Avoiding the Education Dot Bomb
How do we avoid creating an Education dot Bomb?
After several years of frantic speculation in the business sector, much of the Internet hype and bombast has turned out to be more bubble than miracle. The stock market is littered with "dot bombs" and "dot compost." Those leading schools must protect them from similar fates, creating programs with an emphasis upon student learning and information literacy in ways that will show a real return on the huge investments being made. McKenzie offer a half dozen strategies to focus efforts on enhancing student reading, writing and thinking by blending new technologies with classic tools.
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Mixing Metaphors and Media for Best Results
How can schools best equip their students to search for meaning, insight and understanding? McKenzie argues that literacy is the real goal that should drive the installation of equipment, the design of program and the offerings of professional development. Unlike many who focus almost entirely on digital resources, McKenzie argues that we must seek a balance and a blend of analog and digital sources. We must be careful to avoid false dichotomies and false choices. The secret to success is careful blending and judicious balancing.
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Building Good New Ideas
Too much time is spent teaching students to gather information and collect the ideas of other thinkers, according to McKenzie. In this session he demonstrates how to develop the synthesis skills students will need to add their own new thinking when considering any challenging question or issue. McKenzie leads the audience through the steps of an inventive investigation.
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Creating Powerful Questions to Avoid Trivial Pursuit
How do we create questions that are worth investigating? What is the secret to forming powerful questions? How do we teach students to form their own powerful questions along with families of subsidiary questions? McKenzie uses an actual example from a student e-mail message about gargoyles to illustrate the process of finding powerful questions within just about any content area.
