Tag Archives: Education

21st century learning, blogging, Education, learning, technology, Web 2.0, writing

Student bloggers speak out eloquently

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On the blog Free resources from the net for special education Paul Hamilton has written a very interesting post sharing his views on student blogging in Jan Smith’s grade 6 class, and a video where he interviews his students about their blogging. If you have any doubts about the value of student blogging, then watch this video. You’ll meet students with different capabilities and interests, explaining what they have learned from blogging. They’re very expressive and specific about how their writing has improved with blogging – and not all of these students like writing. You’ll also notice that they’re able to focus on their special interests and passions in their blog writing, and you’ll see how much work they’ve put in with research and visual presentation, and how proud they are of their efforts. It confirms for me what I’ve been raving about of late – that learning occurs when it’s student-driven, passion-driven, and authentic, with an audience consisting not only of the teacher, but of peers and even people all over the world.

When I listened to the kids on this video talk about their blogging experiences, I was amazed at their ability to reflect and evaluate their learning since taking up blogs. They have become experts in their area of interest. Their passion has driven their depth of research, and they’re more likely to learn from each other than from information presented to them by their teacher out of context and unattached to people they know.

Listen to the girl who loves blogging. She describes blogging as ‘another part of me’.  She blogs outside of school hours because she loves it. When asked to explain why blogging is better than normal classroom writing, she lists the feedback (‘The whole world sees my writing’); the fact that she can speak out and let people know what she has to say, that she can write. What does she write about? What has happened. She writes about what she has read, what has happened in her life, and in the rest of the world.

Take a look at the video. If you jotted down the advantages of blogging as these kids speak, you’d have a decent presentation for principals or staff in general in defence of student blogging.

[googlevideo=http://video.google.ca/videoplay?docid=-5516786120599905125&hl=en]

21st century learning, Education, media, network literacy, technology, Web 2.0

Will Richardson speaks in Melbourne

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willnetwork

 Will  Richardson’s networks

I’m guessing there will be several blog posts about the SLAV conference, Perspectives on learning V2 today. I have considered whether to leave it to others, but a post always deconstructs my own thinking, and creates an archive for later reference.

Will Richardson was the keynote speaker, and he spoke about Network literacy: leveraging the potential of a hyperconnected world. There were concurrent sessions by Jenny Luca (Now you know Web 2.0, what next?), Adrian Camm (Why create a virtual learning community), and John Pearce (Projecting passionately with Web 2.0). The Plenary session was presented by Kerry Rowett and Judith Way (Web 2.0 and resources for you), who write the SLAV blog, Bright ideas.

SLAV is to be congratulated on providing cutting edge professional development, and also on providing links to the presentations on their Bright Ideas blog.

What I’m not going to do is summarise the talks. The slide presentations will give clues, and the podcasts to follow will provide the detail. What I’m going to do is pull out of Will’s keynote speech some of the main points that resonated with me.

Firstly, anyone who has read Will’s blog or looked through his Delicious tags, will know that network literacy is a leitmotif throughout his writings. If you compare the idea of network literacy with our traditional concept of literacy (at its most basic, reading and writing), then you have an idea of how Will stretches the idea of literacy, and also where his focus is. The hyperconnected world he speaks of is a connectedness which is made  possible by technology, but which is not focused on technology itself, but on a connectedness with people and people networks. And these networks are the source of information for Will. He doesn’t Google when he needs information, he goes to his Twitter or Delicious communities. When he wants to know what ‘s going on in the world, he doesn’t just read newspapers, he prefers to go to his personally designed sources in his Google Reader (RSS feeds), or to his favourite bloggers when he wants deep conversation. He connects with people who share his passions, with experts far and wide, and he urges us to do the same.

And so we shouldn’t be surprised when Will speaks of schools as places which need to change. He quotes Clay Shirky (Here comes everybody) who says we have to get outside of our physical spaces which define our schools and learning, and connect with people and networks globally. He reminds us that our students have already made it out to networked activity through social media sites like Facebook and MySpace. He pre-empts our concerns that Facebook is trivial and uneducational by pointing out that kids are already moving beyond the superficial and using social media to form interest-based groups, where their interaction is based purely on passion and transcends physical space, time zones and cultures. We are impressed when we realise that these experiences place kids in a position of being teachers as well as learners. We really get the point when we hear that this all happens outside of school, when it hits home that self-organised learning and teaching activities driven by pure passion are taking place outside of our learning institutions. While we have the problem of increasing disengagement in our classes. The point hits home with some discomfort.

Here are some points that came out of Will’s talk:

  • learning is an ongoing process, not something that fits neatly within a measured time frame
  • blogging allows us to rethink what it means to read and write; it becomes a connection, a conversation with an authentic audience
  • literacy is malleable and will evolve further in the next few years
  • multimedia texts expand literacy to include critical thinking and analysis
  • we need to create and navigate our own personal learning network, and teach our students to do the same
  • network literacy cannot be taught as a one-off course
  • we need to help our kids create a digital footprint, so that they have positive results when googled

Listen to the podcast when it comes onto the SLAV website for the rest of the talk.

Jenny Luca’s talk was a passionate account detailing her journey from Web 2.0 to making a difference to the lives of many people with the help of individuals and communities around the world. Amongst other projects, she spoke about Working together to make a difference which she is most proud of, since it is testimony to the best of people’s collabortive efforts.

I could go on; all the talks I attended were extremely interesting and relevant to educators. It’s the kind of resource and ideas list that could keep you going for a very long time. I’m already using most of the Web 2.o tools and applications that were mentioned, but I’m trying to integrate them into relevant and creative learning and teaching. What I have learned from hearing people like Will and Jenny speak, has not centred on new tools, but shifted me into a different direction, provided me with a new perspective.

What I’d love to find out now is how the audience received these talks, how people felt, what they thought, what resolutions, if any, did they make as they walked out of that conference. Did it make a difference? Please leave your honest comments here, and perhaps we can have a conversation. Did the talks effect a shift in your perspective and teaching direction, or did it just make you shift uncomfortably in your seat?

21st century learning, Education, learning, teaching, Web 2.0

What is School? Look again

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As educators, we all want to engage our students in learning. We also know that this can be challenging, and some of us wonder what we can do about it.

Sometimes I think we need an artist to show us what school is really like. Why do I say that? An artist often presents the familiar in a new way, allowing us to see something for the first time, as it were.

 

 

This is not a pipe – Magritte

When I think about traditional education, the type of education our children are still receiving, it seems to be artificial, contrived, divorced from life. Perhaps this is the reason young people are bored and disengaged at school, why their potential is not always realised. Am I being too negative?

Have a look at a short presentation with segments from the book  The underground history of American education by John Taylor Gatto where he talks about  education creating empty children without independent thought or individual identity. This would obviously apply to education outside of America. He suggests that we have lost the value found in earlier educational practices where people worked in the context of family work or apprenticeship.

Gatto lists the recipe for creating ’empty children’, for example, you should remove children from the business of work, grade according to age, keep them under surveillance all the time with no private space or time, fill time with collective experiences, grade children and make sure they know their rank, forbid useful knowledge, eg. how to repair a car , build a house, etc.

We could never go back to the time where practical education around family businesses prepared all young people for the world of work, but are we actually thinking about how our teaching is preparing students for the world, or even living and functioning in the world, or are we not thinking about that at all?

I would really appreciate some feedback and opinions here. Please comment.

21st century learning, Education, networking, news, technology, Web 2.0

Teacher’s guide to Twitter

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Still in Twitter mode, I’d like to share the teacher’s guide to Twitter by Kate Klingensmith on her blog Once a teacher.

Kate’s post answers those who question whether Twitter is worth the effort – and perhaps all of us have been there. I was certainly there not long ago, and am still expanding my Twitterverse.

Most people start off in a rocky relationship with Twitter.  It doesn’t seem to be as easy or as useful as everyone has said, it takes awhile before you find your niche, and there is an overwhelming amount of information to deal with.  But, just hang on – it’ll be worth it!!! 

Kate links to Mark Marshall’s post ‘Twitter: what is it , and why would I use it?’  Mark explores how to get started, why you would want to share stuff with strangers, and how to get followers in order to make  Twitter a meaningful experience. After all, there’s nothing sadder than a Twitter account with only a handful of followers.

Kate also posts useful information, such as how to manage your life on Twitter, how to control all that information, and favourite Twitter-related tools, and Twitter links.

Finding people to follow is initially problematic. Kate helps out by sharing directories of educators and professionals on Twitter, or suggesting that people use the Twitter Grader keyboard search, or Twitterholic.

I found Kate’s advice about keeping up with the everflowing or even overflowing Twitterstream very helpful (since at times it’s like trying to keep up with the treadmill without falling over

You’re standing on the bank, enjoying the stream as it passes, but you can’t worry about enjoyoing every drop of water that’s there.  Don’t worry about the tweets you missed – I promise that there are always, currently, very interesting things to read.  But – it is nice to catch up sometimes by browsing old tweets on peoples’ profile pages.

Also useful are the links to shorten urls, such as tinyurl  and fun symbols you can use in your tweets. It’s all part of the Twitter grammar and vocabulary.

My favourite section of Kate’s post, however, is the one that links to her favourite Twitter-related tools. Tweetdeck is a more attractive and organised way of receiving tweets; Retweetlist tells you who’s hot on Twitter; and my favourite for today – Twistori, where you can search tweets that start with ‘I love; hate; think; believe; feel; wish.

I wish that I could twitter about something other than food today, but I’m so hungry now;

I love the way the brain cell finally gets up when the body has already begun the day

I hate chasing the clock

Okay, that’s enough reblogging. Here’s where I discovered this fantastic post – on Top 100 Edu Tweeters, which has been revised recently, I’m sure.

Thanks to @Elizabeth Koh for the Top 100 link.

21st century learning, Education, networking, teaching, technology, Web 2.0

Networking is working for some in the classroom

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Photo by Thiyaga on Flickr

In his post The added value of networking, Will Richardson quotes Greenhow in a Harvard Graduate School of Education magazine editorial entitled “Thanks for the Add. Now Help Me with my Homework.” , who says that the kind of skills students are developing on social networking sites are the very same 21st century skills that educators have identified as important for the next generation of knowledge  —  empathy, appreciation for diversity of viewpoints, and an ability to multitask and collaborate with peers on complex projects’.

And yet skills are not the kind of thing that most people would expect to associate with Facebook or MySpace. Online socialising, maybe, wasting time, perhaps, collection of  too many ‘friends’ who couldn’t possibly be real friends, definitely, and what about inappropriate language and photos?  Isn’t this how most responsible people view social networking?

Surprisingly for many, and difficult to believe for most, is the fact that social networking has opened up a range of much more interesting possibilities for young people. Will quotes Greenhow saying that

most students use the medium to reach out to their peers for emotional support and as a way to develop self-esteem. One student created a video of his intramural soccer team to entice his friends to come to his games. Another created an online radio show to express his opinions, then used Facebook to promote a URL where friends could stream it live, and then used one of Facebook’s add-in applications to create a fan site for the show.

Recently our Head of English has decided to use Facebook to engage our year 12 boys in a discussion of their texts, as well as provide a platform for general questions about English skills. I’ve mentioned this in a previous post. What a brilliant idea! The boys are already on Facebook in their free time, so why not use the groups application in Facebook? What has ensued is an intelligent and stimulating collaborative discussion, in which the teacher comes in to stimulate discussion and answer questions only inasmuch as all this hasn’t been taken care of by the boys. There’s something to be said for this kind of discussion where everyone can comment, taking their time to think, not being interrupted or intimidated by others, or being able to re-read comments for clarification and review.

The Facebook project obviously had to go through the correct procedures before starting, eg. parent approval, and presentation and justification to the principal. This process is a good way to inform the school community, as well as clarify the teacher’s own reasons to support teaching and learning.

The relationship between the teacher and the boys would be strengthened, I imagine, following the Facebook group project. A teacher coming across to the students’ preferred way of communicating could only be seen as positive. The tone of the conversation is friendly, open, encouraging and often spiced with humour. The divide between teacher and student is diminished, as the teacher becomes more approachable. I think students would also appreciate the fact that the teacher is taking the time to interact with them after hours.

I only wish that somehow parents could see the valuable conversation that is taking place, so that they would understand the value of such a project, but I doubt that these students would enjoy their parents having access to their Facebook accounts!

What were those networking skills again? Empathy, appreciation for diversity of viewpoints, and an ability to multitask and collaborate with peers on complex projects. Students supporting and encouraging each other; learning to respect others’ viewpoints, working together to explore ideas and understandings. Not bad skills for life…

21st century learning, Education, learning, teachers, teaching

I believe this about learning…

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‘map of Romania’ photo by ggrosseck on flickr

 

…students do not come in one-size-fits-all packages and should be treated as individuals who deserve to be stretched

…no matter what their level of learning, a student’s work is enhanced when their parents are involved in the learning process

…the experiences of students are important aspects of learning and should be incorporated in the classroom as possible

…students live up to the expectations given them by their parents, school and their community; if a student is expected to succeed he or she will

…every student has the capacity to reshape the world; they must be guided to making their impression a positive one

…students should learn by investigating the world and issues that surround them in fun and creative ways

…learning should be an  interesting and useful process

…what happens to students beyond the classroom is as important as what is contained in it

…every student deserves an opportunity to succeed

…the highest goal of education is to teach students to reason and think for themselves

...students should be taught and engaged in such a way that they fall in love with learning

 

Tonia Johnson posted her beliefs for learning on her wiki for Adams City High School. They gave me the opportunity to reflect on what initially may seem obvious and unoriginal, but at second glance are actually deep and essential aspects of learning. I started to think about how much of the teaching and learning at our school corresponds to these beliefs; how much my own practices support these beliefs.

Is there one introductory belief that forms a basis for further good teaching practices, or are they intertwined and shoot off each other?

I would really like some feedback from you about which of these beliefs you consider most important and why, and if you can add to this list.

Essential to good teaching practice, in my experience, is taking the time to reflect and critically evaluate what you are doing as an educator. Now that the new school year is starting, I can see how easy it will be to fall into the busy and relentless schedule of weeks and terms without taking time out to breathe or blink. I think we need to make a time to reflect, just as we deliberately schedule appointments to the dentist. Yes, it is sometimes an appointment we don’t feel like keeping.

Blogging (for those of you who continue to argue with me against it) is always a discipline that provides a regular time for reflection and evaluation. Amidst defensive cries of ‘haven’t got the time, too busy’, I stubbornly insist that time must be made. It’s worth it.

 

 

21st century learning, creativity, debate, Education, learning, teachers, teaching, Web 2.0

A balance between teaching skills and content

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oldscales

Photo by takaken2008 on Flickr

What are 21st century skills and are these skills different to those currently being taught in schools?  How radically do we need to change our teaching practices?

Daniel Willingham has written an informative post in Britannica blog entitled Education for the 21st century: balancing content with skills, in which he asks and answers the important question: why the sudden concern for 21st century skills.

Willingham quotes reports and books  that point to:

changes in the skills required for most jobs. Our economy is generating fewer jobs in which workers engage in repetitive tasks throughout their day (e.g., assembly line work) and more information-rich jobs that present workers with novel problems and that require analysis and teamwork.

 Willingham quotes Elena Silva in defining these skills as having at their core the ability to

analyze and evaluate information, create new ideas and new knowledge from the information.

He also adds to creativity and critical thinking the following essential skills for the 21st century from a report from the partnership for 21st century skills :

new knowledge … [and] global awareness, media literacy, information literacy, and other new content.

Now, this is where I start sitting up and taking note. Although I’m fully on board with the need for 21st century skills, I haven’t felt comfortable substituting content for skills alone. Memorisation of facts without the skills is obviously a waste of time, and I understand that you need the skills to locate, manage and synthesize the freely available information to create knowledge, but we still need a knowledge of some content, surely, otherwise the skills are free floating and without context. 

Willingham ties up the skills/content dilemma very well for me. He says that the 21st century skills require deep understanding of subject matter:

Shallow understanding requires knowing some facts. Deep understanding requires knowing the facts AND knowing how they fit together, seeing the whole.

And skills like “analysis” and “critical thinking” are tied to content; you analyze history differently than you analyze literature … If you don’t think that most of our students are gaining very deep knowledge of core subjects—and you shouldn’t—then there is not much point in calling for more emphasis on analysis and critical thinking unless you take the content problem seriously. You can’t have one without the other.

As usual, a balance is required to make things work effectively, and this should surely be common sense. This way we avoid the too often pendulum swings that have occurred in the history of education

between an emphasis on process (analysis, critical thinking, cooperative learning) which fosters concern that students lack knowledge and generates a back-to-basics movement that emphasizes content, which fosters concern that student are merely parroting facts with no idea of how to use their knowledge, and so on.

For me, this balance is the key to identifying the problems and solutions of 21st century learning. I’m trying to understand the shift in education more deeply to avoid a superficial conversion. I think that, for me at least, more discussion will enable a deeper understanding of the learning processes and the corresponding teaching processes that are essential to prepare students for work and life in these times.

As usual, I welcome and am grateful for any comments, and look forward to generating some discussion.

21st century learning, creativity, debate, Education, internet, learning, parents, teachers, teaching, technology, Web 2.0

In a world in which information is like air, what happens to power?

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[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlqU1o3NmSw&eurl=http://www.usnowfilm.com/&feature=player_embedded]

JP Rangaswarmi  wrote a post about Us Now, a one-hour documentary by Ivo Gormley about participative citizenship, mass collaboration and the internet, and their implications on government as we know it.

The Us Now website links to the thinkers asked to determine the opportunity for government in the radical new models of social organisation. Some of these are George Osbourne, Ed Milliband, Don Tapscott and Clay Shirky.

It’s interesting to follow the new democracy that online social organisations have opened up. More than interesting. As stated in the Us Now website, ‘In a world in which information is like air, who has the power?’

The Us Now blog includes interesting information by Paul Miller from the School of Everything. The School of Everything is a social learning network that connects people who can teach with people who want to learn.

Having been led to read about the School of Everything, and linked to Wikinomics through Paul Miller, I started to think about how, on the whole, we accept schools as the way to go with learning and trust them with our kids. My father, who completed his school education at the age of  14 so that he could get a trade and contribute to family finances, revered Education as a hallowed institution. Throughout my schooling, though, he had moments of disillusionment when I was unable to understand the politics in the TV news report, when I was useless at practical things or what he termed as ‘common sense’, or when I started philosophy and started questioning whether the table was really there. My own experiences as a parent saw me disillusioned at times when my older son was told to dumb down by the primary school psychologist so that he could more easily fit in, and even now, fighting  frustration when my younger son is instructed not to cut and paste, but to use his own words in a project that simply asks for basic facts about a country.

I have friends who have home schooled their children. Is this an option? Hasn’t  home tutoring been one of the ways to educate young people throughout history? And yet, these options have always made me nervous. Maybe because I was told my children would be socially impaired without normal social contact with their peers. Or maybe simply because it wasn’t the norm, and therefore frightening.

I’ve just had a conversation about this and alternative schooling with my older son who has completed year 12 recently. He’s a good example of a passionately curious child who stood out from ‘normal’ children and suffered for it in his primary years, but eventually toned down to fit in. It was interesting to see him become defensive and uncomfortable when I mentioned the School of Everything and questioned the relevance of traditional schooling.

No, you can’t have that, he protested.

Why  not? 

Well, it’s not all about learning of content, it’s about being with people and learning from them.

Who said that an alternative or online learning program excluded face to face contact or social opportunities?

OK, well, you can’t just do your own thing. You have to learn that not everything in life is interesting.

Tell me, how many teachers did you find boring and unengaging, and how much of your schooling have you retained or found valuable in life?

(squirm) But you can’t have life without suffering. You need to learn to cope with disillusionment and disengagment. You can’t totally remove it.

I’m not going to unpack this. I’m just going to ask you to give me your thoughts.

creativity, Education, media, Web 2.0

Capzles: time captured in a story

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Capzles is a new way to combine videos, photos and mp3s into rich, multimedia storytelling.

capzleobama

Until I’m successful in embedding the widget, here’s the link to a capzle on Obama. 

Capzles promises to ‘claim your memories; tell your stories; travel through time’, and they do that eloquently. The Obama capzle traces Obama’s life sequentially, and includes photos, and video and transcripts of speeches. I can definitely see the value of capzles for teaching subject matter, but more than that, kids would enjoy creating capzles to present research. This application really does have the potential to capture what’s essential and interesting, and package it neatly for viewing.

It’s free and simple to join. You can browse capzles created in popular categories, eg. history, art and design, film and movies, people and life, vacation and travel, etc. Under history, for example, you’ll find ‘history of Apple computer’ and ’75 years of the popemobile’. It’s a great way to share travel experiences, or present biographies in an engaging format. Or encapzlate your old photographs. Oh, and of course, it’s another great sharing tool. Although there isn’t a huge amount there at the moment, I expect it will expand its archive very quickly.

Thanks to @grosseck for this.

21st century learning, creativity, Education, Web 2.0

Fly a virtual paper plane into the future of education

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futureeducation

 

I just had to show you this very creative and original site, although I had promised myself before this that I wouldn’t post another thing for a while.

You’re going to love this. When you go to the Million Futures site, you see a blue sky with fluffy clouds and hundreds of paper planes flying around. These represent people’s views on future education. 

Million Futures is part of Beyond Current Horizons – a joint project conducted by the Department for Children, Schools and Families (DCSF) and education innovator Futurelab.

It’s an innovative way of consulting with the public to identify what people see as the biggest challenges facing the future of education, and to gain some knowledge of how people would like to envisage future education. The responses will contribute to a report from Futurelab which will be published on the Beyond Current Horizons website. This will be used to inform the UK government’s long-term scenario planning for education.

There are 6 questions revolving around the central question:

What of today’s education do you want to see in 2025?

When you click on a question, a paper plane flies in and opens up for you to write inside. When you’re done, it folds up and flies into the sky to join the other planes. You can open other planes to see what others have written. I’m not sure how this is going to reflect UK views, since I was able to contribute and I’m Australian.

I urge you to have a look, even just from an aesthetic perspective. What an original idea.

Thanks to @ggrosseck for finding this