ITSC 2012: Opening Keynote

Diana Laufenberg's speech highlights:

• We need students who are capable of standing on their own and solving their own problems, in order to do this teachers need to be less helpful.
• Inquiry driven education should not be my questions, but the student's own questions that they are pursuing.
• The What If? History Project
• The ability for kids to ask their own questions then follow it to wherever it goes...is extraordinary.  
• Being flexible and ready [in education] to act when the news delivers up teachable moments, i.e. linking the American Revolution with the Arab Spring.
• Invisible Architecture of Participation: multiply the ability for students to participate changes the level of relationships with the discussion of learning (Storify).
• There are ways to integrate without being lockstep, but it's about knowing what's happening in your building.  
• The basic mantra of many kids is, "none of this means anything in real life."  
• There are opportunities for us to make stuff in our classrooms specifically relevant.  If you can't answer why you're doing something, or how you can make it relevant to your students' lives, you should be questioning why you are doing it.
• Embrace Failure.  We don't talk about the nuance of failure enough in our classrooms: the blameworthy end (I didn't do anything) is different than the praiseworthy end (I didn't get the result that I wanted).  
• Students would rather choose boring than risky because they'd rather be successful than take a chance and fail.  We have to tell kids it's okay to fail.
• There is an immense about of power when kids write to themselves about how they learn, what they did wrong, etc.
• There's no reason that schools can't be these spaces for kids where they can be independent operators, owning their own education.
• Having fun and learning is not mutually exclusive; education shouldn't be boring.