Gary Stager - Way Beyond WebQuests and Information

http://stager.org/necc

http://stager.org/news.html

He believes that standards are being lowered. Thirty years ago students he worked with in seventh grade did programming. Today in that class, students are learning where the return key is.

Computer is not just an information appliance.

http://www.districtadministration.com/pulse

Buy Will Richardson's book on Web 2.0.

Wikipedia is controversial because we have never taught students to use multiple sources.

Problems with blogging: very narcissistic, same short, choppy writing, little narrative, absence of real debate, intimacy and informality which cause problems when there is disagreement, ahistorical, anti-intellectualism, reverse ageism

Worst idea on earth is to use the laptop as a textbook. He doesn't like textbooks. We need to use original sources.

Bad ideas are timeless.

Education in NOT just about information.

For an activity, he put up an image of an election poster in Arabic from Australia for a Christian Iraqi party. We were to find out who the poster wanted people to vote for. The point of the activity was that two days after the election it took him 2 hours to find the answer. Months later it takes only minutes to solve. The information on the web keeps growing.
www.stager.org/whoshouldIvotefor

Activity he used with a class: Were the Chicago seven martyrs?

Gave his graduate students in Australia this question, "Is Ned Kelly a hero." He is a well known teacher, but he has killed people.

When there is a meaningful context, a lot of computer tools can be used and learned.