Reflection on David Warlick’s Pre-conference Keynote: “Inventing the New Boundaries” (k12Online07)

Blogging Note: I am beginning my work with the K12Online Conference ’07. As I did last year (with ’06), I am entering my comments/reflections here on the Bit by Bit blog, as well as at the site set up by Jeff Utecht and PSU and the Shanghai American School (which will count towards Graduate credits). One purpose in posting here is to keep the K12 Conference alive and well. I saw this happen last year, when my postings in the summer helped to reignite conversations that had begun the previous fall. This is one of the things that is of course so amazing about the online conference model. It can live on. I will be putting these reflections in the category k12Online Conference Reflection 07.

Reflection on David Warlick’s Pre-conference Keynote: “Inventing the New Boundaries”

I’ve watched David’s Keynote 3 times since the K12 Online Conference went live in early October. It is chock-full of great ideas and topics.

The whole concept of “Inventing New Boundaries” at first “threw me.” Aren’t we trying to break down boundaries with technology integration? Aren’t boundaries holding us back because they are antiquated and have not evolved? David talks about the “walls coming down” but also goes on to say that when he visits schools, he sees teachers and students looking for new boundaries in order to get traction. This finally makes sense for me and has helped me to think about things in a whole new way. It has even given me a new way of talking about Web 2.0 with teachers and students that hopefully will be less alarming. People seek boundaries. Instead of giving the impression that Web 2.0 and the uncertainty of what the future will look like will erase boundaries, it is refreshing to think about presenting it as “Don’t worry folks! There are still boundaries… it’s just that we control them now… because we are the ones inventing them.”

One thing that David talked about that had a profound effect on me was when he was describing watching his father get ready for work, and that possibly he is part of the last generation who could look to his father and think he was looking at his own future. David then goes on to describe how he makes a living today, and how it would have been impossible to imagine that when he was a kid. He says something that I’m sure would be alarming to most teachers: “I would suggest that perhaps how I’m making a living —what I’m doing— may be a better model for our students’ future for how they’ll be making a living than what you do.”

He admits that this may be a preposterous statement, and I think many would receive it as such. But I don’t think it is. I think he’s nailed it with the idea that we need to prepare our students for a world where they will probably be “free agents” (much like David is now). We are preparing our children for a future that we cannot describe, but there is some writing on the wall. For instance, we know with certainty that there are things like technology that are changing the way we will work —from things like letting people work together in different parts of the world, to elimination of jobs that we now take for granted due to automation. We know that things like outsourcing are going to change the job possibilities that will exist in this future.

When told that this “free agent” model is the one we need to prepare students for, I can imagine that a lot of people would rather not hear such a message, because it does indeed feel as if everything we’ve known will suddenly be transformed. There’s that fear of losing the boundaries.

As David points out, however, there is a “boundary” that is going to keep serving us: the Network. (He has a great example of how his son taught himself how to make a movie —not by learning from teachers— but by finding his own community of people online that would help him). If you think about it, having the need for a Network is as old as human existence. We all understand that “we get by with a little help from our friends” (to quote the Beatles). I think that teachers would be relieved to see that this “new boundary” is just our good old friend of “belonging to a community.” After all, isn’t that a reason for creating schools? That we are social beings who will benefit by learning together?

The thing that has to happen however, is that we as teachers need to recognize that this community or Network has greatly evolved. We must allow for the changes that have happened in society to also happen in our classrooms. So, no longer does the Network mean “the teacher is in charge of it.” No longer does the Network mean “just the students in my class.” No longer does the Network mean “just using the old tools of communication.” No longer does the Network operate only by the type of literacy that was taught to us in previous generations. The literacies have evolved to include video, audio, images. The tools have evolved to include iPods, digital cameras, cell phones. By banning these new means to operate in today’s Network from our classrooms, then we are indeed creating what David describes as a new form of “digital divide”. Some students will be equipped to operate in this evolving Network, and others won’t have a clue because they’ve been kept from becoming versed in the new rules, the new languages, the new ways of interacting, the new ways of thinking.

Thanks, David! Great Presentation!

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