Here are my notes, unedited and possibly misleading, blah blah blah, of the Reboot9 conference.
Talk stuff is be on Ewan’s blog.
Technology is everywhere but is not necessarily the main thing in everybody’s life.
Have schools and workplaces adapted to the digital natives? 2007: 16-year-olds born at the same time as the web.
Let’s see what some of these kids are capable of. Cup-stacking video. The daughter just broke the world record for cup stacking and the mother in the background doesn’t react. She doesn’t have a clue.
We’re not letting young ones import their passions in the workplace (school/work).
Headteachers’ reactions when they see that: useless, waste of time. But hey, this is what they spend their time at! Do we take advantage of this kind of thing?
Harnessing kids’ creativity. What do we do with it before it’s stomped out by corporations?
Five points are key (we might not get through them all).
- Audience
Kids are used to having huge audiences. 19th century classroom, the average audience for a piece of work is 1, or maybe 30 if the work was put up in the classroom.
In the 20th century classroom (with the printing press)… to the one-click web — a 7-year-old making his first edit on wikipedia. Audience: 1’114’274’426
In Ewan’s school, nearly a third of teachers blog about once a week.
Question: what does this audience mean?
The kids are acting local. They publish for their classmates. And when they get a comment from somewhere else, they turn their interest to that country.
Golden eagle animation: why we shouldn’t steal eggs from nests.
- Unleashing creativity
Kids are very creative. But we never see it. (steph-note: I know where it goes… in “pranks” and “misbehaviour” often — some of the stuff they do is actually really neat if you forget the moral judgement).
Flickr: Toy photo stories. Six word stories. French language animation “sous la mer”, made by 16-year-olds, and they loved doing it!!
Flickr notes are great as an educational tool.
Why are creative kids important… and deadly? If you’re a politician doing a BS blog, the kids will smell it and spoof it. (David Cameron… the spoof had way more hits than the original stuff.)
Scratch: drag’n’drop programming — you can get six-year-olds in there.
77% of gamers are married. Importance of gaming in what education is turning into.
School trip blogs.