Building Understanding

Scott McLeod over at Dangerously Irrelevant posted a simple question the other day.

Given the realities of our modern age and the demands of our children’s future, is it really okay to allow teachers to choose whether or not they incorporate modern technologies into their instruction?

The comments that followed this particular question from his readers are worth reading.

Here’s the thing…it isn’t about whether technology must be included in children’s educational experience. It’s actually about the THINKING SKILLS that must be included.

There is no doubt that students live in a digital world. That they behave and think and communicate in digital ways. And including technology in their schooling will probably serve to engage them and make their education seem a little more relevant.

But they need more than that.

21st century learners need thinking skills. They need to be able to find, process, and evaluate information that is EVERYWHERE and always accessible. They need to be able to participate in an interconnected, wired world in effective and responsible ways. They NEED to be taught how to manage/handle/thrive amidst all of the information that is out there and continuing to grow.

Our allegiance to English, Science, Math, and Social Studies as core curricular ideals and the end-all-be-all in student learning needs to make room for higher order thinking, questioning, and information literacy.

I am not arguing for the abolishment of those subjects (though a part of me thinks that they continue to drive our curriculum because they suit us the teachers, rather than our intended audience, the students – see another McLeod question on this). I do think, though, that major curricular overhaul is needed and schools need to consider an overarching or interwoven curricular piece that embraces the skills that 21st century learners need.

Going back to the original question then, No, it’s not okay.

To accomplish these thinking skills and to get students to evaluate and understand the world they are in and the world we will be sending them off into, technology needs to be there. Technology is the tool for information access. Technology is the tool for communication of ideas, thoughts, opinion, fact and bias. Technology is the tool from which a massive discussion of ethical behavior continues to emerge. How can we not include technology in children’s education? If we don’t include it, what are they learning?

photo by Yuan2003, taken from Flickr Creative Commons

I don’t know what Techlearning’s readership is…but I am sure that it is greater than mine.

Regardless, I want to share a good article by Scott Meech that was posted there that really sums up our need – as educators – to teach kids how to be 21st century literate (fluent?).

The blind assumption of truth on the Internet has reached alarming proportions.

The article talks about how our assumptions as educators are that kids “know how to use the technology and information resources”. After all, they are digital natives. But our assumptions are far from the truth.

Educators need to break away from the traditional role of teaching to embrace these new learning strategies. Too many times I have heard colleagues mention their personal preferences as a reason for not embracing technology in their classroom. I have heard colleagues mention that they would never read an E-book from a palm or laptop computer because they enjoy a real book so much. These same teachers are not using new technologies in their classrooms, which hinder their students learning.

Scott Meech is right on here. Our assumptions of strong ability and use by our students is not accurate or fair, yet too often we see teachers release their kids on the interent or refuse to have conversations with students about ethics or information validity or research skills.

Just because students appear to know more about computers than adults doesn’t mean they are truly technically literate.

It is incredible how often educators default to the idea that these digital native kids come with an inherent gift for using the technology (and use it well). It speaks more to their own insecurities than it does to a student skill set.

Anyway…a good article to read…I recommend it.

Day 2 of the conference brought us another wonderful student keynote who spoke on the Chinese tale of the Frog in the Well. The frog only has a limited view of the sky through the top of the well, and until she is moved and shown the true nature of things, her horizons and her perspective are never changed. A fine start to the day for teachers to think about and to consider international education.

Then, the ever dynamic, Ian Jukes came on to speak. With excellent supporting visuals, Ian spoke on the dire need for our schools to address the thinking skills needed to prepare students for the world that outside of education has changed and continues to change so rapidly. Great quote from Woodrow Wilson, “it’s easier to move a cemetery, than it is to change a curriculum.” He makes a terrific point that the main difficulty is that the change we are dealing with is hard to comprehend and so it is hard to make our own changes when we are dealing with the “tyranny of the urgent.”

Kids today are different – Jukes spoke on how the visual cortex of the brain is larger, more developed than kids of 20 years ago. “Screenagers”, he called them, citing two Time Magazine articles. Interestingly, he talked about how current research seems to indicate that our brains continue to adapt and make new connections. But the brain needs regular exposure to the “change-maker” to make this change. So does this have implications on our schools? (rhetorical)

Jukes talked a fair amount on games and their impact on kids. He encouraged us to learn about these games, to play them with kids and to get our “asses kicked” by kids. They are hard-wiring themselves through these technologies. We should need to tap into this.

I saw a lot of Ian Jukes this week. And the message is clear. Change is here…change is fast (exponential) and getting faster. And predicting the future? Impossible. So what does that mean for us? It means that we need schools to be different. I haven’t had “my own” class in a few years now and I do think about how I would do things differently if I were in the classroom again. But my need for change in education is even greater now. As the tech-guy, this stuff seems to fall under my umbrella for change. And I need to work out how to convince a curriculum office to dump content and adopt thinking skills, a faculty to include me in their lesson planning, and an administration to hire and evaluate based on a willingness to adapt to these ideas and change the way schools work.

Is this overstepping my bounds? Probably. But the need seems to strong to ignore. Education really seems to be failing kids. They seem to be learning in spite of us, not with us. Maybe that’s too harsh, but I liken it to the exact opposite of wikipedia. Wikipedia is accurate at the macro-level, but could be inaccurate at the micro. I think real learning is possibly working in individual rooms with individual teachers, but we are failing miserably on the school-wide education-as-a-whole level in preparing kids for futures requiring 21st century skills. (speaking of which, I attended a workshop on these skills that set us back on moving forward more than anything I’ve seen….good presentation is good presentation and when it isn’t good…ouch. Until I get up and start presenting myself in that forum, I suppose I should not judge).

Luckily, I am spoiled. I work with a forward thinking leader colleague and am about to be joined by another in the ES. I saw many faces from my school at the various Jukes sessions. The tide could start changing at ISB and I think that those who are interested is as good a place to start as any. Let’s see how many come to school on Monday wanting to be committed.

Great post on wikipedia from Jeff at Thinking Stick after his presentation on wikis at the ETC conference in Bangkok.

We need to quit looking at Wikipedia as the end result and instead look at it as part of the learning process. Why not go to Wikipedia and use it as a learning device. Use it in our classrooms as part of the learning experience.

I posted on this topic a little while ago as well. In addition to Wikipedia being an incredibly accurate source on the large scale, it is a terrific conversation starter with students about source accuracy, a participatory web, and about collaboration. These are 21st century learning skills that we acknowledge, yet we avoid these conversations every time we block a site (like wikipedia) or deny it’s use by students.

Teachers need to let go of their allegiance to out-dated definitions of “legitimate information” and understand the power of the participatory web (I am trying to avoid web 2.0-jargon). So how do I convince them to do this?

More on Day 2 of Earcos to come…I’ve been doing a lot of “Jukes-ing”.

(originally posted on harterlearning on Mar 12, 2007)

The Economist just ran an article on Wikipedia, which while behind the times for us in ed. tech. blogging, is a good indicator on how the rest of the web-not-quite-2.0 world perceives it or will come to perceive it. After all, the Economist is the intellectual’s magazine.

Wikipedia has strengths too, chiefly the resilient power of collective common sense.

The article shares how anonymity can be a problem with Wikipedia, but then argues that collectively it is in fact VERY well maintained and that even many of the pretend-experts are conscientious, careful, and accurate.

Constant scrutiny and editing means even the worst articles are gradually getting better, while the best ones are kept nicely polished and up to date. Someone, eventually, will spot even the tiniest error, or tighten a patch of sloppy prose. Mr Jordan, for all his bragging, seems to have been a scrupulous and effective editor.

It’s a great article to share with your teachers. As much as I have tried, I come across teachers who are resistant to the idea that Wikipedia can be trusted or that Wikipedia can be used as a source by students. They think that they are teaching good research skills. I think they are missing an opportunity for students to think critically, to defend arguments, and to confirm information from other sources.

Has anyone else come across the attempting-to-be-web-savvy teacher who in efforts to show they are “with it” with new technologies, make the pre-emptive ban on using Wikipedia as a source with students?

Are we not missing out on conversations with students on “collective common sense”? Or global participatory culture? Educators complain about misuse and abuse of social networking sites like MySpace, but fail to acknowledge the powerful force for shared knowledge that Wikipedia (and other sites have become). Web 2.0 is being used for good right in front of even the most tech-resistant noses, but they miss it hiding behind “anyone could write it, so it’s not allowed.”

The quality of writing is often a good guide to an entry’s usefulness: inelegant or ranting prose usually reflects muddled thoughts and incomplete information. A regular user soon gets a feel for what to trust.

I thought that was a nice quote to describe exactly what we are missing out on, by not allowing kids to use Wikipedia. Don’t we want kids developing that skill of getting “a feel for what to trust”?

I’m going to be sharing this article with my staff. Let’s see if it can get our own conversation started.

[on a side note...Conservapedia?!? Really?!]

(originally posted on harterlearning on Feb 27, 2007)

Teens Can Multitask, But What Are Costs? – washingtonpost.com:

Call it multitasking homework, Generation ‘Net style.

The students who do it say multitasking makes them feel more productive and less stressed. Researchers aren’t sure what the long-term impact will be because no studies have probed its effect on teenage development. But some fear that the penchant for flitting from task to task could have serious consequences on young people’s ability to focus and develop analytical skills.

We all know the scene: teen managing their MySpace, instant messaging, listening to music, sharing homework, and word processing all at the same time. This article from The Washington Post takes an interesting look at teenager multi-tasking.

The article misleads though when they quote Jordan Grafman, chief of neuroscience at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke as saying,

Introducing multitasking in younger kids in my opinion can be detrimental,” he said. “One of the biggest problems about multitasking is that it’s almost impossible to gain a depth of knowledge of any of the tasks you do while you’re multitasking. And if it becomes normal to do, you’ll likely be satisfied with very surface-level investigation and knowledge.

This quote has NOTHING to do with neurological disorder or stroke, yet by quoting him, the writer offers the impression that this could be a possibility. Is this even ethical? Lots of adults are saying the same thing…how can they be focusing? How can they be understanding? What purpose is their in getting this quote from the head of the Stroke Institute unless it is to imply that they think it’s bad for teens’ health (which they do not as far as I can tell)?

The article goes on to describe a study which indicated that scoring is similar on a card recall activity by those multi-tasking and those not. Interestingly again, it then goes on to offer that the multi-taskers seem to recall less detail.

imaging showed that different parts of the brain were active depending on whether the subjects did single or multiple tasks. When subjects were focused on sorting, the hippocampus — the part of the brain responsible for storing and recalling information — was engaged. But when they were multitasking, that part of the brain was quiet and the part of the brain used to master repetitive skills — the striatum — was active.

Was recall part of the activity? Multitasking may shut off certain parts of the brain that are unnecesary, but could it be that good multi-tasking would have allowed for recall, if that were asked of the multi-tasker? Maybe the multi-tasking brain is effective because it can shut off what it doesn’t need. I don’t know the answer to this, but as I read this article I thought of how often we, digital immigrant, try to force our own hang-ups on digital native multi-taskers.

If students aren’t getting to the depth of knowledge like they are “supposed” to, then perhaps that is because we aren’t “asking” them to. If they can multi-task and get good grades, as the article suggests, then these students are doing what is being asked of them and doing it well.

Yet we then question the depth of their knowledge?

Is not the depth of their knowledge, dependent on what we ask them to know? And if our questions ask for depth, wouldn’t that be an effective gauge for how well they can achieve that depth, while still multi-tasking? Maybe with thought-requiring questions, a student might drop some of those “tasks” and focus on the one…or maybe we’d find that their brains are in fact wired differently than ours and that they can think with depth while chatting with their friends.

Either way, I find it hard to blame the lack of depth in teens’ knowledge on their own multi-tasking. No, that blame falls directly on us…their teachers. Let’s give them something worth focusing on and then we can worry about how they get there.

(originally posted on harterlearning on Feb 26, 2007)

Cool Cat Teacher Blog: Teaching wikis to future educators: My virtual presentation at the College of William and Mary:

Tomorrow I am spending time with Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach’s class EDUC 330 Tech Enhanced Learning at the College of William and Mary.

It is great to see that my alma mater is doing some forward thinking here. Made me feel proud that they have a class that focuses on this and that isn’t focused on “tech” that is already outdated. The speaker list is terrific with some of the great bloggers I find on my own Netvibes account. Great news. Well done W&M! Go Tribe!

There are some other great gems on this particular post from Vicki. A great couple of videos on wikis and the 21st century teacher. It’s worth checking out if you came here first…(though CoolCat’s readership is significantly higher than mine, so I am guessing that it’ll happen the other way around if at all).

(originally posted on harterlearning on Feb 12, 2007)

Scott McLeod over at Dangerously I rrelevant brought attention to this April 2006 guest posting by Mike Wesch (who just made the incredible Web 2.0 you tube video…see earlier post in this blog). In his guest post on Savage Minds, Mike describes his World Simulation activity. He calls this activity an example of anti-teaching.

“Teaching,” he says, “is about providing good information. Anti-teaching is about inspiring good questions.”

Reading on in this post, it sounds like a terrific example of students learning and understanding cultures and how they differ and how they thrive (or not) in a globalized world. The activity in fact, seems like a great one and comments by actual students seem to confirm this.

I am struck, however, by his use of terms. Purposely, he refers to this successful activity as an example of anti-teaching. He continues to say that he finds himself anti-teaching more and more in his efforts to have students really learn. Has our opinion of teaching truly come to this? Have we lost all faith in the idea that teachers actually do teach for understanding and that the very questioning that Mike values is in fact the very same questioning that many teachers value? And they call that teaching.

Now I recognize that perhaps it is Mike’s intent to inspire us (like Apple) to Think Differently. His very use of this technology may anger some or at least make teachers defensive. But then, reading the comments, I found no such anger. No such indignation. No one saying, “Wait a minute, I do that stuff all the time and I’m a teacher.” Perhaps it’s Mike’s disclaimer that appeases people by saying classrooms need to have both teaching and anti-teaching. Or perhaps the World Simulation was just such a good activity that teachers were able to look past any slights and recognize a chance at a good lesson plan when they saw one.

Or maybe I am just too sensitive.

Recently there have been discussions in other blogs about teacher movies and whether they inspire people to become teachers, or paint the picture of teaching to be too intense and too life changing to be done by any mere mortal, I guess I am sensitive to how we as educators refer to ourselves and our colleagues. Maybe we don’t all do it perfectly or even well. But when we do, shouldn’t we be calling that “teaching”. Doesn’t it hurt our own cause to refer to best cases of students truly understanding as the exact opposite of teaching?

I love education. And I really love to see understanding happen around me. If, through something a teacher did/planned/encouraged, students start asking deep questions and demonstrate understanding, then I say we call that TEACHING. Because that’s why I think a lot of us got into this gig in the first place.