Old dogs and new tricks

evalina

Gaming in HSIE

Link to the article mentioned in my vodcast

machinima website link

So I think i’m at the stage now that i can say after being dropped in the deep end of the digital generation by the subject i am currently studying at UTS – Designing Learning for a Digital Generation – I am back to dog paddling. I did sink for a couple of months and there was no light to show me the top, but I have found my way to the surface and can now look down at web 2.0 technologies and move forward.

so i am keen to get my teeth into a few of these resources.  i want to read about the how-to in simple man’s language, watch some simple demonstrations on-line and begin to design my own learning for the digital generation.

first up wiki’s. these are my favourite web 2.0 technology so far. so much potential and so simple.  so to tick my first criteria (how-to in simple man’s language) i found an article by Brian Lamb (2004) ‘Wide open spaces wikis – ready or not’ Educause Review, Sept / Oct 2004 Pp 36 – 48.  in his article Lamb sings the praises of wiki’s.  Wiki’s are so valuable as they foster the development of writing skills.  They promote reading, writing and editing. But most importantly they promote thinking.  Wiki’s can ease students into writing for public viewing and into web 2.0 technology itself. if wiki’s do nothing but encourage our students to write, then they are a true winner for me.

so my question – is this the easiest way to learn web 2.0 technologies? one by one, step by step?

it seems the most logic to me – otherwise i find myself sinking again.

An interesting comment that arose from my time on prac whilst discussing the emergence of blogs in education was “oh, so if we put all our class work on a blog our students can access it on the weekend” and “we could even get parents to check our blog and make sure their child is up to date”.  This type of comment got me thinking about how we can use technology to connect the stakeholders of education and the stakeholders of our schools. I found an article CEFRIO book chapter – Technology for communities which discusses the use of technology in connecting communities.  When you think about it, most teachers only connect with parents at parent – teacher interview nights, students only connect with teachers during class time, parents rarely connect with the actual day to day school work or curriculum content being delivered to their children.  These are all communities that by and large remain disconnected in education. 

The evolving technology market providesa catalyst for teachers to use aggregate and hybrids of technology tools to create platforms for community connection and communication. 

Teachers have the opportunity to mix and match technology to suit learning communities activities and multimemberships.  Learning Management Systems such as Moodle and Blackboard as well as blogs and RSS are examples of technologies which, when provided to communities such as students and parents can start new kinds of conversations.  If I am teaching Business Studies to my students I want to connect with the parents and caregivers of my students who are small business owners, business people, tradespeople etc.  I do not have all the knowledge.  The knowledge is collaborative between the communities that exist in the education and learning environments in which our schools operate.

The challenge is to design technology which suits the requirements of our communities and results in an increasing connectedness between the stakeholders of education.

An article published in The Australian titled ‘Teachers on learning curve’ raised a topic I have been thinking about during prac.  Integration of ICT and the creation of digital classrooms at my school was very much in it’s infancy.  Looking at the integration of ICT and digital learning into classroom pedagogy from a realist point of a view, only a handful of teachers at the school had the skills, knowledge and desire to achieve this integration.  With the school executive being extremely supportive of embracing digital learning and ICT, I felt there was a large amount of pressure placed on only a few teachers to implement digital learning across the school.  The teachers who had taken the time and initiative to develop themselves professionally in the area of ICT could potentially be snowed under and placed under a large amount of stress to deliver across the school. 

The article linked above mentions how the digital generation has brought demands on schools for a greater diversity of skills and occupations.  Schools need; learning managers, care-givers, counsellors, tutors, software programmers, instructional designers, network managers and content creators to deliver learning.

ICT in schools just as it does in a large corporation, places new demands on staffing structure, support, staff skills and professional development.

The article goes on to quote, as a teacher, previously, you needed to be everything in one person, however now many more people can become part of the educational process.  From my experiences this is true.  For a school to function, many more people or more ICT skills need to be brought to the educational process.

We cannot expect just a few to do the work of many.  

Recently on my second prac I set up an ICT project in my Yr 9 Geography class which involved group work in constructing a fact sheet on a specific Australian demographic and then integrating ICT into a presentation back to the class, reporting on their group research.  Being my own harshest critic I deemed the task a complete failure! I was aware that there was a large degree of freeloading going on.  I estimated that around 5% of the class was doing the major bulk of the groupwork in each respective group. Having spent time reflecting I had come up with one conclusion – the way I designed the groups (picked randomly from the class roll) had caused friction within the groups and left the conscientous, often less confident and less vocal students to do the majority of the work.   It was obvious to me that some of the information presented had simply been googled the night before.  Population distribution is not defined as how wealth is distributed through society!!  I then discovered Dean Groom’s post “Google proofing for free loaders” which has allowed me to gain a much better understanding of the way we need to assess our students completing ICT projects.  Dean describes how our design of ICT based group projects is too linear. The task is set, the end product is submitted, the group receives a mark.  The problem is the freeloading student and the googlers.  In his post Dean covers the areas of providing a facility for online students to provide feedback in a public forum as this is more likely to out the freeloaders and also the requirement throughout the task for students to provide reflective writing which can demonstrate consistent effort by talking about content, context and understanding.  A significant problem in our schools which we need to work on combatting. Thanks for your informative and thought provoking post Dean.  I will certainly be redesigning that task in the future.  I’m off to investigate ‘reverse googling’ now. Freeloaders beware!

Today I have been reflecting on my prac and the discussions I had with staff in my staffroom over the past 5 weeks relating to connected classrooms.  I introduced my staffroom to blogging and it’s many uses in the classroom as well as the value blogging presents to an individual teacher attempting to improve the connectedness of our classrooms and our individual digital skills.  Much discussion post the first time exposure of staff to blogs in my staffroom was that “it will never happen” or “oh, well I won’t have to worry about that, it won’t happen in my career” or “Good luck mate, you need computers to do that stuff”.  I was encouraged to come across Annie’s blog on digital crusaders.  Annie describes the fact that we as educators stereotype ourselves into digital immigrants and the students as digital natives, detracts or possibly limits our success in creating connected classrooms. To add to Annie’s thoughts I would also like to propose that as digital crusaders at the pioneering forefront of connecting our classrooms that it is also our responsibility to assist the members of our staffroom that may be confronted or challenged by the digital generation.  It is our responsibility to assist and encourage these teachers and provide guidance for their connections to the digital world. Because in the end a connected staffroom as well as individual connected classrooms is of greater benefit to our students.

An interesting point raised in Scotts blog ” Digital natives or spoilt brats?”.  My comments would have to be certainly not spoilt brats. In Reines article he stresses the need to continually press upon teenagers the edutainment side of the digital world.  from my recent prac experience it would seem evident that not every student has the same access to digital resources at home, nor the encouragement from home or the expertise to utilise these resources to the best of their ability in order to maximise learning.  any opportunity we have to expose students to digital learning technology should be grabbed with both hands, encouraged, fostered and guided. it will be so vital to their futures.

A quote I just came across from an article by Dr. Idit Harel of digital sandcastles fame, which really resonated with me, after some discussions about embracing the digital culture with teachers in my faculty on prac.

An interviewer once asked Picasso, “When did you learn to paint? How did you learn to be so creative?” Picasso answered, “You and I started learning at the same age, and I learned the same way that you did. The difference is that you stopped.”

picasso by teadrinker Made available under Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution Licence: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/ Available at:

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