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structure, and promotes a certain sense of community, but the cultural shift of our learners requires changes to our outdated notions that make up the context of educational collaboration & community -- for the sake of our learners.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?
Thursday, April 30, 2009
Monday, April 27, 2009
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.
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.
Wednesday, April 8, 2009
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.
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.
Monday, April 6, 2009
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.
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.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
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.
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.
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