ridgway

Dear Mr.Ridgway,

We would like to invite you to be on our Lunch Time Leaders Podcast that we do as part of our Social Studies class at Moran Middle School in Wallingford, CT. We interview leaders in our community and beyond to talk about the challenges of being successfully prepared for the 21st Century. We came across your name while we were browsing the web for some new headsets for our podcast team. We would like to do the interview on Friday December 11, 2009 at 11:30am/EST.The interviews are usually approximately 15 minutes long. The interview would require us to have us call you on your phone in order for our system to record it, do it with Skype if you have that capability, or doing it live in our school is also an option. You can view our website and see examples of our other interviews on our podcast website, http://lunchtimeleaders. podbean.com. A list of the questions that would be asked are below. If any major changes are made we will send them to you at least a week before the interview We look forward to hearing from you, Anthony Romania lunchtimeleaders@gmail.com (please contact us at the email above) -- The Lunch Time Leaders Podcast Team Moran Middle School 141 Hope Hill Road Wallingford, CT 06492 203-741-2900

The first five minutes of the interview are usually questions specifically connected to your job--you won't have to study for those!! Then we move into the following questions...
 * 1) What skills/abilities do you feel students need to have to be successful in the 21st century as employees?
 * 2) Looking at the people you currently see entering the workforce, what are their strengths and what are their weaknesses?
 * 3) What are your thoughts regarding how much we should focus on learning facts versus focusing on students’ ability to learn/adapt/grow?
 * 4) There is also a lot of discussion in education on being successful as an individual and being successful as part of a group or team. We’d like to hear more about your thoughts regarding this.
 * 5) Tell us a little bit about any changes you foresee for the workplace in the next 5-15 years (and beyond). What do you think this means for students currently in high school and for K-12 education in general?
 * 6) What types of technologies should our students be proficient at using?
 * 7) What was the best learning/educational experience you have had? Why?
 * 8) If you were going to design a 21st century school from the ground up, what are three key features you would include? These features could be physical (building features), pedagogical (teaching techniques/approach), structural (curriculum, schedule, etc.), technological (specific tools/software/experiences), etc.
 * 9) When we're done today, what's the one most important "take-away" message you'd like our teachers and students to hear?