Don Tapscott speaks out on education -- Keynote for Horizon 2008

a simulpost with TechLearning

Don Tapscott, author of Wikinomics and Growing Up Digital agreed to keynote our Horizon Project and has delivered his keynote address on the wiki.



The students will be interacting and communicating their thoughts via the wiki and Ning. I personally appreciate Don's willingness to bring attention to the issues in education. We need broad support from leaders such as him to get the message out about the need for global collaboration and changing system of teaching.

Some points I believe are very important:

1) This generation is different from the students we've had in the past.

2) The education system has remained basically the same although the students have changed.

3) It is time for educational evolution to match today's students needs AND the need to collaborate globally.

4) Having the students envision the future, as they are with the Horizon Project is IMPORTANT!

He applauds their efforts and I DO TO!

What you can do!

I hope you'll share this keynote on your own blog. (please put this tag at the bottom of your post: hz08_keynote )

We need volunteers!
Encourage educators and business leaders to volunteer as experts and judges -- we NEED YOU!

A netiquette note
And, when you ask to join the wiki or Ning -- state your information to me so I won't have to e-mail you and find out "who" you are. We "check out" the participants we involve in this project. Once you're added to the wiki, add your name to an untaken place!

Peer Review Classroom Sign up going on
We also are actively recruiting sounding boards which are being chaired by

• Kim Cofino- Bangkok, Thailand
• Graham Wegner - Australia.

These are classrooms elementary and higher (even college) that take one class period to evaluate videos and provide feedback. Peer review is part of the new ISTE Nets standards! If you hope to do something like this in the future, you should certainly introduce your school to the idea by taking a class day!

What all of this means
We are seeing increasing interaction between business leaders, authors, and education. We saw it with Karl Fisch's project. It seems to be that the teachers who are able to set this sort of thing up are very often the bloggers.

Blogging gives you power and REACH! You are able to link to and reach out to those within your area of expertise and connect them to your classroom like never before.

Blogging makes us better as professionals but it also makes our classrooms better. Connecting and mass collaboration of educational professionals is in its infancy! Join in now! Every day you wait is another day you miss out!

This keynote is for your students too
It is a level playing field. Because this keynote is delivered asychronously via Youtube, your students have the chance to interact and speak out also. Everything that is tagged hz08_keynote in delicious and technorati will be linked to the keynote page today. (I have to have some items in there before I may link to them!)

Your students have equal opportunity to reflect, discuss, impress, and share what they think about this keynote and the changes in education in a way that WILL BE HEARD.

We need to have our students talking about and understanding mass collaboration. Some classes are going to record podcasts of their 'popcorn" discussions and others will blog -- just tag it to delicious (via diigo if you wish) OR technorati and it will come through our aggregation!

Join in! Everyone welcome!

I cannot write this post without a heartfelt thanks to my co-planner and friend, Julie Lindsay in Qatar, without whose common vision this project would not exist.

tag: hz08, education, inspiration, reform, innovation, societal change, Don Tapscott, hz08_keynote