Week #5: Blog 2: It's Not About the Tool

Sean Capelle's article, It's Not About the Tool, points out the importance of using Web 2.0 tools to further instructional goals, not just to say you're using 'technology' in the classroom.  

Using web tools such as Wiki, blog, and Glogster, to name a few, can facilitate the twenty-first century learning skills students need not only for the future, but for today.   These tools encourage collaboration, creativity, and problem solving - the very skills Web 1.0 doesn’t account for.  The caveat for teachers willing to use 2.0 tools is to be clear in its curricular purpose. Basic computer skills are vital for students to learn early on in their education in order to facilitate the use of technology for deeper understandings instead of becoming bogged down with the ‘how -to” of using a keyboard.   When teachers are able to move beyond the ‘procedural’ keyboarding skills and basic computer know-how, students are able to engage in authentic, meaningful, inquiry-based learning.  

 Check out Dover's "Technology I Can Statements for Students K- 8".  

With the creation of the 21^st Century Skills course (I don't yet know how I'm going to implement all of this - couldn't even find the NH IT frameworks on the site) I will be teaching next year, one important role I see myself offering to the middle school teachers is to support the development of instructional lessons and units that use technology to extend and reinforce the very core curricula they teacher.  In 21^st Century Skills, students can learn the digital applications needed to support the curriculum lessons.  This will free up the cognitive space for student’s to use digital tools for authentic critical thinking and collaborative applications. 

  

It takes time to come to terms with a new and evolving teaching and learning context especially in developing the technical pedagogical content knowledge needed by teachers for effective technological integration.  Teachers need to feel supported and encouraged at their ability level and be confident that they can, indeed, begin to integrate technology with curricula to some degree – one step at a time.  

Week #5: Blog 1: Open Source 2.0

    

 We’re all using Google. I suspect many of us have been Googling for years.  What’s changed is the shift from “a medium in which information is transmitted and consumed into being a platform in which content is created, shared, remixed, repurposed, and passed along”.  This open-source movement, created by a community of people, allows people to work together collaboratively and in an evolutionary way.  At my school we use Gmail accounts, share documents, and use/share calendars.  Students have school email accounts, which allows them to work anywhere on their documents, instant message for collaboration, and auto save.  Very few teachers have ventured beyond this, but those that have are doing some amazing things. Check out Stephanie Karabaic, the reading teacher who individualizes each students reading program on-line and Liam Coyle’s 8^th grade Adopt a Country project.  

     Another great Google source discovered in web 2.0: new tools, new schools by Gwen Solomon and Lynne Schrum is Google for Educators.  This offers ideas for lessons, how to use 2.0 tools, and student resources. 

     I’m interested in exploring Moodle as a way to manage and organize my new class for next year, or maybe it’s more than I need. I really like the wiki format of this class and will need to explore how the two can work together and what I can realistically manage. In addition to 7^th grade, I will also be teaching fifth grade students which will present different levels of digital savvy.  The text mentions a site called Whyville for younger learners.  It’s worth checking out. 

 

Week #4: Blog 2: PBS Digital Media

The PBS documentary on Digital Media had me thinking a lot about how schools are structured.  The industrial model of school structure – 42 minute periods, sitting in rows, obediently listening as the teacher distills knowledge – must be revolutionized for students to be partners in producing content making deeper learning than being simply a consumer of what the teacher is selling.  I’m reminded of Howard Gardner’s multiple intelligences.  Schools cater to the linguistic and logical-mathematical learner, which doesn’t meet the needs of many other learners, such as the musical, kinesthetic, visual, spatial, and inter/intrapersonal learners.  Integrating technology into the classroom is one way of meeting many learning style affinities for many students at the same time.  There were many examples in the PBS video of how several schools are teaching on edge of digital media education and making it work!

When educators consider these different style learners, all of which have their own various passions, and then use technology in ways to foster these passions – education POPS!  Students become engaged, active learners who are able to produce knowledge through creativity, collaboration, and problem solving.  Examples of this from the PBS video would be the Smithsonian’s scavenger hunt using cell phones and the video productions created by students at the media arts school in Chicago.  

Teachers need to recognize and embrace the changes in teaching pedagogy that is required for teaching twenty-first century learners.  The Partnership for 21st Century Skills has a great visual graphic encompassing both student outcomes and teacher supports.  Crucial teaching today is to promote a "quest to learn".  I enjoyed the conversation about children being addicted to tech gadgets.  This 'addiction', used for things many educators don't value, yet could be valuable for children in their lives.  Growing up digital isn't all bad.  

Week #4: Blog 1: Social Bookmarking

Social bookmarking is an amazing way to establish yet another type of community. I say ‘amazing’ because I’m still a rooky when it comes to using technology for things other than as a substitute for handwriting letters and lesson plans, and researching and writing research papers.  My e-mail keeps me connected to close friends and my recent Facebook account includes some individuals I would otherwise never see or hear from, such as friends of my almost-grown children. I’m reminded of a comment by Richard Schwier from his book, Connections: Virtual Learning Communities.  He posits that informal communities don’t just happen.   “They do not just drop in by accident for the most part, they participate voluntarily, intentionally, selectively, and purposefully based on what they find of value in the network”.

I don’t find Facebook to be particularly valuable because it doesn’t feel like a community to me.  I’m more of a bystander than a participant. I believe I identify with Schwier’s comments about participation not being equal to engagement.  I almost do it grudgingly, so why do it al all?  This is why social bookmarking may be of more value to me because it’s a tool that can be used across layered networks/communities of colleagues, friends, and family.  “Communities have an edge, a feeling, a swagger, a propulsion system” - I love this description on communities in regard to intimacy, as it seems fitting.  I don’t  ‘swagger’ on Facebook but I do with some groups of various persons sharing specific interests that we get charged up about!  I think social bookmarking could be edgy, depending on the group dynamic and what mutual interests bring people together.  Learning is edgy. 

Diigo has a lot to offer as a cloud-based information management tool.  I think I will use it to make professional connections through the sharing of relevant information with like-minded people.  I could do this with del.icio.us but many computers at my school don’t support the program – which I’ve never been able to figure out!  Diigo offers much more as a social bookmarking option.  I love the highlight and sticky note options, particularly for sharing in groups and I like its possible uses for in the classroom, particularly presentations for students and embedding video, sounds, pictures etc. to engage them –or at least get their attention! 

Week #3: Blog 2: Media Literacy

Portal to Media Literacy

Creating a ‘platform for participation’ in the classroom or the virtual learning community is a teaching philosophy that isn’t really new to the 21^st Century so much as it’s a revolutionary idea for learning in the information rich environment of the 21^st Century.  Technology provides a new frontier for teachers and students to collaborate in learning by shifting the onus of knowledge away from the teacher to the student.  Students’ want to be engaged in meaningful learning that is deeply significant and valuable. 

Dr. Wesch presents an anthropology lesson he designed along with his students in a large lecture style class using technology to engage all students. It was imaginative and creative and engaging.  I also posit that it takes courage and guts for many teachers to take the digital leap! As I watched Dr. Wesch’s presentation, I wondered what the thinning, white haired men in the front were thinking.  Hmm?  As today’s teachers begin to experience the digital shift, the definition of literacy begins to broaden to include more than just reading, writing, thinking, and listening, but also to include visual, technological, social, and environmental literacy to name a few. Listen as teachers discuss what it means to be literate in the 21^st Century?  Students need to be more than knowledgeable, they need to be knowledge-able.

After watching several of the Digital Portraits – Dylan,Virginia, Cameron - I feel compelled to become better at preparing students for the future and be a better teacher and take those digital leaps.  I don’t accept that technology is the only way for students to be engaged or to gain knowledge in the classroom and I don’t accept that all students are digitally savvy, but I also don’t accept that it’s okay for students to be bored in the classroom.  Today my students asked if I would try something I’m learning in this class in the classroom.  They’re hungry to try learning and showing what they know in new ways and my challenge is to provide the platform.   This You Tube video, You can’t be my teacher, definitely hits a teacher nerve with me!

Week #3: Blog 1: Virtual Learning Communities

Chapters one and two of Richard Schwier’s e-book, Connections: Virtual Learning Communities, takes an in-depth look at what learning communities are, who or what makes them tick, and considers the parallels between interpersonal (face to face) and virtual communication.  I strongly agree with Schwier that people by nature want to be connected with  others and learn survival through learning and adapting with others.  Clearly the adolescent children in my classroom are social creatures and enjoy learning most when it is collaborative and interactive.  Schwier argues that community can be just as strongly developed in virtual settings and has many of the same elements as face to face communities: hospitality, authenticity, resilience, and are multifaceted.  These communities’ shift and change as the participants develop trust, connections, and determine the amount of personal investment they are willing to make. 

These virtual communities are growing as technology continues to bring people together. Teachers, such as George Siemens, are opening their classrooms not only to students who are registered for the class, but also to learners beyond the classroom, creating layers of learning communities. Siemens argues that structured learning is irrelevant if learners aren’t involved and considered in the development of the content outcomes, otherwise deeming the learning meaningless and thus graduating students only capable of answering questions designed for the test.  A You Tube video, A Private Universe, where Harvard graduates are asked to explain the changing of the seasons demonstrates his point.

Schwier challenged my thinking as a teacher to remove myself from the “front of the classroom” where typically knowledge is dispelled to the students instead of trusting the students to explore and discover content knowledge on their own through teacher guidance, prodding, and pushing.  This can be done face to face, but the Millennial learner needs to be challenged in ways that only technology can deliver – to increase learning by customization, convenience, and collaboration (Raised Digitally) – a hypertext style of thinking verses the old linear book format.