I went to school in Singapore but grew up on the internet

I just attended a keynote at ISTE 2010 in Denver and Shawn Koh from Singapore was on a panel. He wowed the audience with some great quotes.

“I went to school in Singapore but grew up on the internet.”

Shawn is indicative of the students that we are teaching today. They are so digitally connected and they are literally growing up on the internet. That is a very profound statement from a 20 year old college student. We as educators need to embrace this and set up schools that help these students learn.

Another quote from Shawn when asked: What do you wish you had learned in school: “I wish I had learned how to learn.”

Shawn took classes and focused in on what was being taught, but he never learned how to learn. We need to actively teach our students how to learn and not be so married to our content. I think we can use the vehicle of our content, but if we ignore the learning process we have grossly shortchanged our students.

Short blog post, but profound. Thanks Shawn.