Leyden High School District 212 did an amazing job of hosting and telling their story of embarking on 1:1 last school year. Each day there was a keynote presenter (2 from the U.S., Jaime Casap/@jcascap and Chris Lehmann/@chrislehmann, and 1 from Canada, George Couros/@gcouros), teachers and administrators presenting how-to's, and, the best part of all, on the last day a student panel.
My take-away from the conference was far more than how-to implement 1:1 devices to students. The take-away, for me, was about changing our mindset as to how we work together with our students to learn, reflect, and grow. A large part of our learning today should be about collaborating and sharing locally and globally. How are we providing our students with the opportunity to think and question deeply, interact, and share with authentic audiences from around the world? Learning no longer has to, or should, just take place inside of our school district. An important piece, how are we, the adult learners, modeling this for our students?
As most every keynote presenter mentioned, we are creating 21st century citizens, not just 21st century learners. Most importantly, these students happen to have technology at the center of their world. Why aren't we leveraging this better in our classrooms? Students, physically and emotionally, are not that much different than 10-20 years ago, but the world around them has changed because of technology and the way that they learn is different. How, then, has instruction in our classrooms changed because of 24/7 access to information? What do we need to do as teachers, as adults, to educate them differently than even 5 years ago? We no longer need to teach students information that can be found on the device that they are carrying around with them in their pocket. We need to provide them with the instruction and tools to learn how to find viable information, ponder and question the information, and to use it to better the world. As Chris Lehmann said, "Let's stop asking kids the questions that we already know the answers to."
Here are some of the Tweets from the conference that I collected using Storify. If you should want to read all of the Tweets you can search the hashtag #LHS1to1 on Twitter.
Great job Leyden High School District 212 for a great conference and for your leadership!