My incredibly busy (and productive) fall school term is over, and now I get to breathe again! The video that my class made about the salmon spawning near our school is finally on the EcoKids website - www.ecokids.ca/pub/ecoreporters/videos/save_the_salmon.cfm. We are pretty excited about finishing the first stage of our multi-media documentation of our learning at school. We will be producing two more videos or photo-stories in the next two terms for EcoKids.
We celebrated the end of the term by participating in a very cool concert called "I Need a Winter Vacation" with the other 350 or so students at Eagle Ridge School. The kids sang beautifully and several soloists got over their stage fright and performed as Shakespearean actors on the stage - Romeo and Juliet meet Julius Caesar.
And of course, my 2-year LTT program is finished - went out with a bang (more like a fizzle, since my video/PowerPoint comprehensive portfolio presentation in our last class wouldn't play properly on the computer I was using!) But I certainly learned a lot and made huge strides in my teaching practice towards a student-centered constructivist classroom.
Helping to extricate our 31 year-old son from a tough situation in Hanoi, Vietnam, made the last week of school even more exciting! Arranging a flight with a travel agent in Vietnam with a 15-hour time difference and a malfunctioning credit card was not easy, but imagine trying to do that without email and the ability to pay bills half-way around the globe in a wink!
Now I just have two rooms in our house to clean from top to bottom, paper and teaching stuff that have accumulated in the past year or so of neglect. I hope I can get that done before Christmas and then relax before going back to school - snowshoeing, maybe some telemark skiing, more time with friends than I usually have to spend. Oh yes, and of course, all the Christmas goodies to enjoy that my students and their parents blessed me with as gifts. I guess I'll need that snowshoeing!
A peaceful and joyous Christmas to all and all the best in 2011. (Boy, the years are going by way too quickly!) If you aren't one of the 23 million people who have viewed this heart-warming video already, please take 5 minutes and see it, it really says Christmas to me! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SXh7JR9oKVE
Pro-D Day on the Harrison River - Oct. 2010
Sunday, December 19, 2010
Saturday, December 4, 2010
4 Days to Go!! (in LTT, that is)
Hi there all my friends in the blogosphere! I hope your chosen profession is chugging away as successfully as mine is right now. I have completed two of the three major projects I was working on in the last few weeks: 1) report cards are done and out to my students' parents and 2) I have finished editing our salmon spawning video for EcoKids down to 2 minutes; it looks pretty cool, everybody I've shown it to at school loves it! Now I have to solve a wee technical hurdle, that is getting it burned onto a DVD to send to Toronto so they can put it on the EcoKids website. Two tries at burning successfully and counting!
One of my students posted something very cool to our Edmodo network last week. He posted a link to a TED-talk video showing an 11 year-old boy talking about all the problems with our industrial food production and distribution system - factory farms, polluted farmland, etc. This is a great example of how I had hoped my Grade 4 students (only 8 or 9 years old) would interact with our network - by posting resources their classmates could learn from. Several of his classmates have viewed the 5 minute video and responded to it. Here is the link: TED Talk about the food system
Another student showed us a website she was using to research the salmon for our video. On it, she found the etymology of the word "salmon"; it comes from a Latin word "salmo" which means "leaper". Makes sense, eh? I encouraged the rest of the class to post other things they found interesting. Just this morning, a girl posted the link to another EcoKids video from a class that won the 2010 EcoKids Challenge by producing a video about their recycling program. Well done! Here is that link: 2010 Great EcoKids Challenge Champion video.
So I've got lots of evidence I can use for my comprehensive portfolio for my last LTT presentation next Wednesday, 4 days from now. Got to go work on it - bye!
One of my students posted something very cool to our Edmodo network last week. He posted a link to a TED-talk video showing an 11 year-old boy talking about all the problems with our industrial food production and distribution system - factory farms, polluted farmland, etc. This is a great example of how I had hoped my Grade 4 students (only 8 or 9 years old) would interact with our network - by posting resources their classmates could learn from. Several of his classmates have viewed the 5 minute video and responded to it. Here is the link: TED Talk about the food system
Another student showed us a website she was using to research the salmon for our video. On it, she found the etymology of the word "salmon"; it comes from a Latin word "salmo" which means "leaper". Makes sense, eh? I encouraged the rest of the class to post other things they found interesting. Just this morning, a girl posted the link to another EcoKids video from a class that won the 2010 EcoKids Challenge by producing a video about their recycling program. Well done! Here is that link: 2010 Great EcoKids Challenge Champion video.
So I've got lots of evidence I can use for my comprehensive portfolio for my last LTT presentation next Wednesday, 4 days from now. Got to go work on it - bye!
Friday, November 12, 2010
Update on lots of stuff
Hello there. I haven't blogged for a while, so I have lots to update you on.
First, there's our EcoReporters project of filming the salmon spawning in Scott Creek near our school. My class and I have taken the last three Wednesday afternoons to head down to the creek. Amazingly warm and sunny weather all 3 days, with enough rain in between to keep the water level high enough to allow the fish to swim up the creek. The students, in groups of 4 or 5, have spent time in class writing their own scripts about the salmon and filming each other by the creek with the fish running. We discovered that weirs had been built across the creek in 2 or 3 places to make deep water pools for the fish to rest in, which necessitated building fish ladders in the weirs. There hasn't been a huge number of live fish any of those days, but usually 2 or 3 valiantly struggling up the creek. Lots of dead fish, though, which has fascinated the kids, especially the boys, as much or more than the live ones! The dead fish smell last week was pretty strong! It's hard to keep the kids out of the water; they want to get to know the fish intimately, dead or alive! Trying to keep 22 kids quiet while one group is filming is not easy. After our first practice filming, I showed the videos to the class and we spent some time evaluating the pros and cons of each one. They realized that all the background noise made it hard to hear the kids who were speaking on camera. They're learning a lot about how to write a short (2-minute) script summarizing all the information they have researched about the fish and read their scripts in front of a camera. Not easy when you've never done it before! That's an aspect of language arts that's pretty new to them. After 2 hours of filming over the past 2 weeks, I hope we have enough footage to edit together to make our final presentation. When we do, I'll post some of it here for folks to see.
Our Edmodo social learning network is humming right along. The students are using it to help each other with assignments and to understand aspects of the technology we are using in all our projects.
The third project incorporating digital technologies is my last field study for LTT. It involves the students, in pairs, planning virtual trips to another country in the world with Googlemaps, and collaborating in the creation of the maps, i.e. asking each other questions and sharing ideas and tips via Edmodo. We have spent 5 or 6 weeks studying maps of the world - the continents, oceans, hemispheres, and the location of many countries. Just at the end of October, we were ready to start using Googlemaps to trace routes around the globe. I had 2 big questions: How could we trace routes across the oceans when Googlemaps would only give directions within one continental land-mass?; and how could we get the students saving their maps on the site without them using email addresses, which our school district doesn’t like using for elementary students. The answers to both questions came through trial and error. I discovered that when you save a map in “My Maps”, you can then edit it and draw lines anywhere on the map, across oceans or landmasses, and you can force the line to follow roads on land. Through a bit of searching on the Googlemaps users forum and more trial and error, I found that more than one person at a time can log into the same account to save and edit different maps. I set up a new account using my SD43 email address, gave it a generic password, and shared that with my students one Monday morning in the lab. 10 minutes later, we had 27 different computers all on the account, creating and saving maps to it. The response time is pretty slow with that many simultaneous users, but it works. Usually, we won’t all be on together; they will be working on our 3 classroom computers or at home. Already (Nov. 10) we have kids sharing ideas and questions about their maps on Edmodo. I have only a few weeks to finish that project, or at least get some data to report in my field study and prepare my comprehensive portfolio for our LTT course. So I'll go out with a bang as usual!
Oh yes, and there's 26 report cards to write in the next 2 weeks. Child's play!! If only I was a child!
Talk to you soon - send me some coffee!
Sunday, October 24, 2010
Edmodo Up and Running
I said I would report back on how my students are using our Edmodo social learning network. It is right on track; the kids have stopped (for the most part) using it simply as a socializing spot and started talking to each other and to me about what they are learning. Kids have asked for clarification of assignments, continued with our observation of the phases of the moon, and helped each other understand math concepts. I have posted links to online math quizzes, tide tables and geography games for students to use. One boy is sharing all kinds of Hallowe'en jokes - "What is a vampire's favorite fruit? ....... A neck-tarine!" I think we're going to be laughing too hard to carve our jack-o'lantern.
I haven't managed to successfully post any video on the site yet, something to do with file formats, I think. Hopefully soon.
If they (and I) keep our enthusiasm for this interaction going all year, it should give a big boost to our learning atmosphere at school.
I haven't managed to successfully post any video on the site yet, something to do with file formats, I think. Hopefully soon.
If they (and I) keep our enthusiasm for this interaction going all year, it should give a big boost to our learning atmosphere at school.
EcoKids Video Project - EcoReporters from the Frontline
I took my Grade 4's down to the creek last week to see how many fish there are right now, with the low water level. We saw a few dead ones and 2 or 3 live ones, real BIG ones, struggling valiantly in a few centimeters of water to jump over rock ledges to get upstream. The students were pretty excited, and thought they would give the fish a helping hand by pushing them along with sticks. I helped them realize that the fish need to do it on their own, that poking them would only hamper their efforts. We hope that the autumn rains come soon in enough volume to raise the water level in the creek to allow more fish to make the trip to their spawning grounds.
So in a few weeks, you can go to http://www.ecokids.ca/ and check out our video. I'll keep you posted on the progress of our productions. With any luck, I'll have a class of little David Suzukis by Christmas!
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
Rocky Point Rocks!
Last Friday, Oct. 8, I took my class on our first field trip of the year to Rocky Point Park in Port Moody. This is the third year running that I have organized this field trip for my Grade 4's - partly as an outdoor education activity to study tides, tidal salt marshes, the geography and history of Port Moody (which had its roots at or near the waterfront at Rocky Point) and partly as a team-building exercise. Part of the planning is to take advantage of free bus fare for school students during Walk-to-School Week in early October every year.
The weather forecast was not very positive - rain all day - but the rain held off except for a few sprinkles around lunch-time. So I was very thankful for that. We hiked from the school the 2 kilometers or so to and around the end of the inlet, then continued on to the park. The kids all walked well, nobody got too tired or complained about the hike.
We stopped just before the main part of the park to look at a midden of clam shells that built up for thousands of years; Rocky Point is part of the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation traditional territory and they used this area as their summer camp for gathering clams and other seafood. There are also a few bricks left buried in the sand, likely parts of houses that families occupied years ago on what is now public parkland.
When we arrived at the centre of the park, the playground/washroom area, the students were given a sheet of questions - a scavenger hunt where they went in their groups of 3 or 4 to find answers to historical and geographic questions. I had designed the scavenger hunt by studying all the historical plaques and commemmorative signs around the park, mostly on or near the long pier jutting out into Burrard Inlet. The students were distracted from their study of history by several crabs and jelly fish lurking under the pier. Obviously, I didn't want to discourage them from observing these wonders of the ocean environment, but I did hope they would put some energy into collaborating to find answers to the questions. Some did, others didn't.
After lunch, we (2 parent volunteers and I) gathered the students for the team-building exercises. I had strung up a long, thick rope between 2 trees about 5 meters apart, making a type of spider-web. The goal of the exercise was for the students to help each other get through the holes in the spider-web without touching the rope. Well, that didn't work so well; they didn't seem to catch onto the idea of actually physically supporting each other so they could climb through the web. So after 10 minutes of boys running at the web trying to dive through, and almost tearing it down in the process, we tried a different exercise, called the Electric Fence. For this, you tie a long rope straight between 2 trees, say 10-15 meters apart, and again they need to help each other get over the rope without touching it. They seemed to enjoy that much more; they actually succeeded (with some help from a certain 50-something kid) in getting most of them over the rope.
At 2:00, we started preparing to head back to school via the public transit system. It is a fairly long walk to the bus stop (about 4 blocks), but we all made it in one piece. All 29 of us got onto one bus and arrived back at Eagle Ridge just before the dismissal bell. I bet the kids were as tired that night as I was, after 5 hours running around in the fresh air.
I often wish I could extend that field trip to a much longer part of the school year, do much more of our learning outdoors around the neighbourhood. But I guess during the wettest parts of November to February, it's nice to have a roof over our heads and four walls around us to keep out the chill.
(I'll try to post some video of the trip when I get it downloaded and edited.)
The weather forecast was not very positive - rain all day - but the rain held off except for a few sprinkles around lunch-time. So I was very thankful for that. We hiked from the school the 2 kilometers or so to and around the end of the inlet, then continued on to the park. The kids all walked well, nobody got too tired or complained about the hike.
We stopped just before the main part of the park to look at a midden of clam shells that built up for thousands of years; Rocky Point is part of the Tsleil-Waututh First Nation traditional territory and they used this area as their summer camp for gathering clams and other seafood. There are also a few bricks left buried in the sand, likely parts of houses that families occupied years ago on what is now public parkland.
When we arrived at the centre of the park, the playground/washroom area, the students were given a sheet of questions - a scavenger hunt where they went in their groups of 3 or 4 to find answers to historical and geographic questions. I had designed the scavenger hunt by studying all the historical plaques and commemmorative signs around the park, mostly on or near the long pier jutting out into Burrard Inlet. The students were distracted from their study of history by several crabs and jelly fish lurking under the pier. Obviously, I didn't want to discourage them from observing these wonders of the ocean environment, but I did hope they would put some energy into collaborating to find answers to the questions. Some did, others didn't.
After lunch, we (2 parent volunteers and I) gathered the students for the team-building exercises. I had strung up a long, thick rope between 2 trees about 5 meters apart, making a type of spider-web. The goal of the exercise was for the students to help each other get through the holes in the spider-web without touching the rope. Well, that didn't work so well; they didn't seem to catch onto the idea of actually physically supporting each other so they could climb through the web. So after 10 minutes of boys running at the web trying to dive through, and almost tearing it down in the process, we tried a different exercise, called the Electric Fence. For this, you tie a long rope straight between 2 trees, say 10-15 meters apart, and again they need to help each other get over the rope without touching it. They seemed to enjoy that much more; they actually succeeded (with some help from a certain 50-something kid) in getting most of them over the rope.
At 2:00, we started preparing to head back to school via the public transit system. It is a fairly long walk to the bus stop (about 4 blocks), but we all made it in one piece. All 29 of us got onto one bus and arrived back at Eagle Ridge just before the dismissal bell. I bet the kids were as tired that night as I was, after 5 hours running around in the fresh air.
I often wish I could extend that field trip to a much longer part of the school year, do much more of our learning outdoors around the neighbourhood. But I guess during the wettest parts of November to February, it's nice to have a roof over our heads and four walls around us to keep out the chill.
(I'll try to post some video of the trip when I get it downloaded and edited.)
Monday, September 27, 2010
Diving into Edmodo
Today, I introduced my Grade 4 students to our Edmodo social learning website. All but three of the 26 kids have internet access at home. By 8:00 tonight, there were several pages of messages between the kids and several to me. A lot of them go something like ... "Hi, this is me. Who's online? Oh, I have to go now. Wwwwwwwwwwwwhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaaaaaatttttttttttttttttt!!" Tomorrow, in the computer lab, I'll be spelling out the guidelines for appropriate posts, that they need to have some relation to what we are doing at school, that it's a social learning site, not just a social networking site. Most of them have used Facebook, so that's what they're relating it to, of course. I don't mind it they get all the chit-chat out of their system; hopefully in a few days they'll settle down to a bit more serious use of the site.
In a few days, when we're up and running, I'll be able to report on how it's going.
In a few days, when we're up and running, I'll be able to report on how it's going.
Friday, September 17, 2010
Oh, For the Life of a Spider!
This morning, as I was tending my garden, trying to prevent my tomatoe plants from being overcome by blight (the black death), I found a huge spider web under construction, suspended between an 8-foot tall sunflower and a cherry tree branch, way over my head. So of course I had to grab my new video camera to record the amazing technology of a spider's work (even though it was already later than I usually leave for school). My first attempt at up-close nature videography. Have a look. Feel free to show it in your classes if you want.
Pretty amazing technology, using a filament in your body to make a net to catch your food! I hope my students will be as fascinated as I am when I show this to them next week.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Reflections on Digital Literacy for Today's Citizenry
Tonight in our LTT class we have been discussing various definitions of literacy, from a basic meaning of reading and writing text to communicating in multiple contexts. Digital literacy to me means having the basic skills to manipulate efficiently digital media to acquire information, communicate with other people, and share ideas. Just as we old guys used typewriters, rotary phones, fax machines and VCR's, today's young (and older) people who want to succeed in the world need to be able to use computers, cellular phones, email, blogs and social networking to see what is happening out there in the world and get their message out.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Try to remember the kind of September When life was slow and oh so mellow ...
If you remember that song, you're probably pushing 50 (or 60) like me. Does anyone remember a slow and mellow September? Wouldn't that be nice! It obviously wasn't a teacher who wrote those lines!
The new school year is here; we're off and running. It's hard going from the lazy days of August (sleeping late, spending hours in the garden or at the beach) to being up at 5:30 and preparing to manage (and teach, if possible!) 30 young, energetic, boisterous, and often funny little people. I'm always a bit surprised at the innocence of most of my Grade 4's (really old Grade 3's) for the first few weeks of school. "Where do I put my name on my paper?" "You mean I have to ask to go to the bathroom!?" But by October, they don't seem so innocent anymore.
I'm trying to get my new LTT field study off the ground, but I've only seen my class for 2 days so far. I have no idea what their computer skills or discussion/collaboration skills are like. Since my field study involves mapping, I thought I'd check to see if any of them knew where the four compass directions are in relation to the school. A few thought the sun came up in the west, so we have a ways to go. But by the end of the day, I think they all had a good idea of North, South, East and West.
The new school year is here; we're off and running. It's hard going from the lazy days of August (sleeping late, spending hours in the garden or at the beach) to being up at 5:30 and preparing to manage (and teach, if possible!) 30 young, energetic, boisterous, and often funny little people. I'm always a bit surprised at the innocence of most of my Grade 4's (really old Grade 3's) for the first few weeks of school. "Where do I put my name on my paper?" "You mean I have to ask to go to the bathroom!?" But by October, they don't seem so innocent anymore.
I'm trying to get my new LTT field study off the ground, but I've only seen my class for 2 days so far. I have no idea what their computer skills or discussion/collaboration skills are like. Since my field study involves mapping, I thought I'd check to see if any of them knew where the four compass directions are in relation to the school. A few thought the sun came up in the west, so we have a ways to go. But by the end of the day, I think they all had a good idea of North, South, East and West.
Friday, September 3, 2010
My response to the “Learning to Change-Changing to Learn” video and readings from June 2nd
The video was made in 2008 – 2 years ago, yet seems very fresh and revolutionary.
We are witnessing “The death of Education, the dawn of Learning” as one guy put it - quite a concept! How do we cease to be “givers of knowledge” or “trainers” and become “facilitators of learning”?
The article by Nicholas Carr: The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains introduces many very disturbing concepts, including that our reading concentration is negatively affected simply by the presence of hyperlinks in a passage of text, whether or not we follow the links.
I find his analogy of using a thimble to fill a bathtub to explain the transfer of information from working memory to long-term memory very clear. It’s the other end of the spectrum from the idea of drinking out of a fire hose. We can take little drops of information into our long-term memory, we don’t get much of value if it’s coming at us all at once in a huge stream.
A Vancouver doctor and lecturer named Gabor Maté wrote a book a few years ago called “Scattered Minds” about his experience with ADHD. I had several long conversations with Dr. Maté after reading his book, and realized what it must be like to have that condition, when everything coming at you demands equal attention, and if you are able to focus your attention on one thing, it is often not the most important piece of information in the stream, and/or you totally ignore everything else. I think this is akin to what Carr is saying in this piece, that the internet tends to be the fire hose, and that our brains are trying to fill the thimble with it. Pretty tough job!
One of Carr's statements relates back to Howard Rheingold’s idea of “crap detection” - As we multitask online, we are “training our brains to pay attention to the crap.” Interesting warning – to detect the crap, we have to pay attention to it!
Recent research into neuroplasticity has shown, for example, that soldiers with brain injuries from battlefield trauma can learn to re-wire their brain, i.e. transfer cognitive and physical abilities from a damaged part of the brain to a new, undamaged part. But I don’t think we want our brains to be so “plastic” that they are constantly shifting centers of attention and not allowing for sustained concentration on one activity.
What I got from Henry Jenkin’s article Why Participatory Culture Is Not Web 2.0 (and I agree with him whole-heartedly) is the notion that “There is a real danger in mapping the Web 2.0 business model onto educational practices, thus seeing students as "consumers" rather than "participants" within the educational process”. Rheingold frequently uses the term ‘consumer’ of the internet - that it is up to the consumer to investigate the credibility of information on websites. I hear myself and my co-citizens referred to often enough as 'consumers', mostly when we buy something. I don’t want to consider myself a ‘consumer’ of information on the internet.
I believe in the past few weeks, including our LTT Summer Institute and my work on these May-June assignments, I have gained a new appreciation of the value of collaborating with other education professionals in attempting to modify my teaching as much as possible, aiming towards the creation of a participatory learning environment, where my students are encouraged to ask questions that they, themselves, can investigate and try to answer. The integration of digital technology tools allowing students to communicate with each other, with me, and with people around the globe, can be a vital aspect of this change in my teaching practice.
We are witnessing “The death of Education, the dawn of Learning” as one guy put it - quite a concept! How do we cease to be “givers of knowledge” or “trainers” and become “facilitators of learning”?
The article by Nicholas Carr: The Web Shatters Focus, Rewires Brains introduces many very disturbing concepts, including that our reading concentration is negatively affected simply by the presence of hyperlinks in a passage of text, whether or not we follow the links.
I find his analogy of using a thimble to fill a bathtub to explain the transfer of information from working memory to long-term memory very clear. It’s the other end of the spectrum from the idea of drinking out of a fire hose. We can take little drops of information into our long-term memory, we don’t get much of value if it’s coming at us all at once in a huge stream.
A Vancouver doctor and lecturer named Gabor Maté wrote a book a few years ago called “Scattered Minds” about his experience with ADHD. I had several long conversations with Dr. Maté after reading his book, and realized what it must be like to have that condition, when everything coming at you demands equal attention, and if you are able to focus your attention on one thing, it is often not the most important piece of information in the stream, and/or you totally ignore everything else. I think this is akin to what Carr is saying in this piece, that the internet tends to be the fire hose, and that our brains are trying to fill the thimble with it. Pretty tough job!
One of Carr's statements relates back to Howard Rheingold’s idea of “crap detection” - As we multitask online, we are “training our brains to pay attention to the crap.” Interesting warning – to detect the crap, we have to pay attention to it!
Recent research into neuroplasticity has shown, for example, that soldiers with brain injuries from battlefield trauma can learn to re-wire their brain, i.e. transfer cognitive and physical abilities from a damaged part of the brain to a new, undamaged part. But I don’t think we want our brains to be so “plastic” that they are constantly shifting centers of attention and not allowing for sustained concentration on one activity.
What I got from Henry Jenkin’s article Why Participatory Culture Is Not Web 2.0 (and I agree with him whole-heartedly) is the notion that “There is a real danger in mapping the Web 2.0 business model onto educational practices, thus seeing students as "consumers" rather than "participants" within the educational process”. Rheingold frequently uses the term ‘consumer’ of the internet - that it is up to the consumer to investigate the credibility of information on websites. I hear myself and my co-citizens referred to often enough as 'consumers', mostly when we buy something. I don’t want to consider myself a ‘consumer’ of information on the internet.
I believe in the past few weeks, including our LTT Summer Institute and my work on these May-June assignments, I have gained a new appreciation of the value of collaborating with other education professionals in attempting to modify my teaching as much as possible, aiming towards the creation of a participatory learning environment, where my students are encouraged to ask questions that they, themselves, can investigate and try to answer. The integration of digital technology tools allowing students to communicate with each other, with me, and with people around the globe, can be a vital aspect of this change in my teaching practice.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
My response to Howard Rheingold’s vlog and blog on Crap Detection
Rheingold suggests that ‘skills’ alone are not sufficient to navigate the internet safely and productively; he wants to add another factor – ‘community’. Skills + Community = Literacies. I think he is saying that the internet skills we have are most effective when they are used in a communicative realm. I usually think of literacies as abilities to understand a message read, heard or viewed, and to communicate that message to someone else in oral or written form. So I think I see what he’s getting at.
He lists 5 main literacies for the use of the internet:
1. Attention
2. Participation
3. Cooperation
4. Critical consumption – “crap detection”
5. Network awareness
Teaching our students critical thinking will improve internet safety, to be able to examine the validity of information on the web. He recommends having a critical attitude towards everything online, an “internal crap detector” (a quote from Hemingway).
He doesn’t want the freedom that we all currently enjoy to add information to the internet to be restricted, rather users need to be able to filter web content and determine its credibility. There will always be the "uneducated", people who don't get that "filter training" or who don't care to. I suppose we just have to try our best to train as many as possible.
How long is the internet going to last and be useful if we can’t sort out the good from the bad? I have visions of the Roman Empire (i.e. our society) falling to pieces under the weight of an overloaded and irrelevant mountain of websites.
Rheingold suggests we teach young kids (as young as 8) how to ask questions properly, so they will do that when they are interacting with the web. He wants us and our students to think of the web as a “commons”, a meeting place for groups of common interest.
In response to a question from a viewer on the vlog, i.e. “What kind of skills do we need to teach our kids, and how can we do that?” he further advances his concept of literacies and divides them into three aspects:
Literacies of credibility – having that critical view of everything online until it’s been filtered by the strategies he suggests in his SFGate blog
Technical skills – e.g. using search engines that incorporate plug-ins that help sort through online medical information.
Social literacy - PLN’s – “Whom do I trust?”
Before Google , we needed to know how search engines worked, how to use search terms (Boolean terms, I think they are called – I remember learning those!), so we had a better chance of filtering out the bad stuff before it came up on our screen. Now Google does it all for us, it gives us every website that includes the word(s) we are searching for, in what? – 0.3 seconds or less? No filter there!
He suggests two steps in filtering website information:
First step – Who is the author? What do other people say about him/her? What are the sources? Who is behind the website? www.easywhois.com – very quick and easy!
Second step – What is their agenda? Bias? Terms they use, sources? Examine sources and what other people say about them.
Critical thinking skills = questions, that’s where we start.
Culture of collaborative inquiry is the goal.
I found Howard’s vlog much easier to follow and digest than the blog. The SFGate blog has good information and great-looking tools for crap detection, but is too long to take in completely – information overload!
I find his tools for filtering medical information quite useful. I downloaded and installed the plug-in from HON – Health on the Net Foundation – to test the credibility of a popular health newsletter I get by email. I checked this website with the HON filter and found it to be questionable, i.e. it doesn’t qualify for the HON code. However, my personal experience with remedies suggested in the newsletter has been quite favourable. One article HON directed me to regarding the doctor behind the newsletter states: “Although Dr. Whitaker's magazines may have some useful advice, NCAHF still cannot recommend them. It takes an expert to sort out the wheat from the chaff.” I guess I filtered out the chaff. Interestingly, one of the linked articles suggested in the guide recommended by Rheingold, “Health Information Online: How to check the quality” itself does not meet the HON code!
He lists 5 main literacies for the use of the internet:
1. Attention
2. Participation
3. Cooperation
4. Critical consumption – “crap detection”
5. Network awareness
Teaching our students critical thinking will improve internet safety, to be able to examine the validity of information on the web. He recommends having a critical attitude towards everything online, an “internal crap detector” (a quote from Hemingway).
He doesn’t want the freedom that we all currently enjoy to add information to the internet to be restricted, rather users need to be able to filter web content and determine its credibility. There will always be the "uneducated", people who don't get that "filter training" or who don't care to. I suppose we just have to try our best to train as many as possible.
How long is the internet going to last and be useful if we can’t sort out the good from the bad? I have visions of the Roman Empire (i.e. our society) falling to pieces under the weight of an overloaded and irrelevant mountain of websites.
Rheingold suggests we teach young kids (as young as 8) how to ask questions properly, so they will do that when they are interacting with the web. He wants us and our students to think of the web as a “commons”, a meeting place for groups of common interest.
In response to a question from a viewer on the vlog, i.e. “What kind of skills do we need to teach our kids, and how can we do that?” he further advances his concept of literacies and divides them into three aspects:
Literacies of credibility – having that critical view of everything online until it’s been filtered by the strategies he suggests in his SFGate blog
Technical skills – e.g. using search engines that incorporate plug-ins that help sort through online medical information.
Social literacy - PLN’s – “Whom do I trust?”
Before Google , we needed to know how search engines worked, how to use search terms (Boolean terms, I think they are called – I remember learning those!), so we had a better chance of filtering out the bad stuff before it came up on our screen. Now Google does it all for us, it gives us every website that includes the word(s) we are searching for, in what? – 0.3 seconds or less? No filter there!
He suggests two steps in filtering website information:
First step – Who is the author? What do other people say about him/her? What are the sources? Who is behind the website? www.easywhois.com – very quick and easy!
Second step – What is their agenda? Bias? Terms they use, sources? Examine sources and what other people say about them.
Critical thinking skills = questions, that’s where we start.
Culture of collaborative inquiry is the goal.
I found Howard’s vlog much easier to follow and digest than the blog. The SFGate blog has good information and great-looking tools for crap detection, but is too long to take in completely – information overload!
I find his tools for filtering medical information quite useful. I downloaded and installed the plug-in from HON – Health on the Net Foundation – to test the credibility of a popular health newsletter I get by email. I checked this website with the HON filter and found it to be questionable, i.e. it doesn’t qualify for the HON code. However, my personal experience with remedies suggested in the newsletter has been quite favourable. One article HON directed me to regarding the doctor behind the newsletter states: “Although Dr. Whitaker's magazines may have some useful advice, NCAHF still cannot recommend them. It takes an expert to sort out the wheat from the chaff.” I guess I filtered out the chaff. Interestingly, one of the linked articles suggested in the guide recommended by Rheingold, “Health Information Online: How to check the quality” itself does not meet the HON code!
Tuesday, August 31, 2010
Classroom 2.0 Network in Spanish
I just extended my PLN to South America! I got an email from Classroom 2.0 about an Elluminate session tonight from a network called Aula 2.0 (Aula = Classroom), broadcasting from Lima, Peru. Since I speak and understand Spanish, I thought I would just listen in and see what it was like. The moderator showed several ways his students are using Web 2.0 tools in their classes: webcasting, webquests, podcasting, wikis, etc. There were participants from South American countries and at least 2 teachers in the U.S.
The Elluminate discussion was quite fascinating since they were discussing the same tools, theories and strategies we are working on in LTT, including Connectivism. One of the slides gave a quote from George Siemens from 2004, so I knew they were aware of his work. I mentioned his blog "Connectivism.ca", for people who could read English. One person chatted that George speaks Spanish (now wouldn't that be handy?!). Another of the slides had a great mind-map graphic in English with the titles: "Learning Ecology" and "Connectivism - Process of Creating Network" connecting Filters, Dimensions of Learning, Network Value, Learning Concepts and Conduits. I found the graphic gave me a better understanding of Connectivism. (I thought of copying the graphic here, but then I realized I could be infringing on copyright. The whole slide presentation is at http://aprendamoslastics.blogspot.com/2010/08/charla-aplicaciones-didacticas-de-la.html. Scroll down a bit to the green window, click on it, and look for slide 20.) I took the mic for a minute and told them who I am and what we are doing in LTT, and after the session I joined the Aula 2.0 site. Kind of neat, doing that with folks in South America! If anyone wants to check it out, their network site is http://www.aula20.com/.
The Elluminate discussion was quite fascinating since they were discussing the same tools, theories and strategies we are working on in LTT, including Connectivism. One of the slides gave a quote from George Siemens from 2004, so I knew they were aware of his work. I mentioned his blog "Connectivism.ca", for people who could read English. One person chatted that George speaks Spanish (now wouldn't that be handy?!). Another of the slides had a great mind-map graphic in English with the titles: "Learning Ecology" and "Connectivism - Process of Creating Network" connecting Filters, Dimensions of Learning, Network Value, Learning Concepts and Conduits. I found the graphic gave me a better understanding of Connectivism. (I thought of copying the graphic here, but then I realized I could be infringing on copyright. The whole slide presentation is at http://aprendamoslastics.blogspot.com/2010/08/charla-aplicaciones-didacticas-de-la.html. Scroll down a bit to the green window, click on it, and look for slide 20.) I took the mic for a minute and told them who I am and what we are doing in LTT, and after the session I joined the Aula 2.0 site. Kind of neat, doing that with folks in South America! If anyone wants to check it out, their network site is http://www.aula20.com/.
My response to George Siemens' videos on Connectivism
Video on learning theories vs. human nature – As humans we have a basic need to externalize our thoughts. This is in conflict with Constructivism, which states that the act of assigning meaning happens in our minds, whereas he is saying that useful knowledge is only created as a function of a network of people interacting on a common idea. As educators, rather than helping our students “acquire” knowledge, we need to help them become good networkers, i.e. function well in group working/training environments. So the ability of the young people in our care to function well in groups is as or more important than how many books they read or how many Math formulas they can manipulate. Our curriculum objectives (IRP’s) are aimed more at the latter than the former. To be sure, there are learning outcomes that aim at developing team-building and collaboration skills, but they are secondary to the knowledge-based outcomes. I think it’s a big jump to go from an information (private knowledge)-based education system to one that values knowledge formed by groups above all. We know that our (any) formal education system doesn’t progress in big jumps!
Changing nature of knowledge - I agree with Siemens that learners of all ages need to have the ability to keep learning throughout their life, to stay current with new and emerging information, be it technical or philosophical. He says that we usually keep up with new information in a social milieu. If I think of the numerous education workshops I have attended to pick up a new teaching strategy or refresh my earlier learning, they were all with groups of people, and we usually had the opportunity to discuss the topic of the workshop. We don’t go to too many workshops where we are the only participant.
The network is the learning - I have some difficulty with the notion that the network is the knowledge, or the learning. It seems to me that every learning network must have an idea, a concept, a theory or a skill as its focus. If the ‘network’ itself is the learning, then we could participate in a network telling bad jokes or finding new ways of folding paper, and that would be as valuable as the learning networks formed around education concepts.
I have a concrete example of a knowledge and skill-based network that I belong to. It is focused on the motor scooter I ride, called a Yamaha Majesty. It is a web-based digital network with members all over the world. On several occasions, I have written about mechanical problems or questions I have with my bike, including a pretty major problem that I am currently trying to solve ($800 and counting). I have usually been helped by one or more members of the network who have more technical experience than I, and it has often saved me expensive trips to the dealer. I just wish I had consulted the network before trying to diagnose this problem myself! My point is that this network is based on the give-and-take of information; it wouldn’t be very useful otherwise. I can’t see the knowledge that I am participating with hundreds of other scooter-riders tapping away on our keyboards and turning our wrenches as useful learning.
Changing nature of knowledge - I agree with Siemens that learners of all ages need to have the ability to keep learning throughout their life, to stay current with new and emerging information, be it technical or philosophical. He says that we usually keep up with new information in a social milieu. If I think of the numerous education workshops I have attended to pick up a new teaching strategy or refresh my earlier learning, they were all with groups of people, and we usually had the opportunity to discuss the topic of the workshop. We don’t go to too many workshops where we are the only participant.
The network is the learning - I have some difficulty with the notion that the network is the knowledge, or the learning. It seems to me that every learning network must have an idea, a concept, a theory or a skill as its focus. If the ‘network’ itself is the learning, then we could participate in a network telling bad jokes or finding new ways of folding paper, and that would be as valuable as the learning networks formed around education concepts.
I have a concrete example of a knowledge and skill-based network that I belong to. It is focused on the motor scooter I ride, called a Yamaha Majesty. It is a web-based digital network with members all over the world. On several occasions, I have written about mechanical problems or questions I have with my bike, including a pretty major problem that I am currently trying to solve ($800 and counting). I have usually been helped by one or more members of the network who have more technical experience than I, and it has often saved me expensive trips to the dealer. I just wish I had consulted the network before trying to diagnose this problem myself! My point is that this network is based on the give-and-take of information; it wouldn’t be very useful otherwise. I can’t see the knowledge that I am participating with hundreds of other scooter-riders tapping away on our keyboards and turning our wrenches as useful learning.
My Learning Network (PLN)
Buenos Dias, el Mundo
No, I'm not going to continue writing in Spanish, I just thought it sounded better than "Hello World". This is my first attempt at blogging, so please be gentle.
When I started my Learning and Teaching with Technology program a year and a half ago, I described my knowledge of and experience with digital technology, especially in a school setting, as "being in up to my knees". (I like the water, especially the ocean, where I can swim and paddle and sail.) I said that by the middle of the program, the one-year mark, I hoped to be in up to my waist. Well, now we're 3/4 of the way through, and I feel the water getting close to my shoulders. If it gets much deeper, I'll have to get my mask, fins and snorkel and go for a dive. I am diving into this new world of online thinking and communicating, so here's to calm waters! For my paddling friends, I'm not quite ready for high braces yet, maybe a few low ones!
When I started my Learning and Teaching with Technology program a year and a half ago, I described my knowledge of and experience with digital technology, especially in a school setting, as "being in up to my knees". (I like the water, especially the ocean, where I can swim and paddle and sail.) I said that by the middle of the program, the one-year mark, I hoped to be in up to my waist. Well, now we're 3/4 of the way through, and I feel the water getting close to my shoulders. If it gets much deeper, I'll have to get my mask, fins and snorkel and go for a dive. I am diving into this new world of online thinking and communicating, so here's to calm waters! For my paddling friends, I'm not quite ready for high braces yet, maybe a few low ones!
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