Connecting ‘real world’ tech with school tech

George Lucas the film producer is waiting for school reform too. “Twenty years ago when we started The George Lucas Educational Foundation, we thought it would be 10 years before the general public would understand that the education system was in serious need of fixing,” he wrote this week in a commentary in Edutopia.org, the Foundation’s Web site. Besides his point about how we need to be talking about what’s right in our schools too, one of my takeaways was how much more entire schools – administrators, teachers, and students – understand the importance of bringing today’s media and technology into school when there’s a strong connection between “real world” work and school work, employing the technologies used in both those workplaces. Watch the video in this Edutopia article about Francisco Bravo Medical Magnet High School in Los Angeles to see what I mean (principal Maria Torres-Flores, who appears in the video, seems like the kind of principal all parents want heading their children’s schools). For more examples of technology http://onlinepressroom.net/nsba/new/in [My ConnectSafely co-director Larry Magid weighed in on Waiting for Superman too, in “Waiting for Zuckerberg” at the Huffington Post.]

Meanwhile, the National School Boards Association just released its 2010 “20 to Watch” list of educators who “do not just believe in technology for technology’s sake” but rather are “finding different, effective and exciting ways to engage students through the use of technology,” according to NSBA Director of Education Technology, Ann Flynn.