David Warlick and Stupid, Stupid Twitter

So, I was so excited to see David Warlick this morning at the MO Bar Digital Citizenship Conference that I figured I'd Tweet the whole presentation. Well, for those of you who use Twitter, you know that sometimes the Tweets don't get through. In all, I have about an hour of Tweets that were never published. Nice.

I'm not sure I care much for the brand of ADD-style micro-blogging offered on Twitter. It's good for real-time blogging, or "live blogging" as the kids are calling it. There are often gaps in the conversations, little control over the feeds, and difficulties with Twitter's server being overwrought with traffic. I think there are some valuable professional applications for Twitter, and Youth Twitter seems like a safe alternative for the kids. The problem is that I don't know that Twitter is reliable enough right now. Maybe somewhere down the road...

But I digress.

Warlick was an entertaining and inspiring speaker for sure, but I felt like I had heard all of this before. What I mean is that I read his blog regularly (sans the last month of strange feed problems) and have heard most of his points before. This does not make his arguments any less valid or the presentation any less engaging. It just means that I've heard it before, agree wholeheartedly, and try to spread the word whenever I get a chance. David Warlick doesn't need buy-in from me.

What did I hear that I already knew about?

Warlick really wants educators to figure out that we are preparing students for their future, not ours. He demonstrated how every tool we currently use in the workplace will become obsolete, if it isn't already. There were many examples in the presentation that showed how kids are using technology to create new information not because they learned it in school or from their parents, rather they taught themselves. There are new literacies emerging that prove today's youth are simply on another track than the rest of us. Advancement of thought and technology is happening at a faster pace than ever before. It's not OK that we prepare them for today using yesterday's methods and materials. Teachers have to prepare students for a future we cannot foresee.

For those of you who just wondered aloud, "How do we do that?" The key is to think about process, not product. For example, Warlick showed a picture of a text message discussion between two teenagers. To the untrained eye, the lines of random letters and numbers were indecipherable. It was revealed that the code had a different meaning. Kids have created their own language with very little effort. He pointed out that the important difference between teaching students how to communicate as opposed to which form of communication is accepted.

We have to work with these emerging literacies as opposed to fighting them. Without our help, kids create their own films using video games, novels written on cell phones, and music videos on their sick days. The idea is to find ways in which we can work with these new literacies as opposed to fighting them in a futile effort to protect old literacies.

There were three things he focused us on to close his talk. The first was that we are dealing with "networked students," meaning that they have access to information and resources at speeds that have never been seen before. He discussed how we are dealing with a "new information landscape" that we must learn to manipulate and use for our own purposes in finding ways to facilitate learning that is meaningful and authentic. The third point is that we are preparing students for an "unpredictable future" for the first time in history. We have no idea what the world will look like 10, 15, 20 years down the road. What do we have to do to prepare our students adequately for that future of the unknown?

It was refreshing to hear, even it was scary at times.

Warlick had only online handouts, which you can access here.

As far as the rest, the conference seemed pretty well-organized around the theme of digital citizenship. My partner and I heard Warlick talk some more about all the digital tools out there to support students as they traverse this new age. Then we led our session on copyright and citing online resources. (It was some riveting stuff, really.) We finished our day with a session on intellectual property and copyright laws. This was fascinating, but the allotted time really didn't allow us to get too deep into the crux of the issue: corporations operating under the guise of artistic and intellectual property rights as individuals.

I'd return to the MO Bar Digital Citizenship Conference again. It was only a one-day event that packed a lot of information into that one day. The subjects covered fit well with the overriding theme. The connections between pedagogy and real-life were present throughout.

Warlick Flat Classroom