Technology+Blog+Summmary+-+Will

I found Will Richardson to be a true independent thinker. He had my attention the moment I began to read his blog, “Will Richardson”. His style is casual and easy to read, and his blog is full of references to other writer’s works and ideas. There are several themes that consistently run throughout his blog: his concern and love for his children and students in general, his desire for a general shift in the way teachers function, his political and professional opinions about the direction of education and who is doing the directing, and his concern that creativity is being killed in the classroom. Mr. Richardson writes about his own two children frequently. His motivation seems to be generated and powered by them. His concern for their education is paramount in his writing, and it spills over to all students in general. He is looking for solutions to the cookie cutter programs of the public school. These programs have been designed as a one size fits all, and he laments they lack creativity and individualization. In “ A Vision for Who Our Students Need to *Be*”, he describes that he wants his children to be in a classroom where //“////…students engage in real and relevant problems that excite them, work together to approach these problems as a learning community, and harness and leverage digital technologies while also critically reflecting on how those technologies mediate and change their lives” // (Richardson, 2011). He also quotes John Medina’s suggestion that schools should be dismantled and restructured because they are so archaic (Medina, 2011) in “ Kids, Not Schools, are "Individually Wired" (Richardson, 2011).

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// A second reoccurring theme throughout his blog is his belief there must be a shift in education. Teachers must become //the// learners and not receptacles of knowledge. He understands that information is changing too fast for teachers to be responsible to know it all. “ //The Truly Flipped Classroom...and Conversation”, says, “T hose who have been reading here for a while know my thinking on teachers needing to be learners first, needing to be the learning experts in our communities, not just the subject matter experts” (Richardson, 2011). //Students must become life-long learners, and teachers must help them learn how. He advocates a shift from teachers being the instructors to being master learners.// ====== Another theme I have detected is the struggle he sees for control of the education of our children. In “How Can You Not Be Angry?” he declares, // “ // The profession is being trampled. Politicians and businessmen with no background in education are driving reform. And our students are stuck in a system that still thinks it’s the 19th Century” (Richardson, 2011). He was humorous as he mocked Governor Chris Christie for bringing private companies into the state with pilot educational programs. He suggested the governor does not trust educators to educate children, and by bringing in corporations, Christie can make some money off the students and even get some votes (Richardson, 2011).  A final theme I noticed in his blog is Mr. Richardson’s disdain for standardized testing and the obsolescence of the classes that children must take to prepare for them. In “ Standardizing Creativity and innovation Really?” he writes, “What kills me is that we are even attempting to measure creativity and innovation by a ‘computer scored test’ when we have this thing called a teacher already in the room and the potential of many other human assessors via the network who could do a much better job” (Richardson, 2011). Who would not agree with this?

====(note: Mr.Richardson's blog only goes bach to June, 2011, with one post in May, 2011).====

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