Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

I picked up a copy of the local paper to see my son on the cover…Full name, clearly identified. Did he give permission to have the photograph published? No. Newspapers have a policy that they must print full names of anyone photographed. They’ve been doing it for years.

Our schools meanwhile try desperately to protect students from any chance of identification online. Is it worth the effort? After the recent incident in Quebec, the popularization of youtube combined with the advent of cellphones as video and still cameras, the ease of internet publishing, I’d say we should spend our energies elsewhere. Let’s face it, we all live in a fish bowl.

The fact that newspapers have a degree of credibility that we trust somehow makes us not challenge their breech of privacy. While a local ice rink is a public facility, schools are not, but our paper, like every other paper publishes student photos taken in schools. We don’t care. We all like the publicity. As long as it’s good. We’ve heard for years that any publicity is good publicity.
Like I mentioned in an earlier post about privacy, “this is the reality of our world and we need to get our heads around it.” Scott McNealy of SunMicrosystems claimed,”Privacy is dead”. If this is true it should change what we teach our kids. During my breakfast with Stephen Downes, I remember him saying that nothing he says is off the record. He said his life’s an open book. I know not everyone is comfortable with that but that attitude makes life on the web less stressful than one trying to protect their identity.

We can’t control what others will do with our information and unless we want to spend time fighting legal battles, I think we need to give up the idea that we can protect kids. We can’t.

[tags]privacy,moosejaw,timesherald,downes[/tags]

These are the future, my friends. They’re here and living among us. They’re not very interested in us, and I’m not sure I blame them. The best we can hope for is that one day they may keep us as pets.

This article via David Warlick via Ewan is dealing more with the irrelevance of today’s newspapers but substitute the word newspaper for school and editor to teacher and it’s pretty telling.

They buy music from the iTunes store - but continue to download tracks illicitly as well. They use BitTorrent to get US editions of Lost. They think ‘Google’ is a synonym for ‘research’ and regard it as quite normal to maintain and read blogs (55 million as of last night), use Skype to talk to their mates and upload photos to Flickr. Some even write entries on Wikipedia. And they know how to use iMovie or Adobe Premiere to edit videos and upload them to YouTube.

Now look round the average British newsroom (staff room). How many hacks have a Flickr account or a MySpace profile? How many sub-editors (teachers) have ever uploaded a video to YouTube? How many editors (teachers) have used BitTorrent? (How many know what BitTorrent is?)

Looks like Prensky material. We’ve got a long way to go. It’s noteworthy that the business world, the traditional newspaper is realizing that they are missing a critical demographic. But for them, it’s only one demographic. For us, it’s our only demographic.

Now we have a wiki. Google has acquired Jotspot. I’ve been enjoying Docs and Spreadsheets, not to mention my Calendar, now my wiki’s all in one place….whatever happend to small pieces loosely joined? They’re tightening up!

Read the full story

A colleague of mine sent me this link : Video games can reshape education: U.S. scientists .

The group found many video games require players to master skills in demand by today’s employers.

And here I thought employers were interested in students who could understood dangling particples and quadratic equations.

“This is not an, ‘If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em’ message,” he told CBC Thursday. “It’s, ‘Hey, something’s working here.’”

“Common sense tells us that a medium so basic to the lives of these
‘millennials’ has potential beyond the living room,” Lowenstein said.
“We would be crazy not to seek ways to exploit interactive games to
teach our children.”

But won’t they just be playing “shoot ‘em up games”?

Sawyer cited the simulated worlds of games such as the Civilization
series and Age of Empires as examples of rich, multi-textured games
that require a cognitive style of play versus eye-hand style play of
most sports and action games.

And the most telling statement:

The most significant obstacle to video game learning, he said, is
the parent who doesn’t participate in the “media literacy” of their
children’s interests and often doesn’t see the benefits the games offer.

“They have to be more engaged, or they risk their children tuning the good things out,” he said

“Are we ignoring the culture of our youth?” And yes Dustin, you should have blogged this.

technorati tags:videogames

Today I had the privilege of sharing my thoughts on blogging with a group of administrators from our divsion. (I’ll podcast my talk later). I had some great conversations with these folks and am encouraged at the number who want their students to experience social and global learning.

I tried to emphasize the aspect of freedom and controversy that exists in blogging and how important it is to build authentic community. (I’m not sure I made this point well but I thought about it). To my surprise, I opened up my Bloglines account to find two rather steamy postings from fellow Canadians.

First Stephen Downes must have a bad morning as he wrote about the K12 Online Conference. Not that you have to always be nice but I had a hard time understanding his post. I like Stephen and generally enjoy his short but poignant postings. I know he’s had issues with the likes of David Warlick and that’s fine. I’ve enjoyed how he and David have engaged in some discussion about the disagreements but this posting lacked any depth or explanation and simply came across as mean spirited. I sort of get that he’s suggesting there’s some ego at play or perhaps he sees someone gaining financially because of it but I don’t see that. Also, he talks about reading blogs as a better way to gain this information. I agree, I’m not sure I’ll gain much from this conference but I think it’s more for those needing an introduction to some new stuff. I played only a small part in this conference but know that those building it were doing so only to provide a great opportunity to learn. Unless I missed something?

Then I read about MP Garth Turner getting punted out of the Conservative party for apparently breaching rules of confidentiality on his blog. I’m not sure what exactly it was and neither does Mr. Turner. I certainly hope it’s not for that. Like his politics or not, it’s evident after reading his blog that he is doing his best to be transparent and present an opportunity for everyone to have a voice. Of the 282 comments posted, I liked this one:

Shame on the PC party. You have allowed all voices, negative and positive on your blog. You are honest and open, something your party leader obviously doesn’t appreciate. While I am non-partisan, I have often read your blog and found it to be refreshing, interesting, informative.

So, for some, these examples will move them farther away from wanting to blog, for me it’s gets me more excited. Maybe that’s not normal.

After reading this article in USA Today, I thought of road rage as reasonable analogy. The article talks about some teachers blogging anonymously and making personal attacks and criticisms about teachers and schools. In the same way that drivers can hide behind the windshield and metal of their vehicles and yell and shout at other drivers, so do these teachers. I don’t like it. I suppose there might be a place for anonymous blogging but it seems like many do so in order to go on the attack. I think it’s a bad practice and for the same reason, I don’t want anonymous commenters on my blog, I not much interested in reading theirs. If I can’t find the about page, I’m leaving.

It isnt’ like you can’t challenge others views or writings. That’s part of what makes blogging interesting. I don’t consider myself too controversial, although some may disagree with me. Tom Hoffman’s recent challenge to Wes Fryer, David Warlick, Will Richardson, and Vicki Davis, while not my style, does raise reasonable questions and offers good discussion. He’s not personal, he simply disagrees with what they say. Maybe one day he’ll tell me where I’ve strayed in my thinking.

Let’s encourage each other to be forthright in our comments and discussions and stop hiding behind pseudonyms for the soul purpose of unleashing personal attacks. You’re giving us a bad name!

Dave Weinberger writes about the credibility of wikipedia even more passionately than I do.
He points out that wikipedia’s openness about their accuracy makes them more trustworthy. He talks about the various notices that begin many articles.

Weinberger asks:

So,why is it that you don’t see such frank notices in traditional sources such as newspapers and encyclopedias? Is it because their articles don’t ever suffer from any of these human weaknesses? Oh, sure,newspapers issue corrections after the fact, and “This is non-neutral opinion” is implicit on the Op-Ed page. But why isn’t there any finer grain framing of the reliability and nature of what’s presented to using their pages? Can we come to any conclusion except that traditional authorities are more interested in maintaining authority than in helping us reach the truth?

Wikipedia at the least, encourages us to be critical thinkers. I know when I go there, it may be inaccurate. I’m okay with that. Let’s help our kids not to be brainwashed by the media into believing everything they read and see.
I love the behind the scenes type shows on TV. I love the special features on a DVD showing how the movie was made and any other background information that provides context. The discussion portion of wikipedia entries is well worth the time, especially on these types of disputed articles.
Will we ever see a wiki newspaper?

technorati tags:wikipedia, weinberger

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After reading this article today in the NYTIMES, it once again raised the issue of how we measure success.

Saskatchewan has been one of the last provinces in Canada to move towards standardize testing. We’re still not there yet but recent changes worry me. In an effort to become more accountable we are moving dangerously close to models were test scores determine funding and support.
My argument has been that these type of bureaucratic models will lead to the lowest common denominator of work which is low level thinking and testing in order to produce the required results. Good assessment takes time and thought. Good assessment is not simply assessment OF learning but assessment FOR learning. Data collection in these circumstances for this large number would not likely be able to handle thoughtful, messy assessment. (See Wes Fryer and Brian Crosby for more on messy assessment)

Personally, I’ll be coordinating a number of projects this year relating to the 21st century classroom. It will be largely experimental and self directed for the participants. I want to assess not only for its success (assessment OF learning) but more importantly to make learn from it (assessment FOR learning). I’m struggling with the right type of assessment and the right questions. Any suggestions would be welcomed.

One final thought. If you think of these districts like the NY Public school district or even Saskatchewan Learning and compare it to a classroom, how effective is assessment when you have a large class of 50? Not very in depth. That’s why I argue the validity of these test scores as true indicators of learning. It can’t possibly measure your students learning alone, why would we expect it to reflect the learning of a school? Also I hope that teachers don’t pull their support/funding when they see how poorly students have done. Shouldn’t we provide more support for schools that achieve less? Weird.

technorati tags:assessment

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