It’s time again for the K12 Online Conference.

k12Online09

It was David Warlick‘s Keynote that introduced me to this wonderful, free online conference, and although I had a blog for 6 months before that, I wrote a key post that influenced my future as a blogger.

And now a much admired friend Kim Cofino has created this wonderful 2009 Pre-Conference Keynote:

Going Global: Culture Shock, Convergence and the Future of Education

As someone living in Asia now, Kim’s metaphors in Part 1 really hit a chord with me. I especially like from about the 5:30 mark until the 14:30 mark: ‘Lessons from Culture Shock’. At the 7:45 mark of this presentation Kim states,“We have to find ways of more nimbly, realistically and effectively adapting to the new status quo.” What excites me is that the ‘status quo’ is based on connecting the students in our world in more meaningful ways… We now have the ability to foster cross-cultural connections with kids who aren’t just ‘growing up digital’ but also ‘growing up global’.

As one of Kim’s connections in Asia, I had the chance to play a small part in this presentation. I sent her the video below that she edited and added to the presentation above. The idea for this actually came from a Twitter discussion with John Davitt as he was preparing for a presentation. I sent him these-two-tweets and very shortly after Kim asked for a video clip… it was already written, I just had to film it.

Here is my ‘Connected World’ Video that I made for Kim:

It is a fabulous time to be an educator! Watch Kim’s presentation. Watch it again and think about the potential for what we can do in our classrooms today. Connectivity is key. Adaptability is key. We live in a connected world and our students are going to have to learn about each other, connect with each other and adapt to different working and living environments. Let’s adapt our schools to meet the needs of student today, instead of trying to make students fit into an old model of what schools used to look like.

4 comments on “Convergence, Cofino and a Connected World

  1. Hi David,

    I just finished listening to Kim’s presentation and I found it interesting and timely in many ways as well. I certainly found a lot touch me personally, although perhaps I’m not exactly the 3rd culture person she referred to (I’m air force brat who is linguistically but not necessarily culturally bilingual so perhaps I’m 1 and a half). I was just wondering about how you felt after moving to China and trying to figure out how to live. I remember moving to Japan and finding myself illiterate and it is not an experience I will soon forget (humbling is one word I use to describe it). I found this extremely timely when thinking about the students I was dealing with today in class. I was working with our ELL teacher to provide the students with a digital opportunity to learn English outside of class time, and it is interesting to compare the students I was dealing with today with the one’s in Kim’s presentation. The ones I saw were ones that desperately need more consistent one to one work and I am now convinced that the only way that will ever happen is through technology. They are so diverse in their needs and backgrounds, some being extremely computer savvy but without English skills, others being very life savvy but without necessarily the skills to be ‘successful’ by our definition of the word. These are the students that we (I) am trying to figure out how to help. Kim’s presentation helped me refocus on a lot of thoughts that have been running around in my head all day!

  2. Hi Greg,

    Thanks for your comment.
    I wrote 3 posts when I first got here about the challenges and insights of moving to China:
    Destinations and Dispositions

    Variable Flow

    Bubble Wrap

    There are certain things that are quite embarrassing about being illiterate in a country in which I live and work:
    • I can’t say the name of my school in a way that is consistently understood by taxi’s so I just show them a piece of paper with the name on it.
    • I know the name of my complex at home but don’t know the name of the street I live on.
    • I often end up with something I wasn’t expecting when ordering food from pictures.
    So I can just imagine what some of the newer ELL students in our classes feel like when they arrive in our classes.

    You are so right about the diverse needs of these students and what I’ve learned over my years in the classroom is that many of the tools and strategies that we choose to help these learners often end up helping all learners.

    Regards,
    Dave.

  3. Thank you so much for contributing to my presentation Dave! And, thank you for your kind review of the final product. I love that you’ve picked out that specific chunk of the video to highlight – those metaphors were probably the most difficult to describe in educational terms, but also the most exciting.

  4. Kim,

    I just watched your keynote again. It really is fantastic! I had to edit my post to include the entire ‘Lessons from Culture Shock’ section rather than the shorter clip I had mentioned. Your lessons section is brilliant and I’m tempted to edit just that section out to send out to every educational leader I know. I think it would make a great stand-alone video:
    ‘Globalizing Education: Lessons from Asia’!

    Thanks again!

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