(Music)

Dan: Welcome to the Full Circle Resource Kit Podcast.

I'm very excited today to have with me Will Richardson, who is an avid blogger, and educator and facilitator of presentations and he has been thinking and writing and teaching about this new world that we live in - the world of Web 2.0. And digital information fluency has a direct connection to the literacies that we need in this new world. So, Will, welcome to our show today.

Will: Thanks very much, Dan. Glad to be here.

Dan: Will, I'd like to jump right in and ask you about DOPA (Deleting Online Predators Act). Illinois just passed, didn't pass the law, but..

Will: Oh, don't say that.

Dan: proposed the law that would significantly affect how students in schools can access tools on the Internet. So just tell us, 'What are you thinking about this?'

Will: Well, I'm thinking that legislation like that is probably written by people who don't use the tools at all themselves and that they have no real contextual understanding of how these types of tools really impact learning and change a lot of the ways that we communicate and interact. And I think that it's really unfortunate.

I think that certainly there are dangers out there. Certainly there are instances where kids are going to get themselves in trouble and adults are going to get themselves in trouble as well. But from an educator's standpoint I think the way that we prevent that is not to pull the plug on those and not to pretend like our kids are not going to use them simply because they are not available at school. But the answer is to educate them how to use them well.

And you know, you obviously talk a lot about literacy, this is a literacy. It's a literacy in terms of finding good sources, knowing who to trust, figuring out who to trust, being able to identify when things don't look right or ..I mean, the idea that
this is going to protect kids I think is just false on it's face and I think in fact it's probably going to do more to harm kids than to protect them.

Dan: So, what can educators be doing? Let's look at it from the other side of the coin.

Will: A lot of where my thinking has come in the last, really in the last six months, is that educators have to invest in the use of these tools as well. I think educators have to have...well not 'have to have' ...but should think seriously about a MySpace site, should thinks seriously about using Facebook and other social networking sites, should go in and edit Wikipedia, should grow learning networks online in ways that many of our students are. And there's no question, I don't think, despite the fact that you know obviously there aren't many kids that are using these tools right now,
if you look 5, 10, 15 years down the road, when these students that we have right now are in their working lives or in their professional careers, their ability to network online in social environments like this is going to be crucial.

And so teachers need to own these tools. And you know it's a difficult thing right now. Certainly there's time issues and all sorts of other barriers to implementing them in your own personal practice. But in the end of the day, teachers have to understand the ways in which the web is changing the way we learn and so we can't really own the pedagogies of these tools unless we own them ourselves.

Dan: So I know that you are going to be presenting at NECC this year and one of the things that you'll be talking about is building networks of practice. So I'm picturing a teacher in a school - give me a practical example of what that would look like.

Will: Well, I think networks of practice or just kind of these affinity groups that a lot of people are writing about now that are occurring on the web. I think they happen in a lot of different ways - it doesn't necessarily have to happen around academic topics. Certainly that's kind of the way that it has happened for me. I mean, the network of practice that I have is built on a passion for trying to figure out how these tools affect learning and education and teaching. And I've been able to connect with, you know, hundreds of people who are equally interested in that as I am.

But in terms of teachers and educators and simply people in general owning the tools, I think it's got to rest where their passions are, whatever that is. I kind of use the analogy that in my physical space there really are only a couple people that will have this conversation with me for more than 10 minutes and then their eyes kind of glaze over and then they say, 'Will, that's great but I have to go do other things'. But in my virtual space I can have the conversation anytime I want and I can learn anytime I want by kind of turning to that network. So that's the idea too and for anyone else depending on whatever they are interested in.

Dan:  So where would a teacher start if they wanted to start building a network of practice? Are there certain blogs or how do they get going in this whole area?

Will: I think blogs are a great starting point for that. And I think people can find bloggers out there who are writing about whatever they are interested in by going to places like Technorati.com and searching for a particular topic or even going to blogsearch.google.com and searching for particular phrases and words or whatever.

And then I think you, the first, the scaffolding steps are to start commenting on other people's blogs and then perhaps start a blog of your own and begin to connect to people, link back to things that you are reading. And in that way you just start to build conversations around the ideas and the subject that that little community is interested in.

Dan: One last question for you here. Recently someone quoted you in their own blog and they said, 'Genuine passion cannot be ignited with a podcast or a blog. Instead we need to give our students the freedom to learn and engage with ideas that they find relevant and important.' And they said, 'I think it begins with what Will referred to today as the comfort zone of content.' What's the comfort zone of content that you are talking about stepping out of?

Will: Well, I think that one of the things that becomes very comfortable about teaching is when you master your content. I think that it is very easy to fall back on that. When there are disruptions and there are things that are happening that you don't understand. It's easy to just pull it back into the content - let's just focus on that.

But I really think that at the end of the day and again, for these kids, that content is not going to be that important to them in terms of remembering it and learning, and you know - quote, unquote - "learning it". Because you know content now is in flux, and content is changing and content is everywhere. So I think the literacies that you talk about and the ability to find the content when you need it - those are the types of literacies and skills that kids are going to need as they, again, grow older and go into their own professional lives. And that's a little more risky for teachers - you know, that's not as comfortable for teachers because again, I'm not sure how many teachers really own that. I'm not sure how many teachers really practice that.

And so it is about opening it up and telling students, I think, 'Look, you can learn a lot of the things that you need to learn in the context of what you are passionate about. And if you are going to pursue the things that you are passionate about, one of the best ways to learn about those things is to become parts of these networks, of these communities of learners that are out there.' And again, that just doesn't happen as much in physical space and that's I think been a limitation of physical space in the educational system for a long time. So I look at this as a real opportunity to connect kids to, you know, people who could be great teachers for them. Whereas we can give guidance to that, we can facilitate that and that that may be more of our role in the classroom as opposed to delivering a set curriculum, you know, that has a certain content to it.

Dan: So the tools then, like podcasts and blogs, you know it sounds sometimes like we are saying, you need to go out and start blogging and podcasting - I hear you saying something a little different than that.

Will: Yeah, I think you need to go out and build networks. You need to go out and make connections. Now whatever tool you use to do that I think is up to you. Some people really like audio, some people like video, some people like text. I do think that no matter what the tool there has to be an opportunity for an interaction there. There has to be some way for the consumer of whatever content that you are creating to engage in those ideas. That's one thing that I think is a little limiting about podcasting actually and to some extent video. Though I think that both of those are going to change drastically in the next couple of years in terms of being able to be more interactive with it. And I think that's why the blog can be so powerful because it is so easy for people to engage in those ideas - you know, it's so easy for people to connect with whatever you write there.

Dan: Well, thank you Will. You've given us some food for thought here and pointed us to some ways of thinking about what our next steps could be and I want to thank you for being with us on the show today.

Will: Well, I really appreciate you having me. Thanks very much.

(Music)

Dan:  This is a production of the 21st Century Information Fluency Project at the Illinois Math and Science Academy.