Drawing on ideas and themes from Ian’s best-selling book of this title along with his experience of working with young people and educators around the world, this interactive session will explore why world-class is the only standard for education, why the democratisation of knowledge has to be matched with the democratisation of learning and why lunging at the first question that comes into our heads will make us better learners.

Bring out the best in people, by challenging them to think different – see this video on ‘Thunks’

Mental limbering up makes for more effective learning [Is that why I have to springclean before I write?]. James Clay queried this, as he did with the need to avoid the word brainstorming.

What state do students walk into your classroom (online or offline… I kept flinching at the use of real/virtual, but then Ian’s not a technologist )

Studied Business School, Durham University: Your attitude counts (aptitude/study also counts)…

The Great Educational Lie: ”Do well at school and you’ll get a good job”

Dyson – said – A* = you’ve shown you’ve got a brain – now go away and use it.

Others = ‘it doesn’t matter’ ‘get the best education you can & keep on learning’ – school didn’t work for you, but you still have as much right to success on this planet.

One to watch later…

Reference to ‘BRIC“, Goldman Sachs research:

We now have a much flatter world … geography doesn’t count any more for some of us (digital economy). – employers have 5 x as many people to choose from – but our students are going into competition with 5 x as many people who have more experience … need to work more towards being ‘world-class’ rather than good enough.

Thomas L Friedman: World is Flat: fungible jobs; from the chat: the world is spiky

Why do we need creativity – for so many of us in school is waiting to be told what to do – and how to do it well.

Robot Doctors: Medical Robots; Robotic Surgery; Robot Doctor

Nominet: Young People’s Use of Search Engines

Google offers democratisation of knowledge/learning – so our job as educators is to add value to that experience – needed more than ever – unless you’re a bad teacher!

Picasso: Every act of creation requires starting with an act

of destruction.

Gabi Witthaus:

The knowledge management hierarchy goes: data -> information -> knowledge -> wisdom

Sometimes there’s so much teaching going on, there’s no time for students to learn….

Adam Jones (Newcastle University)

difference between information and knowledge: the man with one watch knows the time, the man with two is never sure

YouTube: Ultimate Search Engine.

Think in a way that works for you – Darwin used to have ‘thinking walks’ – a specific route

Sheryl Williams ( Loughborough Uni)

you do need to know what to look for or where to start in google !!!

Sharon Lewandowski

I wonder about the ‘sum of knowledge’ on the net…getting to it depends on the browser you use and how it indexes and its structural hierarchy

Dave Middleton (OU)

This all goes back to this mornings session. We assess learning by assessing how to remember facts. But why remember facts when they are at your fingertips via a smartphon

e.

Elisabetta Lando rsc london

Now brains have freed up more space to use the information/ knowledge rather than expend energy remembering it

Mark Stiles

Whilst personal learning may well be more open and accessible, there is a real danger that we are, espeicially in the west, moving backwards to a world where formal learning is the preserve of the wealthly…

Nathan Cobb (East Riding College)

I do not believe I can “know” everything I need to to do my job now – what is important to me is that I have the ability to find what I need to know when I need to know it – often that is online but it isn’t always – the sheer volume of information available and increasing at an ever faster rate means that to me, while knowledge may be power, it is not everything (and breathe)

Brains don’t work on a straight line – dips & curves, and we need to think about how that affects our concentration, etc.

Chris Thomson (JISC Netskills)

Thinking aloud – at the moment we can rely on the web to be our information store, what about when the semantic web develops? Will we be able to get the web to do our understadning for us as well? What would that mean?

There are probably many problems that we are not able to solve, but which we need our younger generation to do so .. We should not just be training up accountants who are going to be unemployed.

View other teachers teaching = inspiring

Richard Jones

try starting at the end and then work backwards

ckwards with what you are teaching

More links: Using IT to go green; Gapminder; Happy Planet

Are worries that students can tell us what Socrates thought, but can’t think for themselves… what questions does this picture raise for you:

Take right/wrong out of the equation as much as possible… ask questions without a right answer, and then ask why they think that – encourages idea that are lots of different viewpoints, etc…

Big Bang Theory: Shrodinger’s Cat

Think of questions such as “is it wrong to read a newspaper in the store without buying it”… someone then suggested: “is it OK to take a bite from bar of chocolate without planning to buy”

Stimulus (5 minutes) to come up with your own ‘thunks’ – about a journey…these were Ian’s:

8 Ways of Thinking:

As spend longer on thinking – start to push deeper – e.g. start with “how many people live in London?” then get much deeper… Can do f2f, paper notes, Twitter, Skype, etc.. .

Education can’t just be about addressing the ‘known’ things..

Look for more on: http://independentthinking.posterous.com