Monday, February 7, 2011

Closing Session - TCEA 2011 Google Academy

Notes from the closing session of the TCEA 2011 Google Academy

Professional Development for Becoming A Google Apps Certified Trainer - both in person at TCEA, webinars, and on your own options.
  • Every Wednesday TCEA does a lunch and learn webinar that is free for TCEA members. If you sign up, you can get recordings of the webinars if you can't attend the live session
  • All content from the sessions today will be posted to the academy website after TCEA conference is over. www.tcea.org/google
Closing Speaker
Jaime Casap
Google Education Evangelist
Twitter: @jcasap

Innovation in Education

Education is the silver bullet - Jaime grew up in Hell's Kitchen in New York. His own children have no idea what poverty is and know that college is an expectation for them. In one generation, his family's trajectory has been changed.

Today's young generation is different in many ways. They are growing up with technology all around them. It is part of their every day lives. They are caught in an environment where they can do multiple things at the same time. (That doesn't mean they're good at it though!)

Search is central to students' beings. For example, they walk into a bookstore and go straight to a kiosk to look up the books they want. They have no idea that the world existed before Google. No memory of card catalogs, folks!

The expectations students have for the tools they will be using are very different than previous generations. (Young people don't say "Not another version of the iPhone!)

The founding fathers would be amazed by cars and airplanes if they saw today's world, but they would be very comfortable and familiar with the majority of classrooms today (that's not a good thing, by the way...).

Outside of school, students are increasingly interacting with the world through mobile devices - phones and tablets. We might think it's too small to type on, read on, etc...but it's about the kids, not us.

The New Millennium Learners (NMLs - born 1980 and later) are ready to dive into teamwork and collaboration)

Just because we have devices in the classroom does not mean we are building technical skills.

When the Internet came into wide use, it was supposed to level the playing field. Everyone has access to all the information they need. But, there is so much information, we now need to learn how to search well.

Teach Not Ban - We teach kids how to cross the street, we do not ban cars. We should teach them how to search, collaborate, create good content, and leave a good digital footprint.