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!