I’ve been in New York a lot lately, and tonight I spent 90 minutes speaking to parents, educators and community members from the beautiful Lake Chautauqua region of Western New York. As usual, the 45-minute conversation was more interesting than the 45-minute presentation, and I wanted to put this up there in case those in attendance wanted to add their thoughts.
If there was one take away I had from the discussion it’s that this is an incredibly challenging moment for all of us. The ways in which we have been used to learning about the world are becoming less and less effective in terms of making sense of things these days. We need new skills and literacies that our kids and our students are exploring, but we’re not giving them a lot of landmarks to follow to learn those literacies effectively. And the lens that we bring to these shifts is very difficult to change.
Someone in the audience said that he wished there was an inoculation that we could get that would instantly make sense of things. I said that if it at least allowed us to consider a different model that would be good enough.
But conversations are what this is all about…and this was a challenging one. I hope it continues.
I keep thinking it would be interesting to get some feedback on what other people out there sense is happening with the education blogging community as a whole, so I put together this short survey that I’m hoping you’ll consider taking. Be advised that SurveyMonkey will only tally the first 100 respondents for free. I’ll share the results later this week.
Most of these probably are on the community radar by now, but here are a few new tools that I’ve run across that might be of interest:
Google Blog Search and Google Custom Search–The one thing that I’ve always been frustrated with at Technorati is the multiple steps it takes to set up an RSS feed for a blog search. Now, Google has made subscribing to a blog search feed as easy as subbing a news search feed. And the custom search makes it easy for every student to have a personal search of his/her blog or network.
Vox–This is the new social community set up by the founders of Moveable Type. Here’s my new Vox blog…anyone else got a site and want to be friends? What is intriguing about this is that it has many levels of privacy for individual pieces of content. It’s got all sorts of tie ins to del.icio.us and Flickr and stuff, extensive tagging and connecting capability, and fairly unobtrusive ads. I’d be interested to hear if anyone else has been thinking about Vox for classroom blogging/networking.
Flock Scrapbook–In case I haven’t mentioned it yet, I LOVE Flock. And now I love it even more. The scrapbook extension makes it easy for me to save an entire page, save a snippet of a page, highlight and annotate the stuff that I save, tag it all and organize it, search it all, and keep like tons of notes from disparate sources pretty well organized. It’s not a social extension, obviously, but it solves some of the limitations of del.icio.us that have frustrated me, namely the note space and full page archiving limitations. I’ve been playing with it for about a week and it’s pretty amazing. Anyone else on to it?
Terry Elliott has been one of my off and on teachers for a very long time, and it’s made me very happy of late that he’s been more active in his blogging and commenting. He writes with depth and passion, and there’s almost always a take away idea that makes me think.
“I have been accused in the past of making too much of metaphor and the coming shift, of being apocalyptic, of failing to recognize that change happens in “connected” and understandable ways. Perhaps I am guilty of being too much of a homeless prophet pushing my shopping cart around the margins of academe. I accept that, but I also know in my heart if not in my head that the learning world has already changed in ways that are complexly strange and quite beyond our capacity to control. I want to see it turn out well. I want to see at least part of that mystery unfold.”
Clarence summarizes the points in Henry Jenkins’ latest white paper and adds more fuel to the conversation in terms of moving away from teaching content simply to regurgitate it and moving toward teaching content in the context of developing skills for learning, and I think they are worth repeating here:
Play— the capacity to experiment with one’s surroundings as a form of problem-solving
Performance— the ability to adopt alternative identities for the purpose of improvisation and discovery
Simulation— the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
Appropriation— the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
Multitasking— the ability to scan one’s environment and shift focus as needed to salient details.
Distributed Cognition— the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
Collective Intelligence— the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
Judgment— the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
Transmedia Navigation— the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
Networking— the ability to search for,synthesize,and disseminate information
Negotiation— the ability to travel across diverse
communities,discerning and respecting multiple perspectives,and
grasping and following alternative norms.
There’s a healthy mix of Pink, Siemens, Robinson and others in there. (And I would again highly recommend Jenkins’ book Convergence Culture for even more on these ideas.) It’s amazing, isn’t it, how little of this is being done in most schools? Appropriation? (Plagiarism!) Collective Intelligence? (Plagiarism!) Networking? (Plagiarism!) I look at this list through the lens of my own kids’ school experience and seriously wonder…are my kids at risk?
I agree less, however, with the idea that “Jenkins tells us, we need to look beyond our kids having access to tools (blogs, wikis, etc.) and we need to learn how to use them effectively in our classrooms to support their learning.” Yes, I need to seriously roll up my sleeves and, like Clarence, get deeply engaged in the pedagogy. And this is another example of the conversation shifting to a larger scope beyond technology. But I feel like I also need to petition whoever will listen that it’s a moral imperative at this point to get every kid connected. If Libya is on the verge depending on how the $100 laptop initiative plays out, why aren’t we? (Don’t answer that…)
Today was one of those days that it felt like there was a subtle shift in the discussion about the effects the Read/Write Web is having on education. I spent about three hours with around 30 or so technology leaders from the Lower Hudson (NY) region, and my talk and the ensuing discussion felt less about tools and more about learning, our students learning and our own. (The session was live-blogged, btw.) And it felt more like a conversation about systems rather than blogs or wikis or podcasts. How will systems be impacted, and how will systems need to change to support what seems to be coming? Sure, there were questions about safety. But this was more of a “how do we make this happen?” session rather than “here’s about 50 reasons why we can’t” one.
Now this was a pretty heady group to begin with. There were people in the audience whose schools were getting rid of AP courses, and others whose students and teachers were holding classes in Second Life. These are by and large connected schools with connected kids, and many of them have traveled much farther down the road than most. And there was a palpable “can do” feel in the room, despite the concerns that were brought up. It was pretty inspiring, if I do say.
I wonder if maybe, and it’s a big MAYBE, we’re nearing another level in the conversation. It’s one where we talk about how the realities of the ways in which our kids are already starting to learn outside of school need to be leveraged inside of school. One where we really start to take a look at teachers as learners modeling learning first. And it’s one where people start to recognize that this isn’t about technology as much as it’s about assembling a new vision for their own practice and for their students’ education.
One thing I do know, and I feel a longer post coming on about this. We have to carry this conversation to other audiences. We’re doing a great job of talking to each other, but at some point, we have to find ways to bring it to people who have little to do with educational technology, namely parents, businesspeople, etc. I’ve said this before, but I need to blog less and try to write more for print pubs that have nothing to do with tech. Hmmm…maybe there’s an angle here for Good Housekeeping…
(Photo of Mohonk Mountain House where the session was held by WalkingGeek)
Just a quick link to another example of how teachers can use blogs to enhance the reading of a book in class by extending conversations past the school day, linking to resources and relevant materials, inviting parents to read and study with their children, inviting students from other parts of the country to collaborate and have students learn directly from interacting with the author of the book. What a concept! Guerrilla Season is the book, Eric Langhorst of the Speaking of History podcast is the teacher, and it appears he’s looking for more participants.
Check it out and join us if you like. In addition to the students here in Liberty, Missouri we have students in California and a teacher in Louisiana taking part right now. It just started so there is plenty of time to join. I want to thank Pat Hughes for taking such an interest in our project. She is commenting directly to reader questions and spending a great deal of with this project. How incredible it is for an author to be communicating with her readers while they read the book!
Last week, George Siemens put up .pdf’s of his new book Knowing Knowledge, and I’ve been reading through it on and off for the last couple of days. It’s been pushing my thinking even more about what connectivism and connected learning really is, and I’m amazed at how much it resonates with my own experience.
The idea that knowledge is not only a product but is also a process.
That know where and know who are much more important today than know what or how.
That learning is all about network creation and attending to that network.
That the learner is the teacher is the learner.
For me, that last one is what has made this such a powerful journey, and is one of the biggest shifts in thinking that I’ve had. In my “now” network, I am constantly shifting in the roles I play, most often acting as learner, but occasionaly, perhaps as teacher who then learns from the experience of teaching. And my learning is transparent; I model the way I find, synthesize, process and publish information at almost every turn. And in that sharing, I become teacher. It is an ongoing process, a negotiation not only with the material I consume about the subjects which I am passionate about but with the understanding of that material, the learning, in the context of the way the network offers it or responds to it. It’s about as far from the transmission model of learning as you can get, yet that’s still the way we look at learning in our schools.
At any rate, check out George’s book…I’m sure I’ll be writing more later.
If you have kids, work with kids, have relatives that are kids, show them this video and really talk to them about what it means. As many of you know, I have a nine year-old daughter and sometimes it feels like my biggest challenge in life is making sure she gets through the next few years with a healthy self-image. I think showing her things like this and talking about the implications is an important part of that. As is doing it with my son.
I really believe that the “problems” we see at MySpace (like this, for example) are absolutely a result of a society that objectifies its kids, primarily girls. We need to make sure every child can separate truth from fiction not just in what they read but in what they see and hear as well.
I’m heading over to the K-12 Conference to look at the first week keynotes, so I don’t have enough time to blog something original today. (I did have to play about two hours of “football” with the kids, in the brisk autumn air, with the leaves falling all around us, ya know.) So I thought I’d post something from the time machine. My how things er, haven’t changed…
October 22, 2002–Took a mini-vacation from posting about Web logs, and my mind has been drawn more and more to the new, changed state of the world and it’s implications for teaching. Been thinking a lot about what we don’t seem to teach our kids in any contextual way: living with less impact on the environment, understanding media messages, the impact of consumerism on the global society, the now-more-than-ever duty that falls to all of us as members of a participatory democracy. We don’t give all of our kids practical skills to deal with these issues which I think are among the most important we face right now. They get them piecemeal here and there, but we need a “Living in the 21st Century” class that’s mandatory for every student.
Found this quote: “This is a time in which it is profoundly tempting to withdraw into old certainties, to return to familiar landscapes of teaching and learning whose routines and well-worn grooves give us comfort and a sense of control and order. But the world itself holds a different lesson for us: a lesson about the importance of teaching the young to live well when the very shape of that world emerges every day in ways that are unlike anything we have ever known before.” (Emphasis added.) (From CITE.)
I think a lot about what this all must be like for my students. This week, here is what they’ve had to “consume”: The U.S. is nowhere near prepared for another terrorist attack, and the next one will likely dwarf 9/11; snipers who get 24/7 coverage while their victims names have already faded from our memories; hundreds of innocent people gassed to death by their own government; tales of war in Iraq; 16,000 people murdered in this country last year; suicide bombings and killings left and right…and the list goes on. I struggle to process all this, to maintain some sense of balance and usefulness in the face of all of this out-of-my-control stuff.
This is a changed world, and we need to change our definition of what it means to live well. With our students, I think we have to do a better job of giving them some context for their own definitions. And I think technology can facilitate that, maybe even Web logs, in bringing people together in shared spaces to understand more of what it means to be human, and American, and white, and male or female or whatever. Just thinking about it…
If nothing else, this trip has reminded me how much fun it is to work with kids and how I really love to be in an environment where I can be serious and be really silly at the same time. All of the kids that I met this week in Liverpool and Bolton just sparkled about the idea that they could begin to be a part of a more global network of learners (even though the phrasing might have been a bit different.) And yesterday back in Liverpool, we got about twenty more of them up and running with blogs. If you get five minutes or so and could do a quick read of a couple of them and leave comments, I’m sure that would go a long way to helping them sustain their work. (Now before you ask, we reminded them over and over not to use their full names or identify themselves, but obviously, some didn’t listen.) And in an attempt to start capturing more of this in video, here’s a little snippet of one of the kids in the group.
The bad news, if there is any, is that as they were leaving, one of the girls turned back and said “Now I only hope our teachers let us use these…” Now there’s an idea.
So the second best thing about being in Bolton yesterday after the amazing group of Year 6 students that were in attendance was that I got to sit in on an introductory Garage Band workshop that and Joe Moretti, and ADE from the UK was giving. All I can say is: Oh. My. Goodness. Now I need about 30 hours in a day. Amazing, amazing stuff that I’m really looking forward to playing with on my long, 8-hour plane ride back home on Sunday. Joe did a great job of getting the kids and their teachers to start playing, too. And this picture epitomizes the experience…kids engaged, collaborating, pushing ahead of their teachers many of whom were left scratching their heads. I found myself trying to channel into their fearlessness and I found it hard to keep up. As Joe was going through the many ways to create and manipulate the sounds and music, I was trying to jot down some notes along the way. But not the students. They just went after it.
We did some blogging yesterday, too, and another highlight from yesterday’s workshop was an impromptu Skype call with Chris Turek from November Learning to ask a question about the software that Bolton was using to support its network. When I asked if anyone had any questions for Chris, a whole bunch of hands shot up. Where are you from? How big is Texas? How many people are there? Do you own one of those big hats? Too funny. The kids, and the adults, were amazed that I was talking to my computer and having a conversation with someone halfway around the world. Just another connection…
So despite having to do a final workshop today with a group of high school students back in Liverpool, last night I just could not sleep. I’d be surprised if my brain shut off for even a couple of hours. I laid in bed directing the MacBook Movie I should have been making on this trip, catching snippets of the kids, the technologies, the travel. In my fog, it was a great movie. I kept thinking of David’s keynote and Alan Levine’s presentation (coming up next week), how fun and interesting I found them, and how much I’d love to make my own. But here’s my dirty little secret…getting up in front of hundreds of people and delivering a message is something that no longer bothers me, but I still feel horribly shy about going up and talking to people one on one and, even more, capturing it digitally. I really envy those who can do that easily. Another challenge to work through.
Yesterday in Liverpool there were a few kids. Today in Bolton, there are lots of kids, and I have to say that trying to deliver a message about the Read/Write Web that was relevant (and interesting) to a very bright group of Year 6 students and their teachers alike was more than challenging. Basically, I told them this…you guys are extremely lucky…look at the opportunities that await…look at the connections you can make. We talked about networks (they were impressed by my Cluster Map, trying to figure out where the little dots in the ocean were from,) and they were amazed at the idea of fan fiction and the over quarter million pieces of writing posted there about Harry Potter. (When I asked them what they would write about their answers ranged from Wonderama to the Simpsons to CSI.) And I think I got them with the Northwest Tree Octopus, telling them that’s one area where they are not as lucky as us, that they can’t just be readers anymore, that they have to be editors as well. And I also told them they have much to teach us and that they need to get to it.
While I was talking, they were using the computers at the table to comment on Tucker’s blog and on mine. (They liked me! They really liked me!) Later today, we’ll be creating blogs for all of them on the Bolton Blog Network set up by John Bidder, who is doing great things to move the area forward.
Then it was off to the teepees (yep, they actually have teepees here for them) where the “digital natives” learned about Comic Life and Garage Band and other tools that they can use to begin to create and publish their own work, building their own networks. The kids just exude such a great energy…more later I’m sure.
So one of the reasons why I feel very lucky these days is because I actually get some chances to get outside of the US and see firsthand what others are doing. This is my third trip to the UK this year and I get more and more impressed each time I come by what they are trying to do. The ICT folks here are extremely invested in pushing these technologies forward and supporting teachers’ efforts to use them, and the message from the government is that as an educator you can be safe and be creative and innovative with your students on the Web. What a concept.
Today in Liverpool I got a chance to address a group of about 160 or so teachers and students about how learning and teaching are changing and how schools are struggling with how to respond. The basic message was that we’ve done a fairly good job of bringing the world to our schools over the last 10 years, but now it’s time to bring our schools to the world. And we can do that if we have just a bit of creativity and imagination, and if we have the will to do it.
As usual, the best part was the kids. A number of them came up after my presentation and wanted to talk about the things they’ve been creating. One talked about video had had been editing and uploading with his friends. Another talked about fan fiction. Really small kids were taking pictures and videotaping, and others were creating movies and claymation on various computers. It’s something you never see in the states, kids showing off at conferences.
But the best idea of all that I heard was that it’s the intention of the government that every child in the UK will have a digital portfolio of work by spring 2008. It’s not quite clear yet what form it will take and how it will be assessed, both big issues, but the conversation is taking place. And the teachers and students are a big part of it. Definitely something that’s not even on our radar in the states. More later on tomorrow and Friday’s events working with students…
So the second best thing about being in Bolton yesterday after the amazing group of Year 6 students that were in attendance was that I got to sit in on an introductory Garage Band workshop that and Joe 
teachers alike was more than challenging. Basically, I told them this…you guys are extremely lucky…look at the opportunities that await…look at the connections you can make. We talked about networks (they were impressed by my 