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.
Pro-D Day on the Harrison River - Oct. 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
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!
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