21st Century Skills - AASL and ISTE Standards
The NZ Curriculum

Engaging Students
in the Making
of Good New Ideas

Every Student a Thinker!

Can they make up their own minds?
Can they come up with new ideas?



Join Jamie McKenzie for an exciting morning devoted to the challenge of engaging students in synthesis, invention, imagination and novelty.

What can teachers do so that students grow beyond mere cutting and pasting?

Outline of content below.

You can register and pay for the seminar at http://fno.org/fnopress/books.html

This is a large group, auditorium session with Jamie presenting and demonstrating effective teaching techniques to strengthen the inventiveness of students.

Despite all the talk about Web 2.0, inventiveness is unlikely to emerge simply because students gather online. Jamie shows how we must equip students with a toolkit of synthesis strategies if we hope to see them develop good new ideas of their own.
New standards from the American School Librarians and ISTE both call for students to do more than gather information when they research.  They set the expectation that students develop good new ideas, not just scoop and smush, copy and paste.  This session will provide participants with a toolkit of synthesis skills required to invent good new ideas along with strategies to equip their students with the creative capacity to meet the standards.

Learners use skills, resources and tools to:

1. Inquire, think critically, and gain knowledge.
2. Draw conclusions, make informed decisions, apply knowledge to new situations, and create new knowledge.
3. Share knowledge and participate ethically and productively as members of our democratic society.
4. Pursue personal and aesthetic growth.

AASL Standards for the 21st-Century Learner

Schools and districts that have adopted the 21st Century Skills model for schooling will find this seminar on target, especially for Information Literacy, Media Literacy and ICT (Information, Communications & Technology) Literacy:

  • Using digital technology, communication tools and/or networks appropriately to access, manage, integrate, evaluate, and create information in order to function in a knowledge economy
  • Using technology as a tool to research, organize, evaluate and communicate information, and the possession of a fundamental understanding of the ethical/legal issues surrounding the access and use of information

8:30 AM  -  9:00 AM
Coffee, Tea and Registration

9:00 AM  -  10:30 AM
Laying the Groundwork

What do the ISTE and AASL standards suggest in the way of thinking and invention? How does that contrast with old fashioned topical research and copy and paste thinking? What can we add from the NZ Curriculum and the 21st Century Skills?

What do we mean by synthesis? invention? novelty? imagination? originality? inquiry?

How do questions and questioning support inquiry? What kinds of issues, challenges and concepts lend themselves most powerfully to inquiry by various age groups? How will we know when they have moved from knowledge to understanding? When is inquiry worthy of student time and when is it mere ritual? How does a teacher orchestrate inquiry?

10:30 AM - 10:45 AM
Morning Tea

10:45 - 11:30 AM 
Synthesis and Puzzling
Meaningful inquiry involves students in wrestling with mysteries, puzzles, conundrums and difficult questions and issues that deserve thought and consideration. We expect students to weigh the thinking of experts and elders but then come up with their own positions, decisions and suggestions.

Research should take students beyond the mere gathering of information to the construction of new understandings. They will need a firm grounding in synthesis skills in order to combine the information in ways that may resolve puzzles and mysteries.



11:30 AM - 12:30 PM 
An Introduction to a Dozen Synthesis Strategies
Back in the 1950s, Osborne and others came up with a synthesis strategy called SCAMPER, the first of a dozen strategies the seminar will introduce briefly. Mixing presentation and demonstration, Jamie will lead the group through the toolkit of strategies and provide a rich collection of resources for follow up after the seminar.