours exposing millions of students to fiction and literature, but end up training most of them to never again read for fun (one study found that 58 percent of all Americans never read for pleasure after they graduate from school). As soon as we associate reading a book with taking a test, we’ve missed the point. –Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams

8. Without opportunities for failure, there's no engagement

9. Embracing failure: without the confidence to try and fail, we’ll never foster the creativity of our students. Please describe a failure that you learned from…

10. Connected Learning The National Writing Project's "Digital Is" Web site has a wealth of resources for student-centered learning Nic Askew's Soul Biographies series has wonderful testimonials: soulbiographies.com and sign up for his Monday films!

11. These kids are very high achievers who are not used to failing. Some of them were a little dejected by their less-than-perfect work until one very sharp boy said that he was thrilled with his project no matter how bad it was because he finally felt challenged by a school assignment. My one great lesson, by Deven Black

12. What does success look like?

13. addressing what students want from education: What changes can you make right now?

14. Rather than bubbletests, measure student progress with personal success plans.     Rather than report cards and transcripts, allow students to showcase their learning with an authentic ePortfolio.     Rather than work that only has the teacher as the audience, empower students to do real work that matters to them and has a real audience.     Rather than telling students how to meet learning goals, empower them to drive their own learning. Lisa Nielsen, 5 ideas for responding to what kids want the nation to know about education

15. Leveraging Student Interest

16. Leveraging Student Interest

17. Opportunities to empower students to “Tell the computer what to do” : digital storytelling Web 2.0 collaborative writing Game creation Web design Cool Tools for schools

18. The question is “how our schools’ environments blend–or fail to blend–with the freedom and wealth of the  digital information network.” Thus, “the learning that goes on in the school environment becomes more of an organic process, and the focus of the discussion changes from fixing a problem to growing a solution.” A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change, by Douglas Thomas, John Seely Brown, CreateSpace 2011p.36

19. The importance of student agency: developing personal authority and competence, which comes from solving real-world-relevant problems through authentic self-chosen and directed activities which have an audience beyond the classroom. Co-authoring identity: Digital storytelling in an urban middle school Alan Davis (University of Colorado at Denver) http://thenjournal.org/feature/61/

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