WINDING DOWN, OR GEARING UP?

I’ve learned a tremendous amount through this class, about the very challenging and complex issues surrounding the technology revolution. As educators, parents, and human beings, we shoulder enormous responsibilities, many of which we had no role in choosing. For students, my greatest concerns are:

-how multi-tasking is affecting their brain development, their thinking, and the balance of physical activity, face-to-face engagement, and social manners

-how capitalists and makers of games which promote aggression and violence, are preying on educators and students to make us think that education should be designed like an online game and if it isn’t, that’s the explanation for every educational failure

-that technology is exacerbating, rather than helping to find solutions to, the rich-poor divide.

As a teacher, I have seen that carefully planned introduction of laptops, technology, inservice for teachers, and guided instruction can help lead to improved school results, such as the school highlighted in the movie Digital Nation. However, we don’t know what other variables led to this success (my guess is that many of the students in this school didn’t have laptop or perhaps even Internet access at home). And other schools with the same endeavors and intent, such as the one mentioned in the most recent issue of The International Educator, haven’t fared nearly as well.

On a personal level, my greatest concern is the environmental impact of electronic waste.
Producers of devices – from laptops to kindle to iPad to whatever will be on the market next week – all compete fiercely to get schools to buy their product. In affluent settings, a college might adopt kindle for its freshmen, and a year later decide it wasn’t the best idea. In poorer countries such as Romania, a government might provide families with computers to improve education, but without Internet access and home training and moderation, the computer ends up being a gaming tool and ends up detracting from schoolwork, lowering grades, and defeating the whole purpose of the project. There’s lots of good intent out there, but I would guess hundreds of thousands of these toxic tools end up in the dump within a year. Is all this worth the human and environmental cost, and better than sticking with books, the electronic tools we already have, and face-to-face conversations with the humans who have to figure out how to save this planet?

I think Korea, perhaps moreso than other nations, tried to adopt technology in a very planned way. Yet look at the tremendous social problems they are having now, as illustrated in Digital Nation. I don’t think their social problems related to technology are greater than other places; I think they are just acknowledging them sooner, and trying to address them faster and more openly. Is this the kind of global society we want to live in?

Finally, many of the scenarios in the Horizon report and some of the statistics Jeff shared in class just don’t check out when I try to verify them. I’ve talked to 3 recent US college graduates who told me that they didn’t need to multitask in college classes, and when they did, it distracted them and decreased learning. I know 4 Americans who don’t have Internet access at home because they can’t afford it. I polled 4 of my Grade 8 classes at ISB and only 15% of the students had iPhones or Blackberries. And in ALL of the informal class discussion we’ve had, students say they want a BALANCE of online activity and other types of classroom learning.

Pegagogically, the best thing I learned about was the power of connectivity, and I can vastly improve the Family Heritage Project to improve the communication aspects on several levels. All in all, a thoughtful and powerful learning experience!

Project Sketch

PROJECT SKETCH:
CLASS: GRADE 7 INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION EXPLORATORY (one-quarter class)


PROJECT: FAMILY HERITAGE PROJECT
One of the three main units for this class is “My Cultural Heritage.” The culminating project for this unit asks students to interview parents (or other family members) about one of three topics: pregnancy/birth, marriage, or death/funerals. I'll share the essential questions and enduring understandings, learning outcomes, assignment sheet, rubric, and some exemplars with the group in class.

I would like to adapt this project to use a new tool: Voice Thread. Several of my colleagues have told me about the advantages of Voice Thread: that it allows students to easily incorporate audio and visual images, and that it allows the presenter to rehearse oral presentations. The compact time frame of the class does not allow for every student to orally present their project, but students could be asked to include the part of the interview which they think is most interesting/illuminating. And, if the interview was conducted in the native language, the student could translate it as well.

Projects could be posted on my blog, and students could be required to view and comment on two other students’ projects. This would have them learning in a “connectivity” mode, and I would be nudged to start using my teacher blog.

The NETS student standard to be met would be:

Research and Information Fluency

Students apply digital tools to gather, evaluate, and use information. Students:

a. plan strategies to guide inquiry.
b. locate, organize, analyze, evaluate, synthesize, and ethically use information from a variety of sources and media.
c. evaluate and select information sources and digital tools based on the appropriateness to specific tasks.
d. process data and report results.

I would be touching on most of these NETS Teacher standards:

2. Design and Develop Digital-Age Learning Experiences and Assessments

Teachers design, develop, and evaluate authentic learning experiences and assessments incorporating contemporary tools and resources tomaximize content learning in context and to develop the knowledge, skills, and attitudes identified in the NETS•S. Teachers:

a. design or adapt relevant learning experiences that incorporate digital tools and resources to promote student learning and creativity
b. develop technology-enriched learning environments that enable all students to pursue their individual curiosities and become
active participants in setting their own educational goals, managing their own learning, and assessing their own progress
c. customize and personalize learning activities to address students’ diverse learning styles, working strategies, and abilities using
digital tools and resources
d. provide students with multiple and varied formative and summative assessments aligned with content and technology
standards and use resulting data to inform learning and teaching

Week 3: The Big Picture/Maintaining Perspective

The assigned readings for the week were quite manageable, but events in the classroom, the video "Digital Nation," discussions with 8th graders in Synergy, and the content of my Global Studies class left me with a rather frustrating range of observations, thoughts, and emotions. While I understand that this course is about the technological world, I worry that it is presenting a view of the world - and knowledge and education - that may not be complete or entirely accurate.

GEEKING OUT is a HOBBY ("esoteric, peer-driven, self-directed, passionate"). To me the positive aspects are that it gives artists - musicians, film directors, etc. - a venue to share their work and gain recognition. The online games concern me because so many have a war/battle/control theme in a time when all of us are in dire need or practice with peace education and conflict resolution techniques. Geeking out can also become downright dangerous, or even illegal. Last week I watched a CNN episode about child porn. The accessibility is disturbing and then there are the predators: the one who was arrested in this special was an 18-year-old senior who would leave his computer running, downloading hours of horrifying child rape scenes, while his parents were in the next room, oblivious. Gee, was he enraged or engaged by school, and is "going digital" in the classroom going to solve these issues?

Dance, painting, gardening, and Pilates are all hobbies, too, and they are healthier and more holistic than geeking out.

THE RSS READER AND FOLLOWING BLOGS

It was interesting to see the wide range of approaches and writing styles in colleagues' blogs. I have to admit that DEvice's first blog completely blew me away. I'm not surprised, because Laura is "doctoral" in every way, and eloquent when she writes and speaks. I was relieved to see other teachers taking a more practical approach, such as Hala describing a teaching activity. I'm beginning to see the connectivist learning power of blogs......but ah, the time factor.

From The Thinking Stick, I finally learned about the reasoning behind reconnecting Facebook during school hours. I found this a bit disconcerting on several levels. First, the bullying incident, the Facebook shutdown, and the Facebook reconnection were never fully discussed with, or explained to, teachers. It's fine to have the information posted on a blog - even within insideisb, but we can't assume that all members of an organization will go there for information. Personally, I was relieved when Facebook was shut down, partly because its distracts me, and reduces my focus and productivity at work. Nearly all of my friends who work at other schools, including private schools in Thailand and public schools in the US, have strict policies where students AND teachers do not have access to social networking tools during work hours. I like that.

A classroom is for engaged learning, not off-task, petty socializing. I want my students to be focused on their learning tasks, and I want me to be focused on coaching and teaching and learning with my students. In one 4-day work week, in which students had laptops for four separate periods, I had to send four students to the office for: using Facebook (1), using chatmail with another classmate (gossipping about Gr. 7 couples) - (2), and playing a game (1). In each instance, they had a very structured task, and in the chat instance, student pairs were sharing laptops to view and evaluate and piece of student work. Students have plenty of time to socialize, digitally or otherwise, outside of the classroom, and I shouldn't be spending instructional time as a policewoman. Have these decisions been made with full faculty discussion and participation?

During a Synergy session 3 weeks ago, I did the rare thing: I told students they had a choice: they could work on homework, read a book, or use laptops to work on homework or play the game FOOD FORCE, so they could appreciate the difficulties of getting food aid to Haiti. The gender difference was absolute: all of the boys chose the laptops and game, and all of the girls read quietly. So is online engagement more of a learning styles issue than an answer to educational woes?

DIGITAL NATION, IMPOVERISHED WORLD
I'm still processing the first 2/3 of the video Digital Nation. So many scenes resonated with my own experience: my husband, a farmer, doesn't use the Internet (nor email) at all, and he is one of the happiest people I know. We've always had a commuter family, meaning we live five hours apart, and spend 2 weekends a month and all of our vacations together. If those weekends are in Bangkok, and I or our kids start "connecting" with our computers, phones, or other gadgets, Boon feels alienated and shut out, and some kind of conflict can ensue. And I completely understand everyone's side. So are digital devices really connecting us, or disconnecting us from the ones we should be loving the most?

So, in Synergy this week, I asked our group a question. Should their instruction and class time all be on-line and virtual? Here were their responses:

"No, because I get distracted."

"No, not all the time - only when the technology is a tool that makes the learning better."

"No, because my teachers have knowledge to share."

"No, because we need to have charisma and develop social skills."

"The human connection is important."

Have we involved students in the discussions and decision-making?

Finally, there is the question of whether the readings, Digital Nation, and our own views and experiences really reflect global realities. The data constantly change, and I try to work with the most reliable and updated sources for my class: for this quarter, by looking at 3 different sources, students decided that IF THE WORLD WERE A VILLAGE OF 100:

12 would have a computer

7 would have access to the Internet

1 would have a college education

33 would lack access to a safe water supply

67 would be unable to read

So, while our job as teachers is to engage learners and choose technological tools which enhance learning, my job in particular is to inspire students to become caring global citizenss. So let's not lose sight of the big picture. The one beyond the digital screen.

Changed Approaches to Learning and Managing: Connectivity

I found the readings for Week #2 to be realistic and useful. "Messing Around" is, from my experience as a parent AND educator, how most students currently use technology and tools: primarily for social purposes, in self-defined ways, without pre-defined goals. So we have a long way to go - as learners ourselves, and then as mentors, if we are going to get the education piece right. I did find that this excerpt helped me to understand male learners better - how and why gaming appeals to them, and that generally this is their social construct. We watched our daughter grow up with the explosion of MySpace and Facebook, but our son had left home and ISB prior to the exponential growth of the digital world. As I observe and reflect more closely, I realize that I have been focussing on and understanding my female learners (in the digital world)better because of my parental experience.

Bloom's revised taxonomy was very practical - immediately for me as a student in this course (I'm a list kind of person), and eventually as I design tasks or assessments for my own students/classes. It makes sense, and it isn't tied to an economic theory or capitalist venture (see previous blogs :)

CONNECTIVISM: I'm still pondering some of the concepts in this article, but here are the ideas I found most salient, new, or provocative (with comments in parentheses):

Knowledge is growing exponentially (in every field?)

Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. (How do we know this? In positive or negative ways?)

Learning is a lasting changed state brought about as a result of experiences and inteactions with content or people (this definition of learning HASN'T changed)

Classrooms which emulae the "fuzziness" of learning will be more effective in preparing learners for life-long learning. (Global issues, one content subject I teach, are messay and complex - nice overlap here!)

When knowledge is abundant, the rapid evaluation of knowledge is important. (To me, this is one of our biggest jobs as educators - perhaps MORE important than teaching kids how to navigate the web and operate all the tools)

The health of the learning ecology of an organization depends on effective nurturing of information flow. Diverse team of varying viewpoints are a critical structure for completely exploring ideas. (Is ISB's management structure keeping up with the changes that connectivity requires?)

Week 1 - Slightly Shifting Thoughts

Unlike my last blog, which was really a rant, this piece will focus on the other readings from Week 1.

In "World Without Walls: Learning Well With Others," there were some rather simple ideas which are not new to me, but succintly expressed:

1) Blogs can be used as a tool for social and political organization. We saw this with our colleague Kerry Dyke's organization of banning plastic bags at a Villa location using Facebook to organize consumers. However, I would also like to add that this all started with a face-to-face contact, when Brooke Estin (an ISB grad) came to talk to my Global Studies class about her involvement with microfinance. She mentioned how carrotmob.org works, and I later mentioned it to Kerry. So, digitial tools enhance social organization, but face-to-face connections are important as well.

2) As author Will Richardson states, "We must ne adept at negotiating, planning, and nurturing the conversation with others we may know little about - not to mention maintaining a healthy balance between our face-to-face and virtual lives (another dance for which kids sorely need coaching)."

3) As educators, we need to re-think our role, to strike a balance between connectors/advisors/mentors in navigation, and content expertise. Particularly at the middle school level, and particularly with international school clientele, I think we still have a huge responsibility in talking about WHAT is important for students to know and learn.

"HANGING OUT"

I had read the MacArther Foundation article earlier this year. This portion was nothing new to me, as our daughter, now 19, came of age with MySpace and Facebook. The re-read made me reflect a bit more on how social and romantic relationships and status are, for those who chose to do so, negotiated in a widely public forum. However, I know a number of people who choose not to be be engaged in social networking sites - or the Internet, for that matter, and they are some of the happiest people I know!

"Disrupting Class: Student Centric Education"

I find it very hard to read an article on education which is based on an economic theory.

"Enraged" by Marc Prensky

I'm enraged by Marc Prensky's article "Engage Me or Enrage Me": What Today's Learners Demand. A quick look at his background tells me that he not really an educator at heart: his endeavor is to develop and sell online games, and his clients (with the exception of Nokia) have some of the worst repurtations for exploiting people and the planet: IBM, Bank of America, and the Department of Defense ?!

Prensky makes a number of blanket statements which I'd like to see backed up with solid evidence. Some examples:

(In the 60s)....."those kids lives were a lot less rich." Numerous studies have shown that the happiness levels of Americans have declined steadily since the 1950s.

"Today.....all the students we teach have something in their lives that's really engaging - something that they do and that they are good at, something that has an engaging, creative component to it." He also implies that all students (in the US) have cell phones and ipods and Internet access. What about the poor in America? Perhaps he should read Barbara Ehrehreich's "Nickel and Dimed." Or read statistics like one in a recent issue of TIME magazine: One in eight Americans sought emergency food assistance last year. Or just take a walk outside his sheltered, game-filled life.

"Their short attention spans......are only for the old ways of learning." How will their short attention spans serve them (or us) when they are airplane pilots or surgeons or farmers or engineers or teachers? LIFE is not an online game.

This blog isn't meant to fit the rubric - it's meant to be a rant, because that's exactly what Prensky's article is: unscholarly work, fit for the trash bin.

THINGAMAJIGS AND DOHICKEYS

WHAT THE HECK IS A.......?

On the most general and basic level, I want to understand what my students and colleagues are talking about in terms of educational and social technology and, when feasible and possible, how to use those “thingamajiggers.” I also want to be able to manage incoming information more efficiently, for both work and home purposes. When the time is right, I would hope to be able to choose tools which can enhance learning and fit realistically into one-quarter classes. Finally, this is an opportunity for me, who works as a “team of one,” to use all the connectivity aspects of technology to learn continually with and from other educators.

I would also like to hear or read a bit from the “non-techie” side – the educators who AREN’T sold on educational technology, or educators who have chosen to form or work in “unplugged schools.” If we are lifelong learners and educators, we have an obligation to think critically, and not be completely sold on ANY educational approach without looking at the other side of the coin. I have concerns about how technology is widening the rich-poor gap, the commercial aspect of the Internet, and the environmental impact of the use of technology. And I’d like to know more about how multi-tasking and frequent use of the computer affect the brain, particularly short- and long-term memory, and the parts of the brain which activate empathy. Will any of the course content look at these issues?

From the first two class sessions, I have a better understanding of how a social networking tool such as Facebook can be used for social action purposes (“crowdsourcing”), and how an RSS feed can help me to manage reading material, subscriptions, and course materials. I also found that using delicious.com as a search engine can be a great resource; it led me to lesson plans on sustainability, something I had been trying to do rather slowly and not very efficiently using general google searches. From Chris Betcher, I learned about newsmap.jp – a rather new and wide and general resource for news articles which is attractive and can be used in many ways. I was so excited about that one (for Humanities), that I shared it with our librarian and the MS Humanities Department.

Our first day of class was interrupted by a very HOT fire drill!