Kobus+email

Dear Mr. Van Wyk,

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. I find your career very inspiring, how you take so much time our of your life to put technology in schools in South Africa. I loved your most recent blog post about how the computer can be an "Albatross around one's neck" if it isn't used properly; your analogy makes a lot of sense. We would like to do the interview on October, 31st, 2008 at 5:30 PM(That would be for the time zone with Johannesburg--we were not sure where you are located)**.** The interviews are usually approximately 15 minutes long. The interview would require us to call you on your phone in order (for our system to record it), perform the interview with Skype if you have that capability, or live in our school is also an option(Connecticut is beautiful in the fall!). You can view our website and see examples of our other interviews on our podcast website, [|http://lunchtimeleaders.podomatic.com] or http://lunchtimeleaders.wikispaces.com. A list of the questions that would be asked are below.

We look forward to hearing from you, Kayla Paugas Moran Middle School Wallingford CT

The Lunch Time Leaders Podcast Team


 * 1) What skills/abilities do you feel students need to have to be successful in the 21st century as employees?
 * 2) What skills/abilities do students need to have to be successful citizens in a globally-interconnected world?
 * 3) Looking at the people you currently working on the Khanya Project with you, what are their strengths and what are their weaknesses?
 * 4) There is a lot of discussion in K-12 education about the importance of content knowledge (knowing a lot of “stuff” about math, science, social studies, language arts, etc.) versus the importance of learning skills and students being able to construct their own understanding of material/ideas that are new to them (being able to “learn how to learn”). What are your thoughts regarding how much we should focus on content knowledge versus focusing on students’ ability to learn/adapt/grow?
 * 5) There is also a lot of discussion in education on the tension between 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.
 * 6) Tell us a little bit about any changes you foresee in the use of technology in schools 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?
 * 7) What types of technologies should our students be proficient at using?
 * 8) What was the best learning/educational experience you have had? Why?
 * 9) 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.
 * 10) When we're done today, what's the one most important "take-away" message you'd like our teachers and students to hear?Kobus_questions