Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

I love debates, especially when it comes to controversial topics that I struggle with.  Ewan is in an official debate regarding social networks.  And like Will, while I side mostly with Ewan, I hope to learn of some viewpoints I hadn’t considered.

I’m naturally attracted to blog posts where controversy and heated discussion occurs. That’s why you need to visit the site and not simply rely your reader because you’ll miss the comments. While some get overly concerned with the tone and their interpretation of malice, I’m interested in the arguments and appreciate diversity because it helps me learn.

Here’s one I’m currently watching: David Warlick’s post on Pedagogy and Gary Stager’s Response. The fact the Gary is challenging David is far from novel but no doubt their previous bouts have been helpful to me in developing my own beliefs. I like what both of them stand for and say. Is that weird or possible when at times they seem to be on opposite sides?  My feeble comment on the issue restates my feeling that they are likely closer in their thinking than it appears but still their discussions and perspectives serve to clarify and hone my thinking.

Another one that might not materialize but I find interesting is Tom Hoffman’s concern about Dan Meyer’s latest design contest. I won’t even provide much detail here because I’m not sure what I think yet but hope others join in on this to voice their opinions and uncover the nuances and perspectives on this issue.

Embrace diversity and learn.

Image: Courtroom One Gavel Joe Gratz
http://flickr.com/photos/joegratz/117048243/

Technorati Tags: debates, ewanmcintosh, socialnetworks, garystager, davidwarlick, danmeyer, tomhoffman

I started teaching my second online class at the University of Regina.(in large part due to the recommendation from Alec Couros)  Last summer I taught my first, totally online save for an optional face to face meeting. This class was scheduled to be a face to face class, students thought it was going to be face to face and found out tonight, that was changed. (a strike late last year of administrative workers and others likely meant course offerings were not updated and thus the confusion). I didn’t know, they didn’t know but think I managed to convince them it would be a good thing and after some dry runs of the technology, establishment of their shiny new blogs, we’re ready to take off and learn.

I’m so looking forward to this. I love this stuff, I’m passionate about it and  I live it everyday. I’m excited to be able to watch and learn, share and teach with largely a group of first year pre-service education students. Here’s are the main themes of this course:

• Learning is social and connected
• Learning is personal and self-directed
• Learning is shared and transparent
• Learning is rich in content and diversity

So much of the work I do in my day job is similar in all but one key way…TIME. Even the best case scenarios allow teachers 4 or 5 days a year for professional learning of this nature. How can they possibly begin to do the kind of learning and thinking that my students will do? We will meet every week for a few hours, they will spend hours on their own and with each other learning. We will be in constant communication. The teachers that I work with must try and carve out time after work to begin to reflect and embrace the idea of a changing classroom. Ever see the video of building a plane while it’s flying? Perfect analogy for today’s teachers. My students get to build it on the ground where it’s supposed to be.

This is not so much me reflecting on how hard it is for teachers to have the opportunity to learn but more on how excited I am to be able to spend some quality time helping these young people consider how they’ll be able to create spaces that are fun, engaging, personal, relevant and authentic. Those aren’t buzz words for me either, I really try to foster that in all the work I do. It’s not easy all the time but it’s what I believe is important. What makes it hardest is not being able to spend the time to really get it. That’s what it’s like for most teachers and I have to find ways to live with that. I can’t expect big things from a teacher who is already maxed out from a day filled with all kinds of distractions, duties and stresses that at times deplete their energy down to almost nothing.  So I make adjustments, try to support them in small ways, give them bite sized chunks of ideas and because most are smart and want to be better, they do pretty well. But most will say to me over and over, “I just wish I had more time”.  This phrase is echoed throughout the walls of most schools on the planet.

But for the next four months, I get to work with people who have the time; not the expertise, not the experience but the time. It’s gonna be good.

Update: Another surprise to me was that many of my students are Arts Education students so if you know of some great teachers of arts education (music,dance,drama and visual art) showcasing their work via blogs, wikis, podcasts, whatever, leave the link here….it would be greatly appreciated.

Technorati Tags: uregina, aleccouros

I posted about printing my blog as a book but wanted to expand some ideas.

As I show people the printed version, most seemed quite impressed; mostly with the quality of the print, the quantity of my work and the concept of being able to publish to a traditional, familiar format.  It’s fairly novel (but it’s no novel) and could perhaps help those who aren’t engaged in digital learning to see the depth of work that is done via blogging. These people expressed that sentiment well.

I’m also wondering if producing your blog into a book might be good for those who don’t get the amount of learning, communicating, etc. that we get from working in these ways. For example, it would be great for administraotr’s, etc. that I work with to see this volume of print as a way of justifying the time that I spend learning on my blog. Online it is hard to see the volume that is produced, in a book, the learning is more “weighty” and easier to show. Clarence Fisher

Wow Dean, just recently a friend (Diane Cordell) was lamenting that her district would not accept her blog as time spent in professional development. I wonder if they would have denied it had she produced a book like this. WOW! Cathy Nelson

But as I peruse it’s contents, it’s strikingly obvious how it lacks power. Without the comments, hyperlinks, and multimedia, it’s just my thoughts and work. It clearly doesn’t capture my true learning. Blogging isn’t just about me. It’s about my learning, my network and resources. It’s about me being able to express ideas in a variety of ways, engage in conversations, and take me to all sorts of new places and spaces. Even without those aspects, how many people would read this if I published it a  book? How about zero. Instead, I’ve had over 100,000 eyeballs look at my stuff. I realize eyeballs aren’t everything but still, how many people have published their dissertation and had that type of response? This print version cost me about $50 and misses so much. I could blog for free and include all that multimedia as well.

So here’s where it hits me even more clearly. If you are a teacher and have the ability to choose how your students will demonstrate their learning, why would you choose analog text over blogging? How can it compete? Is there even one reason that analog text is better than digital? I can’t think of one advantage other than access and while in some cases that may be important, for most schools and situations, it’s not.  When you watch Michael Wesch’s first video, it’s clear how digital text changes everything. You haven’t seen it yet? That’s easy, I’ll just embed here: (By the way, if you’re reading the text version of this blog, you won’t be able to see this or click on the links or read the comments)

Technorati Tags: clarencefisher, cathyjonelson, michaelwesch

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This is the final in my series of top 5’s. (I can hear the mocking applause now)

Looking back on my 204 blog posts of 2007 (actually 197 since Wes Fryer guest blogged for a bit).  These five post represent not necessarily my best writing but my best learning. in choosing these, I had a look at the comments as well since to me most of my writing relies on the additions of others to make the writing better. The more I write, the more I sense the power of collaboration inside my own blog. Thank you all for that.

• Is it just me….this post from April signaled the beginning of many similar posts and thoughts and is helping my structure learning experiences to move away from this model
• Just the Facts….powerful research that I carry with me wherever I go as inevitably every discussion about publishing and participating in digital learning raises these questions.
• If you ain’t a feed, I don’t read…This post got me in a bit of hot water (most of which was engaged via email) but I really learned quite a bit. Not that I would totally change my post but see the perspectives of the other side a bit better.
• PLC’s…Something’s Missing…this one is of great personal importance to me because of my local division’s and province’s assessment movement. While there are some great things about it, I still think it’s easier to slip into some nasty habits around assessment.
• Shifted Learning and Silliness…Those who follow me in twitter, will certainly attest to the silliness part.  This post reflects a great deal of my learning in 2007. As you can see, I reference an experience I had in summer and try to map how that might evolve in our classrooms. This will certainly continue to be a major theme for me in 2008.

Thanks to everyone who bothers to read and contribute to my learning. I hope I’ve been of some help to you as well.  Have a happy 2008!

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Once again a tweet inspired me. This time it’s Mark Wagner at a conference presentation in California:

Will Richardson’s been talking for a while about having teachers examine their learning. Not necessarily their professional development but their personal learning. For many reasons, this is a major challenge. For people that are in the business of learning, it can be really difficult to engage in this discussion at times. Perhaps because of the busyness, the daily grind, the pressure of teaching, teachers have a difficult time recognizing the need to learn beyond the subject areas and pedagogies they spend much of their day grappling with.

So I understand the frustration and in a sense, ground breaking idea of teachers thinking about personal learning. Without this discussion, our ideas of learning are inevitably confined to the structures and traditions of school. Thinking about the last time you planned a trip, researched a political candidate, compared vehicles you wanted to purchase or tried to learn a new instrument.  What did that look like?

I wonder if these two ideas are somewhat at odds?

• “Teachers do not need to learn the technology in order for kids to use them.”
• “Teachers need to model effective use of technology”

Will may not have said it explicitly but the personal learning he talks about involves using the tools of today to maximize learning. Connecting with experts, social networking, publishing ideas are all part of what effective learning looks like. While more and more teachers get this, they really don’t get it for themselves. They want their kids to blog, but they don’t. They want their kids to connect with others but they don’t. They want kids to use all kids of technologies, but they don’t.

I never was all that impressed with Physical Education teachers who were out of shape. It didn’t make sense. They are supposed to be advocates for healthy lifestyles and need to model that. Fortunately most do and those are the ones that will likely have the most impact on kids. Come to think of it, that’d be an interesting piece of research.

If learning is personal, there has to be an element of selfishness. Teachers aren’t very selfish in this area. I’ve posted the Big Ideas of Digital Learning on our school district’s website. I use Will’s Ten Things we May Need to Unlearn idea:

We need to unlearn the notion that our students don’t need to see and understand how we ourselves learn.

That’s way harder than it sounds. Silent reading advocates always demand teachers read with their kids. I was one of those guilty of grading papers or planning when I should have been reading. I guess I just didn’t think it was all that important. I was wrong.

I’ve always been an advocate for teachers to take stuff home and personalize it. That’s how I learned. That’s why today I have a hard time separating professional and personal learning. If I learn a new technique in videography, I play with and use it with my friends or family. It’s not long before eventually I bring it to teachers and students as a new tool.

If you’re a classroom teacher, tell me how do you show your kids how you learn?

Technorati Tags: markwagner, willrichardson, pln

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A local principal told me today she had to suspend 20 students from computer privileges for inappropriate use of school computers. Primarily Facebook. Specifically some of these students were engaging with bullying others socializing. She also suggested most of these student’s parents do not understand the implications of their actions, let alone what facebook is or does.

While my initial reaction was to suggest alternate ways to handle the socializing, the bullying of course raises another issue. She did ask our IT guys to considering blocking Facebook. He was not prepared to make that call. We discussed it later and would certainly like to pursue educational opportunities.

I quickly fired up a tweet and received this responses(for those that do not understand twitter, it only allows 140 characters, thus the IMspeak) :

• cburell @shareski I’d be interested to read a post about that. If they violate AUP, how is it different from any other misbehavior?
• Durff @shareski I would revoke until they had passed bullying curriculum and parental meeting…then when they graduate from tha
• kwhobbes @shareski get them to explore the effects of bullying - do some interviews with people bullied, look at bullying in the media, seek out info
• kwhobbes @shareski work with them on the issue - on their own time. As for the socializing, isn’t that WHY most kids come to school?
• cathyjo @shareski where else but at school in safe env can kids learn to use FB & MS SN sites. Banning not the anser IMHO. Thy’ll jst do it @ hme.
• courosa @shareski: Bullying is against the law in jurisdictions, so let the law deal with, at the same time, let’s educate them, design a program.
• briangrenier @shareski Take away their Math books! No that doesn’t make sense either. Have them create and post a digital anti-bullying ad.
• lucychili @shareski the medium is not the message/problem
• duckie @shareski teachable moment -can they regain their privileges?I’m not to concerned about the social part just the bully part
• plivings @shareski - bullying .and. socialize - these 2 things should be separate and have separate responses imo
• mctoonish @shareski If it was just to socialize I would argue that that could be a part of learning. The bullying part changes everything IMO

All great responses and once again, the value of the network is evident. (For those still not convinced twitter has merit, how else would you get this type of response so fast? Grant it, these are bursts of support but still they are helpful to me) Definitely these are 2 separate issues and honestly I didn’t get all the details so I’m not sure how the students were dealt with individually. The information given by the principal was limited as this was not the intent of our conversation. But I’m trying to develop a response to this for future reference.

The cyberbullying one for me is almost the easier one to deal with. Part education, part consequence, part responsibility. This may involve the law as Alec suggests but certainly requires a well thought out response. The socialization one is the tough one. As Kelly writes, that’s why they come to school. I’ve talked with our administrators and teachers about social learning and its importance. I’m sure most don’t consider the use of tools like IM and Facebook to be a part of formal social learning. The problem is the lines between personal, professional and educational socialization is blurring. Twitter for example, combines the personal and the professional as well as any tool. Even bloggers get personal from time to time and that’s a good thing. Good teachers have always understood this but today we are more compelled to figure this out. I remember spending classtime talking about their personal issues be it sports, or the current event of the day that impacted them. I also recognized that as students worked together, they would engage in conversation not directly related to the work they were doing. And yes, they got off track and had to be drawn back to focus on the task at hand. But I could never think I could eliminate their efforts to socialize.

We have to consider how to provide learning environments where students can learn and socialize at the same time. As we move to a more personalized learning model it only makes sense. How we do this and how we help teachers get comfortable with this is a challenging task. Obviously, many are not ready to shift to personalized learning. But if we continue to ban these tools be it via filtering or simply classroom rules, we perpetuate the notion of irrelevant learning.

What does a learning environment look like where students can use things like IM or Facebook or text messaging in both an educational and social context?

[tags]facebook,contentfiltering,twitter,school,education[/tags]

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I certainly haven’t gone through all the K12 presentations and likely won’t. Like my RSS reader, I’ll look at the ones that capture my attention and imagination, focus on presentations of those already in my network (by the way, as Jeff Utecht points out we choose our network and generally attend to their work first.  I have an awesome network and feel the stuff they produce is by in large the best in education) and then graze through the others.

Scanning the K12 blog, I noticed a comment left by Clarence Fisher on Ben Wilkoff’s presentation. His comments made me take a look immediately. Being that I’ve been downloading them via itunes, it was easy to begin to watch it.

Ben’s presentation is definitely steeped in philosophical or big picture thinking. For me that’s important. In particular his definition of authentic learning truly is powerful.

For some, this presentation lacks the “how to” nature many of the other presentations provide. But like any conference, not every presentation is meant for everyone. If you are involved in supporting and moving towards change, this presentation is not only well designed but provides some key concepts in moving towards authentic, relevant learning.

Technorati Tags: benwilkoff, k12online07, jeffutecht, clarencefisher

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Driving home from this conference, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to reflect. Some people just think about conferences and learning, I record them. There might even be some ideas in here worth listening to.

Show notes:

• Finding Our Way: Assessment Evaluation & Accountability
• unconference
• open space technology
• K12 online
• Andy Hargreaves
• My notes on Hargreaves talk
• Learning 2.0 in Shanghai
• Jeff Utecht
• Wes Fryer’s recordings
• Joanne Quinn
• OISE
• Konrad Glogowski
• Mark Ahlness
• Clarence Fisher
• Walled gardens
• Miguel Guhlin
• Just the facts

[tags]conferences, networks[/tags]

 

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