“I can do that without technology” -Actually no you can’t!

Here is the Slideshare.

This was the presentation I first created for BLC08, and I wrote about it here.

I’ve finally edited it for the web… a tedious task as I tend to use a lot of slide transitions that do not convert well to individual slides. I shared a few presentation notes on this Slideshare, but not too much. This is a great feature I’ll probably use more in the future.

Here again is the Ustream: This version was done for student teachers at Simon Fraser University. As a video, it has a slow start with student teachers discussing a statement, and sharing ideas until about the 13 minute mark. Also, the slides in this video won’t match perfectly to the Slideshare above as I had to explain some of the slides for the stand-alone slide show, but it would be easy to connect the two presentations.

I’ll be using some of this presentation as the intro to one of my BLC09 presentations:

The P.O.D.s are coming!

What are PODS? They are Personally Owned Devices, and they are already infiltrating our schools. For now they get tucked away in lockers and backpacks, but as the saying goes, “If there is an elephant in the room, introduce it!” Students are bringing small machines with huge potential into our schools. It is time to introduce these tools into our classrooms and also to make sure that we have the knowledge and the infrastructure to use them to their fullest potential.

And I’ll probably link to this post in my PODs presentation. I first discussed PODs here.

It’s nice to finally be able to share this presentation and as always, I’m offering it with a CC license:

Feedback, as always, is greatly appreciated.

If you haven’t joined Classroom2.0 yet, do so. It is a great network of teachers, of many different technological competencies, all sharing and contributing questions and ideas. I went there this morning to find a link to a Mathcast that was happening, but I ended up reading a discussion thread started by John McCullough, which took most of my attention away from the Mathcast.

In John’s discussion, Pre-service Education… Social Networking, not., he states:

I’m a college professor that teaches future teachers how to integrate technology. For a couple years, I’ve been teaching my students the awesome world of Blogs, Wikis, and other 2.0-related technologies, not just how to use them, but how to integrate them effectively as a teacher. However, even though they are digital natives of social networking, my students don’t seem to recognize the educational implications. They don’t see it, and the effective integration typically has never been modeled for them, (and I’m pretty sure I’m not helping very much). In addition, trying to take “I’m a student” thinking individuals and convert them into “I’m a teacher” thinking individuals in regards to social networking in education has been a battle that I seem to lose more often than I win.

And John asks:

What do you think about pre-service teachers’ skills and knowledge regarding social networking, as well as pre-service education on the same topic? I would love to read your comments, suggestions, and experiences.

This was my response, that I thought I’d also add here on Pairadimes:

Hi John,
I’d like to share a few ideas here although I’ve never taught pre-service teachers.
1. First I’ll share. I have presented to pre-service teachers before and I have some links I’d like to share.
This includes my ‘The Rant, I Can’t, the Elephant and the Ant‘ presentation I did to pre-service teachers and my newest addition to these links, Cindy Quach’s look at effectively using collaboration tools.
2. On the topic of collaboration, I think most of these ‘digital natives’ we talk about are very good at connecting to socialize and communicate with their peers, but not to collaborate and learn.
3. Digital collaboration is not intuitive and collaboration roles are context and purpose driven, not general in nature. Thus, learning intentions, purpose and expectations for collaboration need to be explicit or the contributor’s role in sharing and contributing isn’t clear. If these things aren’t clear, then how do I as a contributor add meaningful value?
4. ‘Ownership’ is key. I had a Ning network for Grade 10 Planning and it was teacher-driven until I opened up the forum for them to generate some topics, suddenly the site came alive. The topics varied from important issues, to favourite hockey teams, to a lively debate on whether ‘boys are better than girls’… but what happened after that was that the students started sharing more on each other’s blogs and class discussions.
With student teachers, I would think that generating the content of the site would be as important, or perhaps more important than with any other group since, as mentioned here many times, you want them to see themselves as teachers.
Hope this helps!

Reflecting now, I think my last point is incorrect:

We want ALL learners to see themselves as teachers and contributors to the learning… content creators.

A google document is a collaborative tool, but I’ve been a contributor to many such documents where others have not, and I have also been a non-contributor on a few. Putting a class on a google document does not necessarily make the process collaborative: It can create a group of contributors, participants, editors, and lurkers, but should we call that collaboration in any meaningful way, just because there is the potential for collaboration? What is the intent, purpose and expectations for the learners and contributors?How are they accountable for their contributions?

Things have changed and we need to change too. As I said in my comment on Cindy Quach’s post:

You said it well, “Most writing that is published electronically is, by nature, works in progress.”…A work in progress that can be collaborated on, linked to, added to, and elaborated on. What I really like about the differences in your three examples is that the roles of the contributors vary, and inadvertently you are teaching your students to understand that they can meaningfully contribute with and to others in different ways. A necessary skill in a new world of literacy and technology.

On a related topic, how important is the process in collaboration? I think the quality of the collaboration can be just as important as the quality of the finished product of that collaboration… but often the expectations for how to meaningfully participate/contribute/collaborate aren’t clearly defined, and seldom assessed. If we want to see, and teach, meaningful collaboration then we have to know what it is that we want to see, and clearly define that for our students.

If you know of any assignments or projects that clearly define the collaboration process, and/or assess that process, then please share them with me.

I first wrote about Andy Hargreaves and the 4th Way back in October, (with an important update added to the bottom of the post in early November). The pyramid below is updated from that post, taking feedback from Hargreaves himself.

Administrators from our district met and discussed The 4th Way last Thursday and we were guided through some activities to encourage us to explore the text and to examine which of Hargreaves’ principles we are doing well, and which ones we need to focus on.

I like the recommendation of putting ‘Teaching and Learning’ at the top of the pyramid. I think that puts the role of both educators, (as a teacher and a learner), and students where they belong at the focal point of what is both important in education and meaningful in educational change.

We need to have a common, clear, inclusive and inspiring vision.

We need to collaborate at all levels of community… it really does take a village to raise a child.

We need to be active learners taking part in lively learning communities, networked with effective role models.

We need to be responsible and effective teaching professionals, lead learners fostering meaningful learning.

During our session, we got to see some exclusive video interviews that Hargreaves gave, and I realized that embedded, but not explicitly mentioned, in my pyramid is the idea of professionalism… This is where ‘Responsibility’ comes from. To me Hargreaves’ notion of “Responsibility before Accountability” is key to the 4th Way. The following was completed on a little reflection card we filled out and handed in, (I’m glad I took a photo of it first).

I wrote:

We need to be unified and collaborative.

Not unions, but professional organizations.

Not corporations, but community leaders.

Not top-down, but shared leadership.

Not teachers, but co-learners.

Not standardization, but a process of inquiry.

Looking at this list, it unintentionally follows the patter of: Not accountability, but responsibility.

The key here it to recognize that there is a coexistence between the two and that this isn’t a dichotomy, but rather a priority: “Responsibility before Accountability”.  This is where schools and school districts have the greatest opportunity to change.

In The 4th Way, Hargreaves says,

“Unions have missed an opportunity to raise professional standards among all their members and increase their credibility and transparency among the public. Government, meanwhile, has kept an iron grip on defining and controlling professional standards. This is professionalism without power—and teachers know it.”

Professionalism, and the ensuing responsibility that comes with it, empowers educators at all levels. In the end, we need to be accountable, but not to governments, or unions, or corporations. We need to be accountable to ourselves as professionals and educators, and we need to be accountable to the student in our schools.

Professionals acting responsibly and holding themselves, and others, accountable in the interest of teaching and learning.

Sometimes that means that we let corporations into our schools but we dictate the conditions and we expect them to be there as community leaders, not advertisers, (and we hold them accountable to this if they don’t do it responsibly). Sometimes we need to let parents and community members share their expertise and not worry that they are doing something that is defined as a union job. Sometimes, (dare I say often), we need to let students dictate what they want to learn, because they are passionate about an area of interest, and let go of the curriculum.

Maureen Dockendorf said at the end of the session about Hargreaves’ 4th Way, “It’s not a program, it is a set of principles”.

This is a great point, as The 4th Way is not prescriptive. Expanding on this idea in a discussion with Dave Sands later he said, “It’s not steps or even a set of principles, it is a philosophy or a way of being.”

Dave continued, “This is how an organization, a society, and a world moves to a greater state of consciousness. This is how we take responsibility and ultimately move to accountability.”

On a final note look at what I highlighted above:

Professionals acting responsibly and holding themselves, and others, accountable in the interest of teaching and learning.

Do you notice where the power lies is in that statement?

- – - – - – - – - – - -

This was my final presentation that I did at BLC08. I never ended up posting it and now I’ve just recently re-presented it for some student teachers at Simon Fraser University.

[Update: July 20th, '09 - new post with SlideShare available]

Afterwards, I had them contribute to a VoiceThread, just like I did with the TLITE presentations, and with my first – two presentations in Boston. Then I created a Diigo Classroom with them… (I should have spent more time on this final part!)

In my presentation, ‘The Ant’ is a metaphor for a networked learner. Ants work together and do so much more than they could as individuals or even as smaller groups. But, I’d call this the weakest part of the presentation… So how do I fix that? I let my network do it for me!

Here is what happened during the presentation

My (Twitter) Network in Action Part 1: The Shout-Out (Read from the bottom up.)

But that’s just a small sample of the power of a network. Sunday night Heather, a student in my session, sent me this e-mail:

Hey David

I have a quick question, i am going to do a wiki with my bio 11 students
with microbiology.  They have to go online and type in a virus and give a
whole bunch of information.  But how do i know which students did what?  I
did it with wetpaint.  And i have blocked all access just in case the
parents have issues with it.

I’ve never tried Wetpaint. I went to two different Wetpaint pages and didn’t have an answer for her so I went back to Twitter!

My Network in Action Part 2: Seeking Help (Again please read from the bottom up.)

It took just a few minutes to get help from someone in Thailand that I’ve never met face-to-face. We may not have met (f2f) before, but Jeff Utecht is in My Neighbourhood. I actually used the images from one of his posts for my Brave New World Wide Web Slide Show then Video.

Another Tweet by Jeff ended with “Let me know if you need any help”. Thanks Jeff, and thanks also to Jen Jones for inspiring this post! I used one of her blog posts in my presentation above.

And I’d like to say thank to Bob Cotter, Cheryl Oaks, Penny LindBalle, Steve Sokoloski, Maureen Tumenas, etalbert, Lesley Edwards, Mrs_Banjer, Derrall Garrison, Sue Waters, Amanda Salt, Elizabeth Lloyd, Silvia Tolisano, Ian Hecht, Neil Varner, James Gill, Kathy Cassidy, James McConville, Lorraine Orenchuk, Brian Crosby, and Dean Shareski for contributing to the networked ‘conversations’ above.

Ants are individually insignificant, but networked in a collaborative way, they literally move mountains! Networked teachers and educators like these I’ve mentioned are moving mountains too, and it is my hope that Student Teachers will see the value of becoming networked and having their students be networked too!

After reading The Fourth Way article in Educational Leadership/October 2008, by Andrew Hargreaves and Dennis Shirley, I’ve been trying to apply personal meaning to this new way. The 4th Way has five Pillars of Purpose, three Principals of Professionalism and four Catalysts of Coherence. But I think The 4th way rests firmly on just one pillar!

“An inspiring and inclusive vision that draws people together in pursuit of an uplifting common purpose.”

Beyond that the other pillars involve Collaboration in order to achieve the vision and common purpose being pursued. The Principals of Professionalism come from having Learning Conversations, or from Collaborators involved in an Active Learning network. And finally we need *accountability Responsibility to ensure the changes that we make are meaningful. I specifically avoided the term ‘assessment’, as that term suggests measuring things in ways that may not necessarily measure what we would consider progress. No ’standardization’ as Hargreaves suggests! Hargreaves’ Catalysts of Coherence are embedded throughout the pyramid.

We need a common vision of what we are in this for… Why schools are important? And how are they of value to our society and to our students? We need to be collaborating more effectively.

In doing so, we need to meaningfully connect Community, Educators, Students and Schools. We need to harness the strength of networks and learning communities and, equally as important, we have to create the time for these communities to meet as part of an educator’s (and student’s) day/week.

We need to be reflective learners, *accountable responsible to our communities that we share our learning with. Principles of Professionalism and Catalysts of Coherence will help us get ‘there’… but we need to collaborate and figure out where ‘there’ is first.

Maureen Dockendorf spoke of:

Not the Knowing, but the Process of Inquiry. Not covering the curriculum, but ‘uncovering’ the curriculum. A focus in innovation and creativity… how do we model this… every day?

We model this by creating meaningful learning communities based on professional inquiry and by giving those learning communities the time and resources to make things happen.

*See update below.

—–

Inspirational reading and viewing:

School Reform in 5 minutes by Chris Lehmann. Also see his What I want to talk about post.

What business are we in? by Clarence Fisher.

If “It’s not about the technology.” Then What is it About? by Heidi Gable.

Letting Go by Alec Couros

21st Century Pedagogy by Greg Whitby on YouTube

Raising Expectations by Kelly Christopherson

We are ready for The 4th Way!

———–

*UPDATE: November 2nd, 2008

I originally had “Accountability” in the top arrow, but a colleague suggested that I change it to “Responsibility” in keeping with Hargreaves’ idea of “Responsibility before Accountability”.

In a letter to my Superintendent, Tom Grant, Andy Hargreaves suggested that “Teaching and Learning” be at the top of the Pyramid. He said, “ We would put teaching and learning at the top, though and reflection all around it, probably.” I may change this yet again when I get an understanding of how to represent ‘all around it’ visually. Hargreaves also said to Tom, “It’s great that you are the first in to the fourth way, and in your own way which is entirely as it should be.” This truly is an exciting time for us!

*Update: April 28th, 2009 See my new post: [Part 2]

I created this for an assignment in the connectivism course, CCK08. It is not what the assignment really asked for, but when you are doing a not-for-credit course, I imagine that you can make the assignments fit your own personal needs. The reality is that Figure 6 hits too close to home right now and although I will follow along with this very interesting topic, I won’t technically be taking the course. Some balance in my life is in order.

As a point of clarification, and for the sake of making my intended point, the size of the categories does not matter as much as their relationship to each other.

- – -

[Update: I think the comments and my response add some necessary information to make more sense of what I was trying to say.]

I grew up watching Sesame Street and singing along to ‘Who are the people in your neighbourhood‘.

Well the concept of neighbourhood has really changed for me. I showed this movie in Powerpoint format at one of my presentations at BLC08 this summer. Afterwards, I think it was one of 3 people, (Liz Davis, Laura Deisley, or Maria Knee), that asked me how many people from my network did I think were in the presentation? I had no idea? Tonight I thought I’d start the search.

See the video on this blip.tv link or click below for it to open in a new window.

- – -

Click to play in this window

– - -

So, here are some of the people that are in my digital neighbourhood, that as a result found their way into this video. (In order of appearance). (Networked teacher images)• Alec Couros | (Blog Comments)• Liz Davis •Wesley Fryer | (Twirl/Twitter) • Martin Pluss •Konrad Glogowski •Sue [Sujokat] • Helen Otway • Melanie Hughes | (Plurk)• SMeech •Liz Davis •GingerTPLC •Jeff McCord | (Del.icio.us bookmarks) •Kim Cofino • Angela Maiers •Chris Lehmann • Jen [injenuity] • Ken Allan | (Google Reader Friend’s shared items) •Darren Draper •Dean Shareski •Lisa Durff •Liz Davis •Susan C Morgan •Kris Bradburn | (Google Documents) •Alan November •Kris Bradburn | (Connect and Protect) •Dave Sands | (Connecting from suburbs) •Kim Cofino • Derrall Garrison •Darren Draper | (Well rounded teacher images) • Jeff Utecht | (The competition) •Lisa Durff | (Blogging) • Arthus •Kris Bradburn | (Wikis) • Clay Burell • Vicki Davis • Julie Lindsay

That’s 30 people, some appearing more than once. Other than intentionally using items from Alec and Jeff, each one of these ’sightings’ are incidental… but significant. Beyond these connections I also have Jabiz Raisdana, Dave Matheson (one of just 3 local connections from my district), Sue Waters, Karen Janowski, and Claudia Ceraso commenting on my post introducing the video.

Claudia didn’t just comment on my post, she wrote a response post that has challenged my thinking. When I’m done here I’m going to her blog to respond… to continue the conversation, and the learning. Claudia may live and work in Argentina, but she has influence over me. Geography and physical proximity no longer matter. (Case-in-point: Sue’s comment offers me advice from Austrialia.)

My digital neighbourhood spans the globe! But this is more than an issue of geography, it is also about influence and significance. Some of these connections are ‘loose’, like the local bus driver on Sesame Street, but others have greater meaning to me.

I may never meet some of these people, but they are my teachers, mentors and friends. This is my network, not my neighbourhood… and networks are fundamentally different than groups/(neighbours). It truly is a brave new world-wide-web, and if we aren’t engaging in the opportunities it provides us then we are missing out… and the same could be said for our students.

For a while now, I’ve been using my blog as a learning space to reflect on professional development… and after BLC08 there still seems to be a lot to talk and think about. But there is a problem: My brain is full.

Here are some brief ‘take-aways’ to jot down before things spill out and away.

1. Never do 3 different presentations at one conference. At the very least repeat one of them. Enough said.

2. Online networks develop meaningful friendships. I’m blown away by the immediate connection I made with so many people in my Twitter network.

3. Face-to-face meetings with your network are powerful… very powerful.

4. More learning happens in the halways and at meals/socials than in sessions. Create opportunities for Learning  Conversations.

5. Sessions influence us, and sometimes anger us, but it is our opinions and attempts to make sense of things that matter.

6. As we reflect and question why we do things, we continue the learning.

7. We don’t need to be there to learn.

8. Ewan made it clear that if we create meaningful spaces for teachers to connect, and if we make those spaces useful to teachers, they will connect in new and meaningful ways. In my opinion, usefulness comes out of purpose and design… two things we need to work on.

9. We need to connect with others to meaningfully learn. COLLABORATION time is essential for learners of all ages.

10. Don’t say more than you need to just to fill the space.

A colleague and good friend sent this review of The Flickering Mind to me, wanting to hear my rebuttal. Here it is!

This outdated book, The Flickering Mind, is based on very poor research, it lacks any meaningful data, and it seeks out the worst of the worst in order to prove a point. How about I come into your class and very selectively choose lessons/examples to give someone a poor impression of you? It can be done, but why?

I’ve got better things to do than waste my time on this “drivel”, however an e-mail of this article is circulating in different departments within different schools in our district, so I’ll take a moment to highlight and comment on 4 parts of the article sent to me:

1. a) Note this line in “About the Author”:  “His lack of exploration of both sides of the issue does an injustice to the educational technology debate as comparison of both effective and ineffective examples of technology use in schools might help shed light on the specific stumbling blocks to making it an appropriate tool for schools.“

b) Later on in the article we find this: “For as anyone dealing with research in education knows, quantitative study does not apply itself well to the field, yet qualitative/anecdotal research like Oppenheimer’s leaves little room for generalizability and conclusion-drawing—a point which Oppenheimer may or may not be cognizant of.“

2. From the article again:

    “To highlight one, on page 211 Oppenheimer parallels Maslow’s Life Pyramid to education. Maslow’s pyramid outlined the levels of existence: lower levels being physical needs and relationship, the higher ones being more superficial, such as exploring curiosities and aesthetic desires). His theory was that the upper levels could not be achieved until the base levels had been fulfilled. On Oppenheimer’s education pyramid, the lower levels represent a student’s ability to observe, listen and reflect in a stable environment, with the upper levels representing learning factual knowledge and using learning tools.“

Forget about BLOOMS we have Oppenheimer measuring “factual knowledge and using learning tools” as upper levels of ‘existence’! I’d call this a load of manure, but manure at least has some redeeming qualities. Oppenheimer puts education on a scale going from ‘needs’ to superficial, aesthetic desires… and this is supposed to be some sort of educational continuum??? Where is knowledge construction? Evaluation? Synthesis? Where is there learning how to learn?

3. And I saved the best for last: “He cites several psychologists who demonstrate how young children are not developmentally capable of grappling with a complex machine like a computer, and therefore should not be exposed to it until later in life.“

Tell that to this kid, or to this student in Grade 7 who is writing code to help run an under-$100-wiimote-controlled-Smartbooard that he built. He has also designed a Pressure Sensitive Pen for it… Oh, and in 9 days he has had 676 visitors from around the globe! You can talk all you want about writing for an audience… but new tools actually give students an authentic audience!

Here is an alternate review of the book, or just look at the excerpt below. Some people call this research, some people call it checking source reliability, and I call it using my network. Why? Because I didn’t find this article with an alternative view, I asked my network of educators for help and Art Gelwicks, an educator I have never met, sent it to me on Twitter… within minutes of my asking. He also offers some more insight:

Networked learning… think our students could benefit from it? Hyperlinking? Do you think what I’ve said has been enriched by the links provided? Again, do you think our students could benefit from this? My final thoughts are after the review excerpt…

____________________________________________________

The Flickering Mind:

The False Promise of Technology in the Classroom

Todd Oppenhemier. New York: Random House, 2003. 512 pages.

Review by Steven D. Krause, Eastern Michigan University

Computer and composition folks tend to be an optimistic bunch. The “techno-evangelism” common a decade ago has calmed, but I suspect that most of the target audience for Computers and Composition Online believe that, on the whole, computers and related technologies are good for teaching. We’re still “glass half full” kinds of people, and deep down inside, most computer and composition specialists, optimists that we are, believe that the real answer to the question “are computers beneficial in the classroom?” is “yes.”

Todd Oppenheimer is not an optimist. His glass, if he has one at all, is completely empty.

False Promises

…The Flickering Mind is clearly relevant to computers and writing specialists working in college classrooms because of its relentless focus on the ways in which computers in the classroom have failed our students.

…Those of us who know better will spot these omissions, but the majority of Oppenheimer’s audience won’t, and these readers will be left with an overwhelmingly one-sided, negative, and ultimately unfair perspective on the role of technology in schools.

In his first chapter, “Education’s History of Technotopia,” Oppenheimer reminds us of a series of failed attempted uses of technology to solve the problems of teaching. Besides discussing the early history of the personal computer, the early role of the computer industry in getting computers in the classroom, and the reoccurring nature of the “digital divide,” Oppenheimer also describes technological failures such as early film, radio, and even the telephone. In each case, Oppenheimer reminds us of the all-too common cycle of technological solutions in the classroom: initial enthusiasm, followed by unmet expectations, followed by doubt, and concluded with a dismissal of the technology.

…After five years of research and travel to schools all over the country, Oppenheimer has few good things to say about computers in the classroom. And after reading what’s wrong for 200 or so pages, I began to doubt Oppenheimer’s impressions because they seem so completely different from my own experiences with computers in classrooms. Granted, I was aware first or second hand of all of the problems that Oppenheimer reports; but in these same settings, I was also aware of at least some successes as well. For me, the effect of Oppenheimer’s polemic approach and his failure to acknowledge the fact that it is possible to teach well with computers casts some doubt on his perspective and credibility.

Conclusions

Ultimately, Oppenheimer’s book tells us something most who study the use of technology in classrooms already know. He concludes that computers are here to stay and that “The challenge for schools, therefore, is to be smarter about how and when they use technology, and how they separate its wheat from its chaff” (393). Oppenheimer does an admirable job showing us what’s wrong with the way schools use computers in teaching, and it is a useful book for curbing the enthusiasm for well-intentioned, albeit misguided, uses of computers in elementary and secondary schools. But that’s the easy part. The hard part is finding those smarter uses of computers. For that, perhaps Oppenheimer should observe and interview the optimists among us.

____________________________________________________

So there is my rant! 

The truth is, it is not easy to use technology well in the classroom. It takes good teaching, good classroom management, and good use of the appropriate tools for the appropriate learning outcomes. However, when it is used well, in order to teach new things in new ways, technology use offers opportunities that a pencil and a piece of paper don’t.

I wonder if the same people who sent the first e-mail around are open to this view and willing to pass it on as well? 

“A portal to Connect Classrooms to the World: Global Citizens can Share Talents and Skills with Students. Teachers can find Global Citizens (Volunteers) willing to help in a field of interest that they are working on in their class.”

FieldFindr: Where teachers can meet global citizens with skills to share.

It started with a post and a wiki, and now it has evolved into a Ning Network.

I humbly request your help so that WE can make this happen. After you sign up, this forum post is a great place to start.

Thank you for contributing to this new site!