Why Not Wikipedia?

A recent article in Education Week, Embracing Wikipedia, by Matthew Shapiro, reports that in 2010, a University of Washington study "found that 82 percent of students use Wikipedia in their course-related research." Yet many teachers and media specialists I have spoken with ban Wikipedia completely, citing concerns over accuracy.

What if, as the Education Week article suggests, we teach students HOW to use Wikipedia rather than just banning it? What if we use it to teach them to become critical consumers of information and to evaluate content for such issues as "authorial bias"?

As Shapiro states in the article, when many of us went to school, our research revolved around the Readers' Guide to Periodical Literature, which had limited citations, the sources of which may or may not have been available in our print-based libraries. In 2010, our students are constantly inundated by information from multiple sources both print and digital, many only moments away from being live, including 24-hour news networks, blogs, ezines, YouTube, Twitter, and MMS messages that include images and video, as well as text.

Is it our job as teachers to hold back the tide, or to help our students develop the skills necessary to navigate the information technologies of their futures?

Teach Your Children Well

How do we prepare our children for a future that doesn't yet exist? Scott McLeod's presentation to the NEA in December gives some answers.

Howie DiBlasi, in a response to Will Richardson's blog post, "What to do with the Web," states, "PD is the lifeline to reform and change."

Amen.

Overwhelmed Opportunity

In a response to Andy V's blog post, Jeff Utecht uses the term "overwhelmed opportunity" to describe our inability to know how to use every digital tool that exists. I think this is a great metaphor for the condition of our Digital Natives, and IMO one of the reasons that they often struggle through their last few years of school. Not just the technology part, but the whole overwhelming issue of being constantly bombarded with mega-media's version of life, with perfect teeth, perfect relationships, and perfect endings at the end of every 30-minute show--contrasted with the violence and gore of video games--contrasted with the often less-than-perfect reality of their own families and lives.

How can we help them make sense of it all?

Missing the point...

From Wired magazine: "How the iPhone could reboot education":

"The traditional classroom, where an instructor assigns a textbook, is heading toward obsolescence. Why listen to a single source talk about a printed textbook that will inevitably be outdated in a few years? That setting seems stale and hopelessly limited when pitted against the internet, which opens a portal to a live stream of information provided by billions of minds.“About five years ago my students stopped taking notes,” Rankin said. “I asked, ‘Why are you not taking notes?’ And they said, ‘Why would we take notes on that?…. I can go to Wikipedia or go to Google, and I can get all the information I need.”

I can't decide if this makes me want to laugh or cry...schools are SO far behind...we endlessly debate the value, the research, the outcomes...and the students just tune us out and keep on living in their parallel universe...I sat next to an educator at the ITSC conference who studiously took notes on his dead tree notepad...no laptop or cellphone in sight...totally missing the point...How many of our schools resemble this remark?

6 words

We shared new ways of teaching

A Lesson for Educators

Slashdot, the website that highlights "news for nerds", reports on the experiences of San Jose State University student Kyle Brady, who, after completing his assignments in computer programming, published the code he wrote online. His professor attempted to force him to delete the posts, citing the school's academic integrity policy. Kyle claimed that he posted his work in the spirit of sharing knowledge as well as part of a digital portfolio for future employers.

Thankfully, the University ultimately ruled that posting the work was acceptable and did not violate either copyright or the school's academic integrity policy.

The lesson is this, as stated by Cory Doctorow on Boing Boing: "Profs...fall into the lazy trap of wanting to assign rotework that can be endlessly recycled as work for new students, a model that fails when the students treat their work as useful in and of itself and therefore worthy of making public for their peers and other interested parties who find them through search results, links, etc. But the convenience of profs must be secondary to the pedagogical value of the university experience...Students work harder when the work is meaningful, when it has value other than as a yardstick for measuring their comprehension."

An important lesson for all of us in education.

Thought for the Day:

"The illiterate of the 21st century will not be those who cannot read and write, but those who cannot learn, unlearn, and relearn."

Alvin Toffler,
American futurist

Wisdom in Digital Form

Marc Prensky, famous for his depiction of people as Digital Natives and Digital Immigrants, has come up with a new term, Digital Wisdom, to describe the results of living in the Digital Era on the human brain. Prensky believes that both cognition and wisdom will evolve as a result. According to Prensky, “Technology alone will not replace intuition, good judgment, problem-solving abilities, and a clear moral compass. But in an unimaginably complex future, the digitally unenhanced person, however wise, will not be able to access the tools of wisdom that will be available to even the least wise digitally enhanced human.” There are obvious implications for education, specifically, to stop asking students to memorize arcane facts that they can look up on Google. Prensky’s entire article can be found on the Innovate website: http://www.innovateonline.info/index.php?view=article&id=705&action=article

Top 5 Learning Trends for 2009

Chief Learning Magazine recently published its Top 5 Learning Trends for 2009.

While I normally don't pay attention to "Top" lists, this one hit home, as embedded into everything I do every day is the search for the solution to the question, "How can we improve learning?"

Included in the list are Mobile Learning, Do-It-Yourself Learning, Flexible Learning Environments, Virtual Worlds, and Games and Simulations.

One of the fascinating parts of this List is the reasoning behind it. Stated in the justification for the various choices are statements such as "drawing people in" and "responding to the gaming culture of younger workers".

IMO, schools would do well to address these issues as well.

VP

The End in Mind

Last evening, Carla shared with me the weblink to an online book she was interested in using for our U.S. Government class. When I Googled the author, Jonathan Mott, I found that he not only has a Ph.D. in Political Science, but that he is also a well-known proponent of the use of instructional technology! Jon’s blog, The End in Mind, is a fascinating dialogue of how to truly reform and transform education by reversing the focus from teaching to learning. This is the same concept outlined by renowned educator Rick DuFour in a podcast that I originally was going to share with you this week, but cut out of our agenda in the interest of sanity.

Hopefully you can find the time to take a few minutes and read one of Jon’s blog posts, Roger Schank and the Tyranny of Grades, which reminds us that Learning is our ultimate goal. And I find myself reiterating that, as we rewrite courses, we should do so with exactly that in mind: the End, the Standards, the Goals--the Learning--that is supposed to be the “take-away” for our students.

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Adobe launches free online photo editing and gallery service

eSchool news reported that Adobe has launched a web-based version of Photoshop, called Photoshop Express: eSchoolNews article

I signed up and tried it out—it’s pretty good!



But beware of the terms:

8. Use of Your Content.
a. Adobe does not claim ownership of Your Content. However, with respect to Your Content that you submit or make available for inclusion on publicly accessible areas of the Services, you grant Adobe a worldwide, royalty-free, nonexclusive, perpetual, irrevocable, and fully sublicensable license to use, distribute, derive revenue or other remuneration from, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, publicly perform and publicly display such Content (in whole or in part) and to incorporate such Content into other Materials or works in any format or medium now known or later developed.

Photoshop Express online service

(but then, perhaps the other photo-sharing sites have similar EULAs?)

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ITSC Notes v3 When does meaningfulness start?

When does meaningfulness start?

Dr. Tim Tyson, in the closing conference presentation, challenged everyone to transform their teaching practice into what he describes as School 2.0:

• Authentically engaged learners
  
• Self-directed learning
  
• Project-driven instruction
  
• Independent problem-solvers
  
• Empowered by technology innovation
  
• Collaborative learning community
  
• Relevant
  

Spurred by the request of a middle school student to work during the summer to perfect his project to share globally, Dr. Tyson created Mabryonline.org so that student projects could be distributed globally on iTunes. He asked his students, “What do you have to say that’s so important that everyone on earth needs to hear it?” Their responses, in the form of student-produced videos, exemplify the potential results of true educational reform and should serve as motivation for all of us:
Mabry Middle School Videos

ITSC Notes v2 The View from Google Earth

Instructional technologist Lynn Lary of Oregon’s Springfield School District presented a dynamic workshop on the use of Google in education. The 3-hour workshop focused mainly on the powerful spatial representation capabilities of Google: its advanced search capabilities combined with mapping tools and Google Earth.

Dr. Lary led collaborative activities in which participants acquired hands-on experience in utilizing Google’s amazing power to locate and analyze various types of data. Most importantly, Lary shares, through her blog, exemplary activities in utilizing the power of Google to transform education by providing students with relevant, meaningful project-based learning that can be replicated across the curriculum: http://handheldcomputers.blogspot.com/

If you haven’t yet delved into Google Earth, Lary’s blog gives you the power and the incentive to do so.

ITSC Notes v1

This weekend, I have had the privilege of attending ITSC, the annual conference for instructional technology geeks held in Portland.

The Keynote Speaker, Marco Antonio Torres, was absolutely riveting! His presentation is entitled, “Now What Do We Do With IT?” He has accomplished phenomenal things with low income students in a huge inner-city school in southern California.

Be sure to check out his websites:
sfett.com
flickschool.com

The two premier workshops that I have attended so far were by Leslie Fisher, a self-proclaimed technology geek, and the infamous Kathy Schrock. Both of these workshops were fantastic! Here is a link to Leslie’s presentation handout.

Be sure to follow the links back to the root domain and see all the free information and funny stuff Leslie has to share!

Unfortunately, you’ll have to wait until this evening for Kathy to upload her presentation handout. But she has so much other cool stuff on her website, it’s worth a look anyway: KathySchrock.net

Don’t miss out on Springfield Middle School teacher Eva Lamar’s website; she has wonderful tips and tricks for promoting literacy using Microsoft Word and Firefox, as well as projects that integrate technology.

Happy surfing!

Google Doodles contest

Google is famous for innovation. Here's a new contest that encourages art, innovation, higher order thinking skills and literacy, all rolled into one!

Picture this: You're standing in front of your class, but instead of keeping their eyes on the blackboard, the students are all sitting there doodling.

For once, though, they're actually working on an assignment -- namely, the Doodle 4 Google competition www.google.com/doodle4google which offers young artists the chance to play around with the Google logo and perhaps have their artwork seen by people all over the world.

The theme for our U.S. doodling competition is "What if...?"

What if...I could live underwater, or in outer space, or in Colonial America?
What if...I could see into the future?
What if...I could build any kind of invention I wanted?

Google will display 40 finalist doodles on their site and invite the public to vote for their favorites. The winning doodler will receive a $10,000 college scholarship and their design will take over the Google homepage for a day (the winning school will also receive a $25,000 technology grant).

Want to get in on the fun? You'll find everything you need, including detailed lesson plans, at www.google.com/doodle4google Registration closes on March 28th.

Have fun and good luck! You can check out Google for Educators @
http://www.google.com/educators

By George, I think they've got it!

Recently, the Library of Congress began posting some of their photos on Flickr. Their reasoning? To gain a wider audience and to harness the power of community. LOC Director of Communications Matt Raymond, on the LOC blog (Wait! The Library of Congress has a BLOG too?!), states: “We want people to tag, comment and make notes on the images, just like any other Flickr photo, which will benefit not only the community but also the collections themselves.”

Obviously, the LOC “gets it”! And not only do they blog and participate in Flickr, they have podcasts as well!

What awesome leadership! Now if only we can get more people in the education community to follow suit…

Keeping the lights on

Not too long ago, a conversation with a colleague about the effect of people’s careers on the world made me stop and think. Sometimes, we teachers take teaching for granted. As teachers, we have a unique opportunity to make a difference in the world; to influence others’ lives in a significant way. What will our students remember about their experiences in our classes? How will their online learning experience influence their lives?

Perhaps the New Year is a good time to reflect on each of our contributions and to the built-in influence that is part of a career in teaching. Michael Dell, CEO of Dell, Inc., states in a recent article in PC Magazine that “Most IT departments spend around 70 percent of their budgets simply ‘keeping the lights on.’” Social anthropologist Dr. Jennifer James, in her speech to COSA last June, explained that one of the differences in the Digital Generation is that it is the first generation to grow up with all their basic needs fulfilled. This generation has more time, opportunity, and money than any previous generation to fulfill their need for self-actualization, and they intuitively know this. I believe that to reach these students, we have to do more than just “keep the light on.” Social networking, multimedia, and Web 2.0 provide us with tools, but it is our job to create opportunities for our students to use those tools to develop the communication, innovation, and creative skills that life in the 21st Century requires.

It is our challenge as technology-using educators, delivering education over the Internet, to do more than just “keep the lights on”. It should be our mission to lead by example and to create best practices on how this can be accomplished. Our challenge is to structure our lessons and our courses to reach beyond the basic, beyond the norm—to tap into the self-actualization and innovation that each of our students is capable of; to create meaning by creating new content and repurposing old content in new ways, using the tools of the 21st century.