Howard Gardner… Inspiring!
This morning I was lucky enough to be part of a conference session with Howard Gardner… yes the Multiple Intelligences guy. The Global Education Conference has been a wonderful experience for me. I’m looking forward to catching some of the recordings when I have some spare time. This morning’s session was present by Howard and his son Andrew. Andrew asked Howard a number of questions leading the participants through Howard’s work over the last 20 -30 years. I found it interesting that though most schools are still focused on Multiple Intelligences and using that as a way of developing thinking Gardner has moved on to much deeper thought. His work on ethics in recent years was certainly very interesting for me particularly in relation to ethics in the 21st Century. In an educational context, from which I am approaching his work, I found that there are some important issues which need to be addressed.
During the discussion Gardner raised the idea of copyright. Gardner mentioned that though people and students can identify that breeching copyright is wrong they often justify this by citing why it’s not so bad to copy other people’s work. I totally related to this. I have taught primary classes and identified discussed and thought I had made clear the ethical issues related to copyright only to find most students ignored our learning.
I’m now going to find Gardner’s two most recent books and read them. I’m hoping from these publications I can get a few more ideas about how I can get real learning and understanding happening on ethical issues related to ICT and 21st Century technologies. I think ethics in education are an important often forgotten aspect. Some useful links are listed below