Phone Book

Check out the future of interactive education for kids:

Learning to Change!

Web 2.0 and Student Engagement

In "Anti-Teaching: Confronting the Crisis of Significance", Kansas State University's Michael Wesch makes the argument that today's students often don't feel that the things they are learning is school are significant; they thus disengage easily.

Perhaps this is because education systems often deliver outdated stuff via outdated methods. We need to deliver curricular content & methodology that is relevant to today's learners in order to reengage them.

Teaching Web 2.0 delivers on both counts -- through Web 2.0 education, students are learning what they will need to know in order to be proficient in their future work, and learning in the way that future education & communication will most likely be delivered & implemented. Today's lifelong learner needs a level of technological proficiency that yesterday's did not.

Check out one way that Web 2.0 is being applied in order to engage and prepare students by watching this short video: Twitter in the Classroom, and try it yourself!

Bloom's Taxonomy: Web 2.0

Here's a great PDF of Bloom's Taxonomy with Web 2.0 skills aligned, from ICTeaching.

WatchKnow

New Educational video website available: WatchKnow.org

This is a wiki-style, fully searchable / contributable database of internet-available educational videos, tagged by age appropriateness.

For an introductory video, click here.

To access the site, click here.

Thanks,
Ross.

Facebook & Twitter in Education?

I'm compiling a list of ways in which people use Facebook & Twitter in education / the classroom. Please e-mail any input to thomsonro@gmail.com

Thanks!
Ross.

Blogging: Just Do It

In his blog post entitled "Just do it," Roy Tennant writes about writing. More specifically, he makes the point that the old addage of "have something to say before you start writing" may be a detrimental philosophical approach. He successfully argues two points to this effect: (1) we are all human, and thus all have something to say about the experience of being human, and (2) starting with the notion that we have to have something worthwhile to write before we start writing may well scare many into not writing at all: if our internal quality filter is on before a word hits a page, no words may ever hit the page -- insecurity may get the best of us. He suggests that people should just write: don't be sure you "have something to say," just do it. He suggests that blogging makes this easier than ever before.

He references teenage self-confidence issues in the article, reminding us of the role that high school teachers may have in the development of teen creativity and creative writing, and reminding us that blogging (and, by extension, other read/write web tools) are potentially key ways to engage these students.

Clearly, the learning of Web 2.0 skills is of benefit to the students in this way, and teachers who possess these skills -- and are willing to employ them in the classroom -- have yet another way to simultaneously foster both teen writing and teen confidence.

Information: Only as good as the source!

Michael Ridley's short article, The Reputation Engine, reminds us that, in the growing world of "social" information sources, who you know is becoming an important gateway to what you know. He asserts that a computer-based "reputation engine" which would rate these human "sources of information" (or allow users to rate each other as sources) should be maintained -- if it were to exist -- by libraries: the already-trusted source of reliable information in society.

Reputation Engine or not, this article makes me think of two things. One: libraries can and should have a key role in the public's understanding of the importance of Web 2.0, and, Two: school libraries in particular need to emphasize student learning around effective use of Web 2.0 tools, as well as keeping students mindful of the "digital reputations" they create for themselves as they go.

Social Isolation and New Technology

Click here for the latest study on Social Isolation and New Technology. Turns out that tech in not killing socialization after all! Whew!

Doctorow & Downloads

Check out Cory Doctorow's AWESOME stand on copyright, e-books, and downloading the printed works of authors! Click here and prepare to be entertained, amazed, and convinced.

Thanks to Will Richardson for the link!

Google Wave!

Here is the future of online communication, in development (and pre-release) today. Check out the short video here, or Wave me when you get an account; my username is thomsonro.

Check it out!

Blogging for Reflection & Learning

A valuable video (<15 min.) by Jill Walker Rettberg on the value of blogging to improve writing / literacy. Classroom experiences & tips included!

Bloom's Taxonomy 2.0

From classroom20.com comes an updated version of Bloom's Taxonomy; a reminder that we need to rethink what education means in the context of Web 2.0...

Videoconferencing @ the library

Distance education, Drury-style! The E.C. Drury Library hosted our first live teacher teleconference today -- Mr. Sheppard (currently in British Columbia) interacted with his class here in Milton via web-cameras and microphones. The event was a success, and paves the way for more staff / student interaction via internet technology. Web 2.0: it's all @ the school library!

Back to Blogging!

Greetings! School is now back in session, and with the end of vacation time comes my return to Web 2.0 Blogging; thanks to all who have read or followed my posts.

I just finished reading a short, but interesting research summary article by Dr. Chun Wei Choo of the University of Toronto. His research was around the question of whether or not the culture of an organization affects its information use. I think this is one of those questions to which the answer seems obvious, but for which real research is required in order to establish credible parameters for assessment and discussion.

In the end he writes:
"To summarize, our research showed that the part of organizational culture that deals specifically with information – the values and norms that people have about creating, sharing, and applying information – has a significant effect on information use outcomes."

To my mind, this is the concrete evidence needed to support the necessity of changing the information culture of education systems; if we are to adequately prepare our students for their likely futures, we need to teach and practice the five "information behaviours and values" Choo designates:

-Integrity (using information in a principled and trustful way)
-Informality (trust and use of informal sources)
-Transparency (openness in reporting information)
-Sharing (providing others with information)
-Proactiveness (actively obtaining and applying new information)

We do our students a disservice if we do not prepare them for the job-based information cultures to which they will eventually head, and we cannot prepare them if we are not willing to educate ourselves in the ways of Web 2.0.

Facebook & Twitter in the classroom!

Here's an update on the as-Web2.0-as-possible summer school class I'm running:

Ning -- we're using a course Ning: it is great. Students have done group work collaboration on it, and some students are using it to get last minute essay writing tips from me over the weekend!

Facebook -- the Facebook assignments are starting to roll in, although they're not due for another few days. Students had to create a Facebook profile page for a character in the novel The Great Gatsby. I look forward to reading the profiles.

Twitter -- we had an informal, in-class debate about character morality the other day. While I facilitated turn-taking in the face-to-face classroom, several students were back-channeling their opinions on the screen at the front. It was great to have the opinions flying in two ways, and the back-channeling provides a transcript of the arguments!

More updates soon, perhaps after the Facebook assignments have been marked. :-)

Where are the updates?

Ok, Ok... it's been a while. I blame year-end crazyness, a family trip, and getting ready for summer school.

That last one took a while, as I wanted to try some web 2.0 things in summer school that I've never used with a class before. Setting up the Ning (and updating the course web site) took some time, but it was totally worth it. Thomson Summer School Ning membership is growing daily, and I see students using this space for project collaboration already: it's only day 2! My in-Ning blog gets updated often, and I'm seeking comment feedback on the nature of the course itself, as well as offering reminders & updates.

Twitter accounts are growing as well: 1/4 of the class is now following me (thomsonro), and I hope to get into some back-channeling next week.

If the marking doesn't pile up too much, I'll update this blog with my summer school web 2.0 experiences often. Feel free to comment back if you've used Ning or Twitter in classroom contexts before.

People for Education: 2009 Report

Here's to the awesome 2009 People for Education Report! Entitled "Wanted: A Renewed Vision for Public Education," the document addresses the need for change in Ontario schools in order to better prepare our students for how their lives will be beyond high school.

Addressing everything from class size and declining enrollment, to principals' experience, to special ed., physical education and libraries, this is a serious look at what is working and what is needed to better the system.

Enter the section entitled "Educating for the 21st Century." Asserting that there is "a tidal wave of change approaching Ontario’s publicly-funded education system," the report goes on to talk about, in no uncertain terms, the importance (and inter-relatedness) of technology, innovation & creativity, and social connection; "For too long Ontario has been operating without a vision for education that is truly forward-thinking."

"Our educational model has looked pretty well the same for the last 160 years. If anything, over the last few decades, the model has become more, rather than less, restricted. It’s time public education caught up to the reality of the 21st century."

I like this, mostly because its true.

Now if we can just get governments, school boards, and teachers to take the implications of this report seriously -- and act on it's recommendations -- we'll be well on our way towards adequately preparing students for their likely futures...

Google Options!

Think you know Google? Unless you click "Show options..." and check out the awesome filtering and graphic organizing tools, you don't know Jack! The "Wonder Wheel" gives Clusty a run for its money, and then some!

Here's a demo.

Check it out!

One hour well spent...

Don Tapscott on the importance of understanding the cultural differences (and their implications) between today's Web 2.0 learners and those of the past.

"Teachers Online"... Really?

The June 2009 edition of Professionally Speaking, the magazine of the Ontario College of Teachers, has a promising headline: "Technology in the Classroom / Social Networks -- Teachers online." When I saw the cover I thought, "Wow! Finally an article on the importance of Web 2.0 to the classroom!" How prematurely silly of me.

The feature article is actually titled "Can We Be Friends? Watching your Electronic Step." Ah, yes... yet another warning to teachers about engaging in social media with students. I'd merely say "ho hum" and move on with my life, if I didn't get the nagging feeling that such articles are actually damaging to the futures of our students. Where are the warnings about what the futures of our students will be like if we do not engage in social media with them?

I read here, in bold lettering, that "When it comes to online social media and electronic communications, teachers often counsel students on how to operate safely and appropriately." Really? I don't know where author Stuart Foxman teaches (if he's a teacher) but I'd say such counselling is a rarity at best in my neck of the woods.

I read that "Web 2.0 will only grow and may well have a positive role to play in education." Fortunately, I love insightful understatements.

I read that "No doubt, teachers and school boards will continue to explore and wrestle with Internet usage and appropriate forms of teacher-student communications." This is likely true, if unfortunate and misdirected.

While it is (glaringly to anyone not living under a rock) true that all teachers need to be aware of the professional implications of everything that we do (whether online or offline, whether on the school day clock or not), we also have a responsibility to our students and their futures. Why not show them how we, as professionals, manage our Web 2.0 interactions? Why not lead by (shared) example? Why not offer a contemporary, "do as I do", example-based education, instead of an outmoded "do as I say, but you'll never see how I do" one?

Forget the manual!

My partner Jenn got a new laptop recently, and, in the course of quickly typing a newsletter article, she accidentally hit a combination of keys that rendered the keyboard incapable of producing the symbols above the number keys. She called me in for tech support.

Not having encountered this before, I went to the Windows Help manual, and searched the index with logical terms that seemed appropriate to the situation. After much reading, use of new keywords, skimming and scanning, I was no closer to a solution. I went to the HP Laptop Help manual, and searched the index with logical terms that seemed appropriate to the situation. After much reading, use of new keywords, skimming and scanning, I was no closer to a solution.

I went online, entered the same keywords, and immediately found a user-based help forum in which others had encountered the same problem, and offered the solution: I used a learning network to quickly and efficiently get the knowledge that I needed.

Time wasted searching corporate manuals: 20 minutes. Time well spent in seeking a Web 2.0 solution: 20 seconds. Now that's the power of the two-way, read-write web!

Push vs. Pull

Thanks to Will Richardson for sharing these Dion Hinchcliffe Web 2.0 diagrams. Many are tech-heavy, but some are accessible to those of us who don't know our RSS from our Atom (whatever that means).

In browsing these images, I found one that, for me, clicked in terms of why I think that Web 2.0 is so important to learning. It was not the diagram per se, but the two simple words it used: push and pull.

Until now, most systems of education have been "push-o-centric." Schools directly push specific information out to students; teachers are the pushers. Even the students who show up in the library to "pull" information out of books have been pushed to do so. It makes sense that this is the way it has been till now: if the indication of how educated one is rests with one's achievement in a top-down system, then people will willingly (though also, perhaps, grudgingly) get pushed. The very fact that we call it "educating" (what gets done to students) more often than "learning" (what students do) is telling.

This model of one-way pushing is being directly challenged by the culture of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 is largely a "share/pull" model: if I have something to share, I send it out into the Web, with all the tags and metadata required to make it discoverable to those who may want it. Likewise, if I want to learn something, I pull that information to myself via my learning network.

I'm not sure if anyone ever liked sitting through live lectures to receive what was pushed, but if, as is the case in our current Web 2.0 world, you can pretty much pull what you need to yourself whenever you want, then we need to re-think what we call education (or more significantly, what we call learning) in a structured "education system."

A Self-Directed Future

I think that the future of learning is self-directed, as enabled by web 2.0 (and beyond) technology. This may seem like a threat to contemporary (outdated?) educational systems, but it doesn't have to be. If our job as teachers is (and has always been) to best prepare our students for their probable futures, then there's no reason why we shouldn't be doing that job to the best of our abilities at all times, regardless of technology-based cultural shifts.

Indeed, some of the things that we say we like to foster in students today include creativity, critical thinking, independent thought, collaboration, etc. These are lifelong learning skills: skills that are, perhaps, best and most relevantly taught through the use of Web 2.0 technology. They are skills that are not necessarily well taught in the environment of an outcomes-based, standardized testing education system.

To serve our students best, we need to adapt our pedagogy, and learn and teach Web 2.0 tools. This statement, I'm sure, will prompt a lot of "yeah, buts" from a lot of teachers: "yeah, but I don't have time to learn it," "yeah, but there's a curriculum to follow," "yeah, but there's no money for technology," etc., etc. Of course we have to make due with what we have, but the even bigger "of course," as far as I'm concerned, is the "of course we have to advocate for meaningful staff learning time, of course we have to integrate use of these technologies into the curriculum, and of course we need to pressure Boards for the tools that will shape our students' futures." If we don't do these things, I'm not sure we're doing our jobs well...

Web 2.0 Assessment: Outside the "Comfort Zone?"

The assertion that Web 2.0 skills should be taught to students will (likely, inevitably, unfortunately) lead to the question of how we assess student learning of those skills. No wonder, then, that many teachers -- even those who use Web 2.0 tools themselves -- are hesitant to implement such instruction in the classroom: assessing Web 2.0 performance is outside of their comfort zone, and likely outside of the "outdated" system curriculum itself. With standardized test results being politically weighty, and high grades valued over learning itself, we're not exactly in a climate conducive to new, school-based Web 2.0 culture and learning.

There are lots of problems with standardized testing and the "importance" of grades in our education system as it stands, but avoiding teaching something that our students will need for future success just because we've never taught and assessed it before seems wrong to me.

Let's teach Web 2.0, and maybe even make some mistakes as we go: at worst, our students will see us as human, but they'll see us as lifelong learners, too. Let's figure out assessment as we go, maybe even with input from students. It's their futures that are at stake, after all...

Collaboration & Community

I'm one of many educators who thinks that we, as teachers, need to learn more about Web 2.0 so that we can teach Web 2.0, but let's be clear on why. While I'm a self-confessed geek who digs technology, I would not propose systemic change just because Web 2.0 stuff is cool: teaching technology for technology's own sake is not cool.

Web 2.0 is about collaboration & community; it is about life-long learning and the culture and environment in which our students will grow up. Our good ol' education system has a well-established (and well-ingrained) "collaborative" structure, and promotes a certain sense of community, but the cultural shift of our learners requires changes to our outdated notions that make up the context of educational collaboration & community -- for the sake of our learners. This change has to come from the system, and teachers are the tools of the system that can make the change happen.

As Will Richardson puts it, teachers need to understand the (Web 2.0) tools "to make the connections, the personal shift around those tools drives the pedagogical shift." What teachers need is learning, not training.

Richardson intimates, with a nod to John Pederson for the concept, that valuable teacher PD should be about this kind of learning: community building. Sounds good to me: learning happens best in a collaborative community, right? Classrooms are collaborative communities, but so are blogs, wikis, and a lot of other Web 2.0 "tools." Sitting in rows listening to a teacher or being guided in the world of Web 2.0 -- which do you think best prepares our students for their futures these days?

Philosophy: Web 2.0 for Educators

As part of a School Board committee, I've been asked to help roll out a philosophy for spending time & money on educating teachers in the ways of Web 2.0. What follows is what I have so far; any contributions via comment? Mission statement connectors are yet to be developed...

Thanks,
Ross.

_______________________________________________


Philosophy for rolling out Web 2.0 instruction to Halton teachers:


General:

- The purpose of the education system is to best prepare our students for their probable futures.

- While it is impossible to predict the future due to the current rate of change in both society and the influence of technology, we must do our best with what we have to best prepare students for what is most likely.

- It is very likely that technology and its uses (Web 2.0, or the "read/write web") will become increasingly important in the future.

- Post-secondary institutions and workplaces are now starting to implement Web 2.0 functionality and require Web 2.0 facility.

- We have, currently in place in Halton Schools, the technology required to have our students engage in Web 2.0 learning; further investment in hardware will be of benefit and increase accessibility, but we can start now without additional equipment cost.

- Teachers who are comfortable with Web 2.0 functionality will be more likely to use / teach it.

- To be effective digital citizens, students should be instructed in Web 2.0; we must embrace and instruct all such applications, including social media.

- The current education system is modeled on an industrial economy; we are now in a digital economy and our education system must change to reflect that.

- Industrial jobs are decreasing and will likely continue to do so; technological and creative jobs are on the increase and will likely continue to do so.

- We want to create life-long learners; today the number one source for self-education is the Internet, and it is Web 2.0 functionality that allows education to flow in multi-directional ways. Students need to learn how to tap into / foster online communities that will serve them well in their ongoing education.

- Web 2.0 is not a "fad" or "just the latest thing" -- it's implications include a cultural shift in information sharing, the likes of which have not been seen since the invention of the printing press; we are teaching new, different individuals (and using outdated methods if we're not teaching Web 2.0).

- If we want our students to know and effectively use Web 2.0, we have to teach it. To teach it, our teachers need to know it.


Halton Mission Statement connectors:

- Halton has an opportunity to be a provincial leader in Web 2.0 education by investing now and making full use of interested staff members.


Quotes & Sources:

"Today’s learners want to be active participants in the learning process – not mere listeners; they have a need to control their environments, and they are used to easy access to the staggering amount of content and knowledge available at their fingertips." 2009 Horizon Report


The Provincial Government of Ontario initiated a study to discover
"how to ensure our economy and people remain globally competitive and prosperous."
The results are summarized in the Toronto Star, one conclusion being:
"We are moving to an economy that values people's creativity, especially a combination of analytical skills – reasoning in uncertain environments to make good decisions – and social intelligence skills – capabilities to understand other people and to work in team settings." The Toronto Star Article


The "What if?" chart from this blog.

Model Learning & Respect for Authority

I think that, at some point in the past, "do as I say, not as I do" used to go a long way with kids. Today, not so much. One of the problems with teachers expecting technology-based presentations or products from students today is that the teachers themselves know little about how to use the technology. Teachers tell students to deliver a PowerPoint presentation, but the teachers don't themselves know how to connect a data projector to a laptop; they mark student websites without ever having created a site themselves. Is this "do as I say, but it's not what I know how to do?" Should we expect (or assess!) something that we ourselves have never accomplished?

We are asked to model a lot of things as teachers: appropriate dress, behaviour, communication, etc. Like it or not, this expectation extends well beyond the school walls and the school day, too: I'm still expected to "be a teacher" at the mall or at my kid's soccer practice -- I'm still a teacher at the local bar on a Saturday night. If such weight is given to my modeling, then should I not model the fact that I am a lifelong learner, too? Wouldn't that be a more positive influence on these impressionable young'ns than the fact that I'm in Dockers instead of jeans?

Students need to know that teachers are learners. In order for that to happen, however, two other things need to happen first: (1) teachers actually need to be learners, and (2) teachers need to be "transparent" in their learning. Will Richardson, and some of his followers, see this transparency as essential in contemporary leadership.

There are lots of reasons for teachers to resist learning, ranging from "I'd love to but I don't have time" to "courses are expensive" to "I don't need to learn anything new to do what I've always done." None of these reasons, however, touch the fact that, as teachers, it is our job to best prepare our students for their likely futures. In order to do our jobs at this point in history, then, we need to have experienced, as "learning teachers," the world of web 2.0. We can't prepare kids for the future without knowing about (and teaching) appropriate use of the tools of the present. I think that, actually, most schools are trying to prepare kids for the future using the tools of the past: it's comfortable for teachers, but not helping the students much.

If a teacher decides to be a learner, then that teacher's learning needs to be seen by the student. We encourage students to take chances and make mistakes, but are rarely willing to expose ourselves as trying and failing; teachers prefer to enter the room as the authority figure. Some complain about a lack of respect for that presumed authority, but perhaps if we portrayed ourselves as possessing the human trait (gasp!) of being learners who make mistakes sometimes, then our students could relate to us a little better; maybe even respect us more... at least we'd get props for our street cred, if you know what I mean.

Size Matters: Tag Clouds & Metadata Literacy

David Warlick is on to something (again? still?): the potential of word or tag clouds. You know these things: a group of words in different font sizes (and/or colours & font styles) are presented together in a cluster, with the larger words representing something more popular than the smaller words.

Many sites deliver their information content in this way, or allow you to represent your own content this way; respective examples include Digg's Bigspy and Wordle. There are many, many others, and popular social networking systems (see Twittersheep) are starting to adopt them, too.

I think there's a reason for their popularity: they distill a potentially useful kind of meaning from a lot of content, and deliver that meaning in a concise, visual way. Aside from just being cool, these clouds are a way of instantly, visually giving information about information: interpreting them requires a kind of new "metadata literacy": the font size adds a new layer of "reading" to text. You could argue that things like larger titles in textbooks or headlines in newspapers have always done this, and you'd be correct. But remember also that we learn to interpret size in these contexts through our education systems: who doesn't remember the "Newspaper Unit" from their schooldays?

In the Web 2.0 world, maybe, amongst other things, we need to teach this relatively new context of font size meaning something other than "title." If font size now means "popularity" too, then perhaps we need to facilitate contextual interpretation of information (how's that for a definition of teaching?). Maybe students could tell us what it means to them, too...

One other great thing about clouds is that they use text to tap into the competencies of visual learners: you can see the importance of a word in a word cloud. This, as Warlick suggests, may have useful applications in education, his example being "one way of reading the chapter of a text book might be to view and explore its tag cloud." I like it.

Web 2.0 Tools and the Extended Mind

As soon as people find out that you're a teacher, they often have something to say about "these kids today." Usually, it is something about how cell phones, iPods, and computers are ruining their lives, and, more specifically, their minds. Must they always be texting? Thumbing? Surfing? Good gracious me!

I think the answer is: yes, they must, and I think there's a good reason for it. That reason is simple: we are human, and humans are inclined to use the tools available in their environments. Tools are an extension of our minds.

Our behaviours are determined by our human minds, but this is not to say that there is merely a deliberate, conscious, one-way flow from brain to world, however. We are dynamic systems: feedback loops. Our sensory input, neural processing, and resulting actions are constantly, instantly refining and determining each other. Hold a tool in your hand, and it becomes part of the feedback loop, too: your senses are extended to it. As Carl Zimmer notes in his recent article, if you are poking a stick into an animal's burrow, "as you poke away, you are aware of what the far end of the stick is touching, not the end you're holding in your hand." Our brains are not just good at having us use tools: our brains want to use tools, and quickly learn to seamlessly incorporate them as an extension of ourselves.

Enter someone with, for example, an iPhone -- a tool for acquiring and distributing information: it would be unnatural to not use it. The only difference between "that rude, anti-social teenager texting at the dinner table" and "that intelligent teen naturally using available tools for social communication at a time convenient for her" is our definition of "good manners": something that, it would benefit us to remember, is a social construct itself. New culture may call for new social constructs...

Zimmer has me convinced about the "extended mind" as it applies to current technologies. He reminds us that Socrates "worried that writing would make people forgetful and unwise." Similarly, post-Gutenberg, many in the western world felt that distribution of texts of knowledge to the masses would dilute learning. Today, reading texts, and writing, are the definition of what makes one knowledgeable and wise.

In a Web 2.0 world, we should not inhibit the use of technology out of respect for outdated social constructs, or outdated pedagogical constructs, for that matter. These technologies are tools that become an extension of our dynamic selves, and we are creatures with a uniquely large ability to acclimate to a dynamic world.

Information Richness and Nomadic Teachers

David Warlick asks: “What are the pedagogies of information abundant learning environments?” in the context of Flickr hitting 100,000,000 Creative Commons licensed photos.

What are the implications of a vast array of easily accessible, legally usable photos for teachers and students? The cynic in me wants to say "Now we can legally do what we've been illegally doing all along..."

Many secondary school classrooms are still "information starved," I think. In situations where a teacher has a classroom that he or she alone exclusively uses each day, there is an ability and incentive to make that room information-rich. Teachers who travel from drab room to drab room each period, however, have less of this ability and incentive: less time to pull it off, and less reason to invest in a place where they only spend a fraction of their day. I think that this "geographical" factor -- that of "migrating, nomadic teachers" -- ironically, limits the use of information-rich resources (that are becoming less and less tied to geography as time goes on).

It is good to start thinking more about "information-rich classroom" pedagogy (I think that elementary teachers have more of a sense of this than secondary teachers), but I think that the physical and psychological implications of the nomadic teacher are limiting factors in developing and delivering such a pedagogy.

Goodbye, Gutenberg! Hello, Hive Mind!

I think it's hard to argue with the statement "what you know determines what you do." This seems true in many contexts, from eating when you're hungry to making career choices. People working in the education field are keenly aware of the implications of this statement within their context -- we try to make young people know more so that they have more, and more informed, choice in what they do.

Educators, however, work with a bias that may limit the knowledge, and thus the abilities, of the students of today. This bias is not immediately obvious to themselves, their students, or the public, and the educators are not alone in having this bias -- that's because the bias itself is hundreds of years old. Between the late 15th Century and, say, about 10 years ago, the effects of the invention of the printing press have been, increasingly, the key factor in the majority of the people of the Western world developing and maintaining a notion of "individuality."

We -- all of us, and not just teachers -- have this bias: individual students get their individual marks, and individual teachers make individual report card comments about what the individual students can do to become higher functioning individuals. It makes sense to us; so many of us take it for granted that the notion of being an individual is an intrinsic condition of being human.

As Eva McDonald reminds us in her recent paper, however, the notion of individuality is actually a cultural by-product, and cultures and their by-products change over time. She, referencing Mark Federman, notes that, with the advent of Web 2.0, the mass-collaborative nature of communicating via the internet is changing the culture of today's youth, and changing, for them, the old, well-established notions of individuality.

Do teens seem unconcerned with online privacy? Do they copy and paste internet content without regard for ownership? Do they share information online that us old geezers would never tell our friends? Do they seem to always need to be in touch with others, via Twitter, or Facebook, or Instant or Text Messaging? If you answered yes to any of these questions, consider the possibility that all are examples of a culture that values group notions over individual ones.

The ramification for education systems is huge. If what you know determines what you do, and we do not teach or encourage or allow "knowing" in this new, web 2.0 way in schools, then we are limiting what the students of today may do tomorrow, and fighting against a dramatic, important, new cultural shift that has huge implications for our collective futures.

Edupunks Rock!

Imagine a world full of people who were motivated and empowered to learn what they wanted, when they wanted. Sure, a structured education system would sill be required (for all the great reasons we have such systems now -- and to keep teachers like me employed!), but what if how-to-do-it-yourself education was one of the things we taught? I think that would be powerful.

Many of our students (and some of our staff!) are DIY learners: "Edupunks." If the system isn't giving them what they need, education-wise, they step up and figure out a way to learn it for themselves. Web 2.0 makes this easier than ever, and more and more people, largely our youth, are learning things this way. In the education field we often profess one of our goals as creating "lifelong learners;" isn't it time we started incorporating Web 2.0 skills into our curricula, then?

Kindle 2 Reads the Classics

For those of you concerned with digital books taking over from print literature:

Betty Blogger

The "Betty Blogger Summer School" is a program, run by the Burlington Public Library, which educates patrons in the ways of Web 2.0.  I am just finishing up a winter version tailored to folks in the Halton District School Board as a kind of "train the trainer" scenario.

The course is great, covering a range of currently available web services, and requires active participation in the likes of blogging, wiki creation, RSS reading, and more.  I was already familiar with the web services covered in the course, but, most significantly, learned about potential educational applications of these services.  If we are going to prepare students for their futures, we'd better have a solid grip on the technology of the present!

For me, the most challenging parts were not "procedural," but rather the parts that required wrapping my head around the ways that I can use these tools (like De.licio.us or PBWiki) to further student skills and knowledge.  The best ideas I had for personal practice involve use of blogging & wikis for summer school teaching -- I'm going to try a "very 2.0" grade 12 English class in July...

I think all key 2.0 applications were covered in the Betty Blogger course, but two areas may be of benefit to future students: using online utilities and finding out "what's hot" online.

Online Utilities: as a teacher-librarian, I get requests all the time from students who want to convert file formats, edit photos, and the like.  While platform-based software exists that does such things, online services such as Zamzar and Photoshop Express are where I send people.  I'm sure that a million more useful utility sites are out there; comment back to this blog post if you know of some!

What's Hot: I often have cool, new "web stuff" to share with people, and they often ask me how I know so much about what's "out there."  The answer has nothing to do with any skills of mine, but a lot to do with Internet trend monitoring sites like digg (I'm a big fan of the stack) or reddit or popurls.  I consider knowing about these to be a solid part of knowing web 2.0.

The Betty Blogger course was very well supported but very self-directed, which makes sense: if self-directed, 2.0 learning is the way of the future, why not have the course that teaches these skills be self-directed as well?

Thanks, and hats off to the "Library Lady" and BPL's Betty Blogger!

Readers' Resistance!

I know some "real readers." You know them, too: the "old school" type. They read books, not screens. They are afraid that all this "computer reading" business threatens academia and dilutes the purity of book-reading, and that anything on a screen must be inherently of lesser value than the contents of a dusty, leather-bound tome.

I propose a compromise: LibraryThing! Here's a great site that allows you to catalog and share your personal library online.  Join communities and conversations built around authors and works, get recommendations & reviews, or build a database of your personal books to track loans!  The old school book snobs can now be old school book snobs with other old school book snobs who appreciate their snobbyness!

Here's an example, featuring just a few of the books from my library.  Education applications include the possibility of online book reviews & reports for students, and print resource information sharing for staff.  Check it out!

RSS -- let the information come to you!

Who has time to surf the vast content of the web looking for the occasional nugget of valuable education information? What if there were a way for all the information updates from many valued sites & blogs to come directly to you in one, easy to access place? There is! Enter the world of RSS...

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a system for pushing out new information from multiple sources to multiple subscribers. You get an RSS reader or "aggregator," find the website or blog you like, subscribe to the site's "feed," then sit back and read the new info. as it comes in.

If you have a Gmail account, you already have a "Reader" -- follow the easy instructions below to learn how to use it. Wondering what education blogs to list as your first few feeds? Why not try one of the ones I follow, listed to the left of this blog. Of course you should also add the one you're reading right now: ParticiFaction!

The Wonderful World of Wikis

A wiki is an online document that is editable by as many users as the author wants: an open space for contribution & editing.

Wikis have a multitude of possible uses from organizing who brings what to a Thanksgiving dinner (I'd bring a time machine so we can get to the food more quickly!) to capturing the knowledge of the world (see Wikipedia -- the open, editable, online encyclopedia).

For education, think of the possibilities! Group work, collaboration, sharing feedback... use a little technology and a lot of imagination -- get your wiki going today! There are plenty of online services available. If your School Board blocks or disallows wikis, develop an awareness campaign to change that -- start now!

Google Docs for Education!

Ever used Google Docs, the online word processor and document sharing tool? It's worth a peek. Users can create, save, print, and edit documents -- just like with any word processor -- without having to buy software or even open an application beyond a web browser; it's all online!

Beyond this functionality, however, is another layer of usefulness for collaborative, educational purposes. Users can set document-specific permission levels for group sharing & editing; if I'm working with others to create a single document, we can all work on the one true copy of the document, instead of e-mailing different, edited versions to each other. You can even subscribe to an RSS feed of changes to the document! Now that's Web 2.0!

Whether writing a book review for a community of librarians or planning a common vision for your business, or just journaling, Google Docs has something for you.

Prepare ye!

Who knows what the future will bring in 50, 10, or even 5 years?  During the first few decades of formalized education systems, "the future" likely seemed more certain; change happened at a slower rate then -- what the "jobs of the future" looked like was more realistically predictable.  If it is our job, as educators today, to best prepare today's students for their uncertain futures, then it's easy to understand why many teachers don't know where or how (or, possibly, why) to begin.  The only thing we can be sure about is what we've always done in the past.

Even though we are not certain about the specifics of the futures of our students, there are some general assertions that, I'd argue, are hard to refute.  Chief among these are, that, as a result of currently available (not to mention future!) technology, social networking as a function / necessity of employment will become more prominent, and the read/write web will change what "work" looks like for an even larger number of people.

As a result, web 2.0 education is increasingly important to the futures of our students.  Despite this, the fact remains that changing curricula and training teachers to deliver such an education would take at least a little time and a lot of money.  Can we afford it?  Can we afford not to?  I've made a chart to help sort it out in my mind.  Here it is!

What is the greatest possible tragedy?  I'd say not teaching Web 2.0 skills in a world where they continue to become more important.  What do you think?...

Purpose of Education - Teacher Wordle

I asked my staff to answer the question "What is the purpose of Education?"  Here are their answers, expressed as a Wordle.  Beautiful as well as interesting...

I'm asking the students next.

The Machine is Us/ing Us

Food for thought from "digital ethnographer" Professor Michael Wesch...

What's in my bag? - School

What's in my bag? - School
Originally uploaded by Brandy Shaul

A random sampling of a high schooler's school bag. Check out the tech!

This shot is from Flickr; use it to share or find pics for classroom discussion & sharing.

Flickr could be used as a starting point for discussion of copyright, attribution and fair use -- many photos are by professionals and many are by amateurs. Creative Commons licensing tags are present for some pics but not others; discuss the types of licensing, and how the students feel about CC-tagged photo use vs. use of pics with no license...

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Rhizomatic Learning in an Arboreal Structure?

How do students learn these days?

Yes, government-developed curricular content is delivered through formal educational systems, but students are also -- and, arguably, more significantly for their futures -- engaged in social, Web 2.0, or "read/write web" learning.  Want to learn something today?  See if there's a how-to video on YouTube, join a blog on the topic to tap into an existing community of knowledge, or create a Facebook group and wait for the information you need to cluster around you.  This type of learning is significant at present, but it can only become more significant in the future.  Are we adequately preparing our students of the present for this future?  

I think the problem that education systems have with this new way of learning is that it conflicts with the way they work at a systematic, structural level.  Governments and education systems run in a top-down, hierarchical way that is very different from this "networked web node" way.  Thinking of this reminds me of one of the writings of Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, namely, A Thousand Plateaus from their Capitalism and Schizophrenia Project.

Here they contrast the "Arboreal," or tree-like structure, of some systems to the "Rhizomatic," or web-like structure, of others.  Sound familiar?  Maybe we need to  implement a new (ie: level, networked, nodal) structure for education systems themselves before we can expect to see a lot of support for learning in a Web 2.0 way.

If, as Glynis Cousin argues in Learning from Cyberspace,  "the medium is the pedagogy" (117), then maybe we need to pay serious attention to how we teach instead of (or at least as well as) what we teach...

Prosperity from Creativity: Education?

Last March, the Provincial Government of Ontario initiated a study to discover

"how to ensure our economy and people remain globally competitive and prosperous."

The results are summarized in yesterday's Toronto Star, one conclusion being:

"We are moving to an economy that values people's creativity, especially a combination of analytical skills – reasoning in uncertain environments to make good decisions – and social intelligence skills – capabilities to understand other people and to work in team settings."

Given this conclusion, if one purpose of school is to prepare our students best for their futures (and given Sir Ken Robinson's assertion that almost all education systems kill creativity), then can't we conclude that we are doing our students a disservice?  Limiting creativity leads to a less prosperous future these days...

Given the range of potential ways -- using available technology today -- that schools could foster student creativity, it is of concern that some Boards / Schools / Teachers don't fully embrace the potential of Web 2.0: arguably the number one way in which the students of today DO practice and express their individual creativities.

(Quotes above taken from The Toronto Star article -- "Ontario's prosperity hinges on creativity." 5 February, 2009. -- available here).

(un-)acceptable use guidelines? No more!

Check out Karl Fisch's revolutionary new idea for abolishing School Boards' (Un-)Acceptable Use Guidelines for technology, and replacing them with something useful instead: click here!  What a great idea: a list of what should be done instead of what can't!

Two Tools for Education

Contrary to the post title, this entry is not about that pair of goofy teachers you had in grade 9. Two valuable tools in the 2.0 world of education today are Del.icio.us and the ever-controversial Facebook. Not sure what one is or how the other might have educational value? Read on:

Del.icio.us:

Ever save your favourite web sites to your web browser's "favourites" or "bookmarks" folder? Sure you have. That's great for when you're on your computer, but what about easy access to your bookmarks when you're on a different one? Get a Del.icio.us account and you have online bookmark access through one site, and can benefit from such "social" features as popularity evaluation, tagging, and sharing. Education applications? -- limited only by your imagination. Example: have students create accounts, and tag and share good sites around any curricular topic; have them blog comments on the sites that others chose...

Facebook:

Get them where they live! Why not create a Facebook site for your class or extracurricular activity (before the students do it anyway)? You'll have administrative control, be the cool, tech-savvy teacher, and tap into the sharing / discussion power of this social networking tool. As well, you can teach kids appropriate use of Facebook for your context, and make them aware of the implications of its use. Does it make sense for Educational institutions to continue to ignore and/or disallow what is arguably the most popular, significant, and powerful communication tool available today?

Your Facebook profile only contains as much information and is as accessible as you want: make a point of understanding the privacy settings, and only upload information with which you are comfortable. Learn to use it, and then you can teach proper use of it well. I have 2 accounts: one for personal use, and one with which I administrate my Library's Facebook page.

Warning: more than one teachers' federation has recommend against engaging with students in this medium, citing potential legal implications. you make the right call for you; I guess my personal position is clear... ;-)

A must-watch for all educators!

Twenty minutes well spent! The (hilarious!) Sir Ken Robinson with an important message about how "The Education System" kills creativity, and how creativity is actually becoming much more valued outside of the education system...

Watch it here. Watch it now!

21st C. Pedagogy

Horizon Report Available online!

Check out the 2009 Horizon Report!

One excerpt:

"Today’s learners want to be active participants in the learning process – not mere listeners; they have a need to control their environments, and they are used to easy access to the staggering amount of content and knowledge available at their fingertips."

Shift Happens: Update!

If you haven't seen the update to Karl Fisch and Scott McLeod's "Did You Know" Shift Happens video, check it out here.  Incorporate it into your classroom: have students watch & blog their responses individually, then foster some group discussion (online or face-to-face) and have them re-blog any changes to their thoughts as a result.  Caution: this video may change your world view and / or make you a more informed individual.

If your Board blocks YouTube access, get around it by using youconvertit.com.  When done converting, create a public awareness campaign to change Board policies: the learning potential denied students by such filtering is becoming greater each day...

Consider this...

... we are preparing the students of today very well for the 1950's. Times, they are a-changin, and if educators, and the education system, do not change radically, and soon, we will not only be doing our patrons a greater and greater disservice, but wasting the potential of their futures and our own.

This blog will be a sounding board for the consideration of the importance of the impact of contemporary technology on the future of our students. Call it "Web 2.0," call it the "read-write web," call it what you will; educators need to be all over it, and soon.

Join in! Participate in the faction of educators who are willing to learn and teach what is necessary for their future success in the Web 2.0 world!