Bernie Dodge on the Purpose of School

I didn't have a whole lot of time today at the ISTE conference to continue with my Purpose of School project but I did manage to get this one last mini interview with Bernie Dodge.



Other posts in this series:

• Purpose of School (with: Bud Hunt, Chris Lehmann, Christian Long, Luna Frank-Fischer, Sylvia Martinez, Steven W. Anderson, Tom Whitby, George Couros, Dean Shareski, Scott McLeod, David Jakes)
  

• Purpose of School - David Warlick

• Wes Fryer on Digital Storytelling & The Purpose of School

• Sir Ken Robinson on the Purpose of School #TIES10

• Doug Johnson on the Purpose of School

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#ties2009 Bernie Dodge on Engagement

One of the people I was most excited to meet and see speak at this year's TIES conference was Bernie Dodge. He presented two sessions at the conference, WebQuesting with GPS and Engagement: What Is It and Where Can I Get Some? Bernie Dodge was one of the advisers for the capstone I did for my MAed two years ago on Virtual World WebQuests but I had not met him in person yet, only via email and Skype.

I lament that I was only able to catch the end of his GPS session. However, most of the information from that session is on his website. Basically he posed a challenge to educators. Evidently there is an extreme shortage of WebQuests involving GPS technologies or geotools. He suggested eight different possible topics he would like to see developed:

1. Small World
2. Walking Tour
3. DIY Lit Trips
4. Critter Count
5. Latitudology
6. X from the Air
7. Travel Chronicles
   
8. Site Selection

He posed this as a contest and the winner wins a three year subscription to QuestGarden.

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How do we attain this level of engagement with our students?

I was able to attend his session on Engagement in its entirety. The overall message of this session was an important one to hear at an education technology conference. Basically he reminds us to focus on the learning and not fall into the "Tijuana Syndrome" with technology where when we are in the tech environment things look good that might not look so good when we bring them home to our students. The following are some tweets from his session:

Are Learning Styles a Myth?

Like many people I have a customized home page that I use on all of my computers that contains links to stuff I use on a regular basis. Recently I have added two RSS feeds to this home page that I have found extremely valuable and maximized my use of two separate web2 services: Twitter & del.icio.us. My Twitter subscriptions and del.icio.us network closely mirror each other. They are mostly composed of people I have come across in the edtech world who post interesting stuff relevant to what I am interested in. With this feed I catch the latest tweets and tagged sites every time I refresh my browser or return to my home page.



Today I noticed Bernie Dodge posted a link to the video by Dan Willingham I have embedded below. I find this video thought provoking but also a bit unsettling. I find it hard to argue with what he says and I am sure I will be spending quite a bit of time over the next few days (maybe weeks) chewing this over in my mind. Basically, Dan tells us that there is no scientific basis for the existence of individual learning styles. The conclusion is that there is no need for teachers to alter their lessons to accommodate individual student learning styles. What do you think? Also, if this is true, how do I address a teacher who says online staff development is not conducive to their learning style?