Blog #8- Reflections

Blog #7- Second Life

Is virtual reality the place where we can awaken our sleeping students? We know that they are enamored with their Guitar Hero and Wii game consoles, but is a platform like Second Life really going to arouse our sleeping beauties from their slumber and bring them in to full participation in the classroom? Could it be that simple?

I recently entered Second Life (SL) as a relative novice trying to discover if this virtual reality might offer anything for me and my students. The first thing I encountered was a very steep learning curve. While being able to customize my avatar was an interesting experience, figuring out which button did what and how to move efficiently in Second Life took some time. I could imagine using this with my students- it would be chaotic at best. While they probably have lots of experience with similar games and applications, allowing the time necessary for the students to become comfortable with the SL interface just isn’t feasible. It would take at least 2, if not 3, 55 minute sessions to ensure that they knew what they were doing. Even suggesting the idea that they play in SL on their own time is not possible because most of my students do not have online access at home.

As I continued my journey, the next difficulty I encountered was the pace of the simulation itself. Slow is a polite way to describe it. Things rezzed in at different times and sometimes made it difficult to navigate in the virtual world. Watching performances that featured avatar performers was laborious- hurry up and wait, hurry up and wait. My students just don’t have the patience required to view a performance at that pace. SL exhibits that offered in-grid video presentations were better, but I can access those types of media from sites like TeacherTube and Youtube , so SL doesn’t necessarily need to be a part of the presentation scheme.

Will I be using SL in the future in my classroom? My Special Education students won’t be using this tool until the interface is simplified and the graphics become faster .

Blog #6- Communities of Practice

Communities of practice (COPs) have been around since the first groups of people began to form structured societies. According to Etienne Wegner, communities of practice are " groups of people who share a concern or a passion for something they do and learn how to do it better as they interact regularly." The old sewing circle and new online forums share the base of a community of people who are coming together to share their knowledge and expertise in order to improve their abilities in their chosen area of interest.

In the educational environment, communities of practice are being formed as a means of professional development. Preservice teachers are interacting to share their successes and concerns as they prepare for their teaching career. Teachers in schools across the country share their expertise and voice their frustrations in the loosely structured COPs such as Teachers.net .
In these communities, educational professionals ask questions and provide each other with practical answers based upon their day-to day experiences in the classroom.

Our students are unknowingly involved in communities of practice as they hang out and socialize on the Web. The various forums for tips and tricks for the games they play, the critiques and comments that they post in response to each others blogs, mashups and videos, and the tutorials they upload to Youtube to explain how they created their digital art are all examples of the workings of COPs. They are involved in highly situated learning with others that is extremely relevant to them. While these activities may seem unstructured, our students effectively learn the structure and rules of the groups in which they participate and earn social capital as they share the knowledge that they have acquired as they are involved in their activities of choice.

We can use the structure and idea of COPs in our classrooms. By providing students with safe, supervised areas where they can discuss and collaborate on topic of interest within our curriculum, we can create communities of practice for our learners. It will be in spaces such as www.21classes.com and Social Media Classroom that our students will share and learn in an amazing new context.

Blog #5- Social Media

Digi-nats are social buggers. They text and blog, spend time on MySpace & Facebook and interact in discussion groups with others who share their interests. They collaborate to create music and videos. We may think that their love of cyberspace is the height of anti-social behavior, but it isn't. It is in the digital world that most of our students are being their most social on any given day.

Unfortunately, in response to the public’s fear of social media as a playground for pedophiles and other dregs of society, most school districts have completely blocked any site that has even a miniscule social component. Even sites with obvious learner value like livemocha.com, a community for learning languages, are blocked. Teachers with new ideas about using social media have their hands tied by the IT gurus with their firewalls and “net nanny” software. We are left with our Powerpoints and LCD projectors while the students are begging to learn in a more global and socially interactive way.

Most social media are blocked from the classroom, but the students have access to these tools despite our best attempts to prevent them from using them. We know that cell phones are restricted in most schools, but watch what happens when there’s talk of a gang fight or other happening of concern in your school. Suddenly, every parent in the district is at your school to whisk their child away from the perceived threat. How did they find out what was going on? Simple- their children went to the bathroom, locker room or other unsupervised area, took out their cell phone and CALLED. Maybe we need to adopt the old idea of “teaching as a subversive activity” once again. Since the technology is there, we could just take on the posture that we won’t enforce the no cell phone rule in our classes as we ask the students to use the technology as a tool for learning. But to be honest, I know that I am not ready to be quite so radical in bucking the system in order to give my students a more global perspective.

So, how do we go about incorporating social media into the everyday interactions of our classrooms? In response to the perceived need for social media in the classroom, Howard Rheingold has begun an initiative to expose the value of social media in education through the site Social Media Classroom . This site encourages both teachers and other professionals to create social media platforms to enhance and deliver their curriculum. By providing access to tools to create wikis, blogs, RSS feeds, video commenting and chat, Rheingold hopes to create “a public resource of knowledge and relationships among all who are interested in the use of social media in learning, and therefore, it is made public with the intention of growing a community of participants who will take over its provisioning, governance and future evolution.” By using a social media platform specifically designed to cater to the needs of the educational community, we can expose our students to countless viewpoints and cultural perspectives in a safe and meaningful way.

As we continue to watch technology evolve and our students evolve right along with it, things are bound to change. As social media platforms become more ubiquitous, maybe our fears will subside and we will learn to monitor these platforms for the safety of our students without restricting them to the point of rendering them useless. Only time will tell.

Blog #4- 21st Century Skills & Life Long Learning

21st century skills include the ability to acquire information and critically analyze it. The term "critical thinking" has been around in schools for years. But unlike the term as it has been used in the past, critical thinking today must be immediate, a skill that is constantly being used as a student acquires and organizes the information that they are learning. This information comes from a variety of sources- some less than reliable. We must teach the student of today how to sift through the chaff and find the kernels of wheat that they are seeking.

If we can teach our students to seek out and verify credible information, they will be well on their way to being life-long learners. The first step in the process is simply to show the students where to go to verify the information they have collected. Howard Rheingold offers a plethora of resources for verifying information in his recent article Crap Detection 101. Rheingold states that we must teach students to "think like detectives" as they sift through the sources available to them online. This is the beginning of the critical thinking process.

As our students learn to think critically, what is our final goal of the learning process that is taking place in our classrooms? According to the champions of the 21st century learner such as Rheingold, our goal should be to create life-long learners- people who are continuously seeking information and learning about topics that are of interest or consequence to them.

How do we do this? By teaching our students to create their own Personal Learning Networks-networks of people and institutions with similar learning interests- the task of creating a life-long learner becomes easier. When the information is organized and the student has access to others with which they can collaborate, the student is in control of their own learning. This control is empowering and fuels the desire to learn more through the use of the PLN.

The 21st century student is like no other student our educational system has encountered. Our methods to reach them must change. As you consider the task of creating a life-long , 21st century learner, view the following videos to cement the ideas in your mind. Hopefully, they will give you the inspiration to meet the task head-on with a resolve to succeed.

Blog #3- Media Literacy

Literacy- that’s the three r’s , right? Reading, writing & ‘rithmetic . This old adage shows how convoluted our educational system can be. Two of those words don’t even start with the letter R! In our classrooms today, this definition must change. The concept of literacy has become wholly rooted in media and technology and while reading, writing and mathematics are a part of that equation, there are new abilities that must be considered as we assess whether or not our students are literate by today’s standards.

According to Peter D. & Co. , “media literacy is the ability to "read" television and mass media. Media literacy education teaches people to ACCESS, ANALYZE, EVALUATE, and PRODUCE media. Many studies suggest that such education can produce less vulnerable children and adolescents.” So, in this emerging culture of literacy, our students are expected to be more than empty vessels that receive information. They must be able to find the information, look at that information critically and then create their own information based on what they have discovered. That’s a lot more than regurgitating facts on a test!

Where does that leave the classroom teacher? The definition of media literacy demands that we teach in a new way. While we have put new names on old ideas such as Montessori, discovery learning, cooperative learning and the like, we are still rooted in our pencil and paper mentality. The media literacy of the 21^st century demands that we not only use the technology, but also actively teach our students to use it to effectively learn and share their learning with others. David Considine purports that media literacy is no longer the domain of the computer teacher down the hall. It should be taught across the curriculum in the context of the daily lessons. In Considine’s terms, media literacy instruction is the responsibility of every teacher, in every classroom, in every school.

So, what does all this mean for my digi-nats? It means that their digital immigrant teacher has to step up to the plate. Bloom’s Taxonomy will have to be turned on its ear. The base of “remembering” cannot possibly be as important. Lessons will have to integrate technology to discover the information, not just to be a cool way to present it. The employers of the 21^st century are expecting prospective employees that are well versed in effectively utilizing these technologies to research topics and create viable information sources of their own. The instruction has to start now or our students will be left in the digital dust.

I GET IT NOW!!!

I now understand how my digi-nats feel! I walked into my new classroom for the year and was taken back to Technology 1.0. It was a bare room with a single computer connected to the school's constantly blocked version of the Web. I was frustrated, disappointed and generally beside myself. No more Promethean board with the accompanying digital slates and activote devices. There's just a whiteboard- not even so much as an overhead here!

I get it now. When you've had access to the technology, something's missing when it's gone. Sure, you can read books and do worksheets, but I've seen Paree and the farm's looking pretty dismal to me now. All the lessons and enrichment activities that I've created will lie fallow until they decide to install a board in this room. Please hurry IT crew- I'm going through withdrawl!

How must the students feel when we ask them to put aside their technology for the better part of eight hours? Bored? Yes. Frustrated? Definitely. Challenged? Not by paper and pencil tasks! It's tough to do without the technology that we've become accustomed to and to my students I say: Kids- I UNDERSTAND NOW!!

Blog #2- Learner 2.0

I call them digi-nats, but the experts have also named them Learner 2.0. As I've said before, they are the natives in this geography and they move around this landscape as effortlessly as a feather on a breeze. They communicate and collaborate, share information and solve problems, all without realizing that they are learning in the process. So, again I ask, "How do we harness this powerful tool to get our students to learn what we want to teach them?"

I wandered around the Web to see what our digi-nats are doing. Beginning in Facebook, I mosied on into an application called Farmville. It's a simple little game where you are given some cash, some coins and a few plots of land to plant crops. What I found was that it was not that simple.

If you go to the bottom of the page, you'll see a link labelled Forums. It's where the participants in the game communicate with each other, giving tips and tricks they discovered as they've played the game. The amazing thing about this forum was the math! Players are trying to maximize their profits in planting crops while earning as many experience points as possible. The participants have created spreadsheets that detail how much each crop can earn per plot size, which crops to plant based on your available time, comparisions based on time vs. plot size- you name it, they have calculated it! The players believe they are trying to perform in the game, but without realizing it they've used math skills to achieve their goal. Why? Because they have a goal and applying their mathematical knowledge is the way to achieve it. Talk about application and problem solving! I can see myself using this to teach multiplication, arrays, profit/loss, elapsed time and probably a few other things - all with a simple little game!

Learner 2.0 wants to share and the world of Web 2.0 provides them with a platform to do just that. They share their feelings and experiences through blogs(online journals) and video and still photography sites such as Youtube and Flikr. How can we use this need to share to our advantage? The simple answer is to let them create and share! Unfortunately, most schools have these sites blocked, so, what do we do then? Some districts have begun using a secure tool called EChalk to give students, parents and school personnel a forum for communication and discussion. It is not quite as flashy or fun as sites like Facebook and MySpace, but it does provide a controlled environment where students can share with each other.

What I've learned as I've perused the Web is that we are losing our digi-nats because we are not asking them to apply the skills we are trying to teach in a context that is meaningful to them. Why are we asking them to regurgitate facts and scratch out math problems on paper when they are actively doing those things in their blogs and games on a daily basis? We need to design tasks that ask Learner 2.0 to integrate the skills that the educational system thinks are important with the things that these students want to do! What about blogging about current events, literature or a scientific question? Learner 2.0 can already create a photo journal for a science project or as a reflection on an assigned question or topic- we just have to give them the opportunity!

Here are some examples of teachers using Web 2.0 to engage students. Hopefully, this will inspire you to engage our digi-nats in some amazing learning.

http://mrshawnspot.edublogs.org/ History

http://english4all.edublogs.org/ English/Language Arts

http://risingminds.edublogs.org/

http://eblen.edublogs.org/ Mathematics

Blog #1- Web 2.0

We're all surrounded by digi-nats. You've seen them. They're the lil' buggers in your class who are buzzing around your desk while trying to hide the latest piece of technology that they've brought to school. They're texting during your lecture and posting on their friend's Facebook wall between classes. They came from the womb already equipped with an understanding of LOL, ROFL, and BRB. They were born in the geography of cyberspace and they're laughing at us as we try to lure them away from their homeland with the wonders of textbooks and hand written essays. So, how do we reach them?

Enter the World Wide Web (WWW). In the beginning, the WWW was a means to communicate static content. A person with an idea created a website, posted their content(text, pictures and maybe a .midi sound file if they were adventurous) and then the world could type in the URL for that site and experience the content that the person wanted to share.

A little more than a decade ago, the face of the WWW began to change. With the appearance of new browser technology such as Mosaic and Netscape the text and graphics began to appear on the pages together instead of in separate windows (Baumbach, 2009).

While this more streamlined interface was an improvement, it was still static content to be consumed by the end user. In the classroom, we used the search engines to find the content that applied to our discipline and, if we had enough technology resources, we shared that content with our students. It was a one-sided show and tell.

Today, we are interacting in a cyberspace that experts refer to as Web 2.0. So, what's the difference? First, the concept of Web 2.0 is anything but static. Users are expected to interact with the content. As T.V. Raman (2009) describes the phenomenon, "Web 2.o is the result of the exponentially growing Web building on itself to move from a Web of content to a Web of applications." It is the Web where everyone can create, share, modify, and collaborate by using web-based applications to get the job done. Instead of using the Web to simply view the content others want us to see, we are using the Web to create content that we wish to share. There are new ways to communicate in real time, through text and voice. We can talk it, type it, share it and change it and then invite others to interact with our ideas as well.

So, how does this shift effect me and my buzzing digi-nats? Consider the fact that the lil buggers already know how to function in the environment. They are comfortable communicating and collaborating in cyberspace. If I introduce them to some basic Web 2.0 applications like ZOHO, Slatebox or Dabbleboard, they could work in teams from anywhere they wanted to create assignments on any topic imaginable. They want to talk, they want to share, they want to work together. Web 2.0 may be the platform for my digi-nats to do just that!