Piontek



Jeff Piontek Google page: @http://sites.google.com/site/jeffpiontek/ Consulting page: @http://jeffpiontek.com/ His slideshare account: @http://www.slideshare.net/jeff.piontek And please click the links if you would like to connect with him via Facebook, Google+, and/or twitter.

Jeff is a teacher, speaker, consultant, and author. He specializes in education reform, creativity in schools, and technology integration. He started out as a science teacher in New York and has gradually moved up to working nationally in STEM interests. He is currently working with a charter school in Hawaii he developed (Hawaii Technology Academy--interestingly enough it is run online by k12.com), where the focus is on innovation and technology integration.

Jeff has been a speaker at [|TED], and in 2010 gave a presentation entitled "Teaching Jetson Children in Flintstones Schools". media type="youtube" key="kvqy0CAMdCM" height="315" width="420" He is very good at explaining the disconnect caused by trying to teach children of the 21st century using a paradigm developed and deployed in the 20th century. The world has changed, therefore, so should education. He discusses how we need to move away from the old paradigm, not only in available technology, but in offering students the ability to make choices take opportunities. He also goes into how some changes have been made by the innovation of individual teachers, however, changes really need to be made in education at the larger level. He believes that we cannot truly prepare today's teachers-- and instead must wait the current students become of age to take over teaching to completely integrate technology into teaching. (I'm not entirely sold on this, but that is probably because I'm older and I still feel as if I am open to learning technology and using it large scale.)

I especially liked how he asked the students what THEY wanted technology-wise, in their school. It doesn't shock me that they wanted more collaboration and less censorship. This is a great point. Students have a great deal of creativity and potential--however, we seem to be too busy standardized-testing and text-booking them to death to see it or allow them to explore it. 2D instruction is no longer going to work when students need skills they can take back to their 3D, 4G lives. We need to learn more about their worlds so that we can change the way we teach so that it is more meaningful for them. I see a lot of adults that discredit and ignore technology (such as social media and gaming), not realizing that it plays a large part in shaping how a child relates to situations and people in real time. It is time to stop discrediting students and their world, and start listening to them instead.~ARW