Social media are changing who we are

"Our body is physiologically rewarding us for talking about ourselves online" Moffit and Brown, ASAPScience video (below)

[youtube]https://youtu.be/HffWFd_6bJ0[/youtube]

It is clear from the research behind this video, that using social media not only changes what we do, but also who we biologically are. Most people in one study regularly experienced Phantom Vibration Syndrome. Being online all the time can have serious consequences. How long before smartphones get statutory health warnings?

I have been talking this week with two CoETaIL colleagues about the guidelines for using social media which our schools need but don't yet have. Our project was structured around four face-to-face skype calls over 12 days during which we evolved a process; set ourselves homework; tweaked our plans; and got to know each other. I have met Stephen briefly before in real life, but I've never met Valerie. It is appropriate that a social medium has been one of the crucial elements in our project.

"We would like to collaborate in a process to gather information and ideas to help each of our schools arrive at some guidelines for teacher and student use of social media." (Valerie, Stephen and Steve)

Our process is woven from a few strands:

1. We each conducted an investigation in our school, wishing to know how their different cultures would influence the process of drawing up social media guidelines. I received 99 responses to my survey (see right). The anonymous findings are collated in a document. We then read each other's summaries, commented and asked questions. It's not only a document but a rich conversation.


2. Early in the project we read "How to create social media guidelines for your school" (Anderson). It gave us a starting point for our fruitful discussion and suggested a possible process we have elaborated into our roadmap to social media guidelines which reflects the common understanding collaboration has led us to. We intend to present the document at each of our schools as a proposal for a way forward. It is embedded on my CoETaIL projects page.


3. Research into the solutions which other institutions, both educational and secular, have drawn up to support their individual circumstances. This included a pertinent exchange with John Mikton.


4. Frequent back and forth between us; not only the skype conversation, but also dozens of emails.

When that is all done, and this blogpost is finished, I will have completed CoETaIL Course 2. It has been a rewarding experience, not least the current collaboration with colleagues who, although we work in different countries, are nevertheless similarly faced with teachers and students in need of guidance about social media. As I concluded in a blogpost I wrote elsewhere, collaboration can be really difficult. We all bring our ideas to the table which enrich the project, but we must equally abandon some of them. The reward is a more complete product than any individual could have made. That has definitely been the case with Stephen, Valerie and me - and it was painless too.

During Course 2, I have been immersed in ideas about what perpetual connection to the Internet might mean:

• What will we do if the platforms to which we entrust so many of the stories of our lives do not live forever?


• How do we properly advise our children about social media when, if we are honest, we do not know many of the answers ourselves?


• What is the incentive to play fair about copyright when the chances of being caught are minimal?


• Is it wise of us to accept, however knowingly, the Faustian bargain of Facebook?


• What will be the long term effect of the digital contrail we are constantly leaving behind us?

These were the questions posed by my five blogposts during the course. I am certain that we do not definitively know the answer to any of them.

I greatly admire the performance artist Marina Abramović. You may have seen the film in which she sat in the MoMA in New York and met thousands of members of the public in silence, one-to-one, staring into their eyes, day after day. It's amazing to see.

She has a very clear view of the ways that we live our lives and how we can make changes which expose the assumptions we had taken to be facts. Speaking on the Note to Self podcast, she recommended:

"switch off your telephone... take a chair next to the window... and do absolutely nothing... What happens to all that energy that you have? You start thinking about the things you never have time to think about... you get into this state of peacefulness... three hours of your life" (Marina Abramović)

Is that really so extreme? I don't think so. We often spend three hours on activities a Martian would find strange. Sometimes, you can learn about the ubiquitous only when it is removed for a while.

So, following a couple of months in which I have spent a lot of productive time on CoETaIL, thinking about familiar things in new ways; learning to write regularly; making new friends, I have decided to call time on my life on the Internet. I don't know what it will be like, but my plan is to be completely off the grid for at least two weeks. I hope that, by cutting loose temporarily, I will gain an insight into what it means to be continually connected for the rest of the year.

"Christmas is supposed to be fun and you want to lash yourself on the back?" (my son on hearing my plans)

"We have to trust this gut feeling that we are completely f****d up with technology" (Marina Abramović in Huffington Post)

 

5 must-use social media for 21st century students

You clicked! Are you also tempted by list blogposts and then find the content disappointing? There is a list at the end of this post, however.

When I asked my colleague Dave's class of 13 year-olds here in Northern Europe how many of them were regular users of Twitter, I expected, if not a forest, at least a copse of arms. Three. All boys. In a class of twenty. Further interrogation revealed that only one of the three used his account actively (to keep in contact with players of a particular game). Other classes turned up the same picture. Dave and I had planned to use Twitter as a means to generate real-time conversations among the students. They dutifully cooperated, but treated it as a quaint adult preference. We persevered for a short time then looked elsewhere.

[caption id="attachment_105" align="alignright" width="467"] Subjective selection of data by SW[/caption]

My finding was confirmed in an interesting spreadsheet of bandwidth use on our school's wireless network shared by Olivier, the IT manager. I extracted a subjective selection of sites which I believe are used largely during students' leisure time and generated a graph. Top of the list are four 'consumption' sites, followed by Snapchat which leads the social networks. That's Google+ resting his lazy butt on Twitter, Pinterest and WhatsApp.

The idea of online social networks is still young. If it was born in 2003 with myspace.com, then it has only just become a teenager. Soon Facebook surged ahead and has maintained that lead as it continually evolves. Twitter joined the pack but seems to be flattening out in terms of active users. Pinterest, Tumblr, Instagram, PutieDami. When I told my students about the graph above, they were unsurprised that Snapchat is top of the tree at our school. I predict, though, that in three years' time, 13 year-olds will be communicating with a network we haven't even heard of yet. Who could have foreseen 10 years ago that the brevity of 140 characters would be so alluring, or that pictures that expired within 10 seconds would captivate a generation?

[caption id="attachment_108" align="alignleft" width="167"] Everyone has his own tech landscape[/caption]

Though claims of exponential change can appear exaggerated, social media platforms do seem to have followed an accelerating pattern. With growing frequency, each cohort of young people seeks its own medium which excludes not only their parents but even their older siblings. We do not know what will happen given that apparently big beasts can became evolutionary dead-ends within a few years; the social network ecosystem is savage.

There are consequences for our approach as educators. Many of us have realised that we must harness the power of the tools of the digital age, whose astronomical processing power and global reach enable billions to interact irrespective of geography. It makes the magic in wizarding fiction seem tame by comparison. But since your students may not be using the same tools as mine; since their younger peers are already looking elsewhere; since every tech start-up has the incentive to ensnare the next generation with novelty, what are the universal principles which will guide us in helping them to use the proliferating platforms beneficially?

It's all about communication. Do we comprehend each other? Do our exchanges promote respect and understanding? Are we making the world better? I'm not talking about digital social media here, but all of the ways in which groups of people can share ideas.

 

FIVE SOCIAL MEDIA ALL STUDENTS MUST MASTER

1 Language

Language is a medium for social exchange. We must teach our students to use it to convey meaning; to avoid misrepresentation and to develop new understandings between people.

2 Kindness

It is too easy to let our impulses get the better of us and to behave unkindly in the heat of the moment. We must help our students to recognise that there are myriad ways to treat others with consideration, each of which makes the world a better place.

3 Emotion

All human interactions have an emotional element. Our students must learn not to be afraid to communicate how they feel and to be able to read the emotions of others.

4 Critical Thinking

We have access to a virtually limitless ocean of information, much of which is unmediated by quality control. From an early age, young people must learn how to weigh carefully the words and images they are served.

5 Culture

The more we are exposed to different points of view and ways of living, the more we realise that what is familiar to us is merely one mode of being. Educators must help students to see that human experience is diverse and that no culture is superior to any other.

Explain it to me like I was thirteen

[caption id="attachment_99" align="alignright" width="378"] We are not amused: Licensed under Creative Commons by Carl Lender on wikimedia[/caption]

Two days ago I watched the film 'Queen Live at the Hammersmith Odeon' from 1975. It took me back to when I was 13 and discovering exciting cultural phenomena. My parents did not agree and pomp-rock was absent from the family playlist in those years. The enjoyment I experienced as a teenager has prevailed, however, despite the domestic disapproval of 40 years ago.

Thirteen year old Greg Hoffman got an iPhone 5 for Christmas in 2012 and the next day his fearful mother, Janell, issued him a contract. There are 18 points to the contract, of which half are rules such as: "It does not go to school with you". There's also some good advice: "See the world happening around you". Janell acted on one of the foremost duties of a parent: to protect her child from the dangers of the world. The iPhone "scared the hell out of me", she admitted. Her reaction was one-sided; there was no negotiation. She wrote up the contract in 20 minutes and presented Greg with a fait accompli. Five years later, it's still on her website, unchanged; you can download the contract and impose it on your own kids.

There are many times when our superior experience of the world entitles us to instruct our children. In issuing her commandments to Greg, Janell ("being bossy is fun") felt she knew what could go wrong and decided the best solution was to be authoritarian. It's an understandable motivation.

Many schools, in advising their students about how to use technology, do the same. They try to manage behaviour by proscription and disapproval. In loco parentis, they have the right, and sometimes the duty, to forbid harmful activities. But like anything else, adults are not qualified to make up rules about technology unless they first take the effort to learn about it.

In 2015 in the 'Status Update' edition of This American Life podcast (first 14 minutes of the episode), Ira Glass talks to Jane, Julia and Ella, teenage girls who spend a lot of their lives using Instagram. The conversation is not judgmental and the girls describe in fascinating detail the specific language and rituals of their culture. It is clear that they have thought intelligently about the pitfalls and benefits. This is not to say that they are not in need of advice and guidance on occasion, but the programme respectfully takes the opportunity to learn about why teenage girls use Instagram rather than condemning them from a position of ignorance.

Schools often do not give their students this degree of consideration. The adults, alarmed by the potential for misuse of mobile devices, and sometimes influenced by anecdote rather than research, devise rules which seek to ban the unpreventable. Their false assumptions are twofold. Firstly, they assume they know what the students are doing; secondly, they assume the students are unaware of the consequences. Children are more sophisticated and reflective than we often give them credit for.

The school where I work is trying to respond rationally to the use of social media. We have a 'Digital Citizen's Agreement' which applies to all members of the community. The agreement considers in general terms "Internet and devices" and addresses "abusive behaviour", but does not offer answers to the questions we have about how, if at all, we should integrate social media into school life (of course, this integration did not wait until we had a policy and has already happened organically).

What would a good 'Social Media Policy' look like? Presumably it would have to address many aspects of school: social communication by adults and students; educational uses; marketing of the school; teaching strategies. The policy might discourage or prohibit certain activities, but it would be written from a position of knowledge obtained by research. Crucially, I hope it would embrace how students and teachers actually use social media and it will also look forward to ways in which we can promote positive attitudes to life online and off. This is where we are right now, wondering where to go next.

Last week, at the ECIS Annual Conference, I met fellow Online 7 cohort member Stephen Reiach. We agreed how each of our schools is in need of a robust policy covering social media. We are now discussing how we can make the process of informing a social media policy the focus of our joint Course 2 project. Are any readers of this blog interested in joining us? If so, please leave a comment below.

Please leave a comment even if you are not wanting to work with us!

 

I finally renounce my life of crime

Many years ago while holidaying in South America, my friend and I were robbed at knifepoint. We had ignored advice and ventured into a deprived area of town. The young men who surrounded us were probably disappointed, however, when, wrenching it from my wrist, my Rolex fell apart in their hands. Sadly for them I was not a rich mark, but rather a cheapskate buyer of counterfeited goods.

[caption id="attachment_96" align="alignright" width="306"] Pirate loot[/caption]

My history as a pirate began many years earlier and I feel it is finally time to confess. Forgive me, for I have sinned. I have recorded hundreds of albums on cassette tape; I have bought bootleg LPs; ripped CDs; torrented music and movies. As I have moved to new destinations around the world, I have quickly learned where the illegal DVDs are sold and how the local authorities tolerate the trade.

Nor in my work have I been scrupulous. I have downloaded videos and music from YouTube; used photos without attribution; uploaded past exam papers to the public Web. I have done these things for what I thought was the benefit of my students. I turned a blind eye to colleagues who did the same; in fact I taught them the mantra: Everything is acceptable in the pursuit of educating young minds which is a sacred task. I didn't try to find out what the rules actually were; I assumed they were complex and inconvenient. I was confident that I wouldn't get into trouble. When a bounty hunter working for the IB got some of the exam papers taken down, I shrugged.

There may have been more (did I mention the Converse All Stars that weren’t? The boxed set of The Wire?), but that's more or less the size of it. Amen. I did it because I could, because it was easier and because I got away with it.

As we are often quick to tell our students, it's not relevant whether other people are doing something wrong too. I wasn't trying to make money, I just repeated the mantra and carried on teaching my students. I have learned over the years that, whatever they say, in many cases, people are more motivated by the fear of being caught than ethical issues.

I have, at least, always been respectful of writers and have given credit for the words I have used. But, as members of society, we shouldn't just make up rules to suit our own prejudices. Even though there are cases in life for civil disobedience, disregarding the intellectual property of other people is not one of them. The ownership of the products of one's creative labours is an important right and the fact that "in the digital world the one fact we can't escape is that every single use of culture produces a copy" (Lessig) does not mean that copyright is unimportant.

[caption id="attachment_95" align="alignleft" width="355"] Licensed under Creative Commons by Silvia Tolisano[/caption]

Surprise, surprise, it's not actually that complicated. Clever explainers like Larry Lessig and Silvia Tolisano have helped me to understand what I need to know about Creative Commons and why it is important. Lessig is a modern-day hero who has applied his creative legal mind to the new situation where culture embraces the remix. Tolisano (left) has provided a superb and useful summary of the precise recipes we can employ for almost every situation we find ourselves in. Inspired by their work, I am contrite and I shall perform three immediate actions.

In the past, my attributions have been inconsistent, but now I am going back through my writings (at least on this blog) to put things right.

Secondly, for some time I have been creating my own images to illustrate my blogs and presentations. I shall begin to use Creative Commons licenses for these artifacts to make clear the re-use I am happy to accept.

Lastly, I shall delete the pages on my old website which the "anti-piracy" man working for IBO has failed to find. It doesn't matter that the papers are old, freely available elsewhere and useful to teachers and students, nor that my goal is purely educational, the IBO has a right to keep them to itself if it wishes. We can't pick and choose.

So, why are our students bad at respecting copyright? There are various obvious reasons (such as a lack of modelling from their teachers), but we should ask ourselves: "What is their incentive to observe others' intellectual property rights?" when being 'good' is inconvenient, time consuming and, in general, there are no adverse consequences if we're bad.

My colleague, Becky and I have discussed how best to instill this important attitude in our Grade 6 students. After explaining the mechanics of Creative Commons, we have set a task for the students to make their own creative work (a personal logo). At the end of the unit, they will all obtain their own Creative Commons license for the logo, making personal decisions about attribution, sharing and derivations. We are hoping that seeing themselves as creators with rights, they will more readily appreciate the rights of others.

---

Footnote: So I have put a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License on this blog (see below) which is the most permissive, only requiring attribution. it covers everything on the blog that is mine. I'd be very interested in any comments as to whether I have made a good choice and done the right thing (for example, what is that copyright sign doing there?).

An educational revolution? Really?

You say you’ve got a real solution

Well, you know

We’d all love to see the plan (Lennon and McCartney, Revolution)

Once upon a time, in the 1970s, a huge political upheaval changed the educational landscape in the UK. The state system had been academically selective, funneling children into different schools on the basis of one examination taken at the age of 11. I never took the 11-plus exam; the system was abolished and all of the children in the area where I lived were sent to the same school. One year earlier, it had been a selective school for girls with teachers who had grown up in that system and had never expected the rug to be pulled from under their feet. Suddenly, the tide of academic girls was replaced by a tsunami of undifferentiated boys and girls. Leaving aside the question of whether or not the decision was just and educational, the teachers had not been prepared for this seismic change. I remember many who rose to the uninvited challenge and I have been influenced by their inspiring teaching to this day. But some teachers stubbornly declined to adapt to the new situation, floundered, and took early retirement as soon as the opportunity arose. I have great sympathy for those women who could not get their heads around the ‘new normal’. They were probably highly skilled in the task they had been doing and it was unfair to assume that, without any preparation, they would thrive in the new environment.

We are experiencing a similar moment, but this time it is not implacable government which is declaring a new paradigm, it is technological change in society. While it is clear to industry, services and business that they need to embrace new technologies, the argument for using computers in education is more nuanced. There is no consensus about the purpose of education, and your attitude to the use of computers in the classroom depends on your answer to the question: “What are schools for?”.

127 ideas enough for you?

“A revolution is taking place... we are living on the future edge” (Global Digital Citizen Foundation video). Really? The majority of teachers are not revolutionaries and such talk scares or annoys them. When many teachers hear these enormous claims in dramatic language, it puts them off.

Our children are Digital Natives living Globally Connected Lives. Their schools are Learning Organisations in which teachers Flip the Classroom; teach 21st Century Skills; and the students Own the Learning. Technology is Redefining learning tasks. The picture is appealing but these models do not always live up to close scrutiny. My students could be regarded as digital natives, but many have a small vocabulary and the strong immigrant accent of their teachers does not impair their ability to communicate. When models and metaphors are used as if they were facts rather than opinions, it puts teachers off.

My teaching life has changed greatly in the last decade. I have developed resources using wikispaces, Google Drive, OneNote, Evernote, Edmodo, Twitter and many more. Maybe I could write a blogpost introducing “Six Tools Every 21st Teacher Should Use”. Or do you think there are enough of those already? Articles which are lists, repeatedly retweeted, contribute to an avalanche of apps which puts teachers off.

Why are many teachers put off? Simply, they are not revolutionaries and do not like to be told that the world around them is changing unrecognisably. It’s not what they see and it’s not what they want. Furthermore, when they are told that they must teach differently to stay relevant, they feel devalued. They know they are good teachers already.

Undeniably, new technology has unveiled an era of amazing potential, but it has not decreed that everything must be different. More realistically, it offers the opportunity for good teachers to adapt and evolve by adding new approaches to their repertoire. Most teachers who are reluctant to learn skills are not refusing. They have been put off by excitable and impractical language and the uncritical attitudes of technology advocates.

They are already expert teachers who understand how children learn and we need them on our side.

What we mean when we talk about privacy

Have you seen this video?



It demonstrates how far we have come in a short time, that these people receiving week-old news remind us of Rip van Winkle.

So we bemoan our loss of privacy. We expect Facebook to allow us to join its network for free and then complain that we don’t like the deal. It’s too late to claim sanctimoniously that “the line between our private lives and the public persona are blurring.” (unnamed author on The Rebel Yell). You don’t have to be on Facebook (no, you don’t). If (like me) you do choose to, don’t claim you weren’t aware that it is a transaction.

“Faustian bargains are by their nature tragic or self-defeating for the person who makes them, because what is surrendered is ultimately far more valuable than what is obtained, whether or not the bargainer appreciates that fact.” (Brittanica.com)

[caption id="attachment_86" align="alignleft" width="167"] SW: Site of antisocial media[/caption]


So that’s easy. Just don’t use Facebook, or refuse friend requests from everyone but the very closest. You can also fix it so that no-one but you can post anything about you on your timeline and if you have been tagged elsewhere it won’t be seen by your friends. The drawbridge to your castle is well and truly up; anything which leaves is scrutinised by vigilant guards. Thankfully, your friends are not quite so cautious about their information, otherwise Facebook would be a much more boring place than it is. You can still check out what is going on in your network including the uncurated serendipities you stumble upon:

“Oh interesting: I didn’t know those two knew each other!”

“That acquaintance is in town; I’ve always wanted to know him better.”

“My son shouldn’t be doing that at parties!”.

“Everybody lurks. Only the blithe let on.” (Elle Hunt in The Guardian)

It does seem a bit unfair, though. The world gets your controlled brand whilst you enjoy their warts and all adventures. Maybe you should refuse to read stuff about other people which you wouldn’t tell about yourself. Presidential candidate’s unguarded comments? No thanks, I wouldn’t like anyone releasing my candid chats. Private emails? Hands off, they were hacked.

When we talk about privacy, it seems, we may be more concerned about our own than other people’s. Surely it works both ways, though. In the real world, when you hide yourself away in your room, you don’t see anyone else. When’s the last time you were offline for a week? A day? Even a  waking hour? Our students may never have experienced a time in their lives when they were unreachable.

[caption id="attachment_87" align="alignright" width="300"] Image licensed under Creative Commons by Brad Higham on Flickr[/caption]

When I think back to pre-email visits to friends, I wonder how we arranged it at all. I’m not saying those days were better, just that something has occurred which has profoundly changed ...er... something. I’m not sure what it is that’s changed, though. My children do not live near to me, but we speak at least once a week and exchange messages pretty much daily. Contrastingly, when I left home, I heard new music only on the radio or from friends; read one physical daily newspaper; learned the lessons my teachers chose to teach me. I regularly communicated only with the handful of people I actually met. I was often alone and had no knowledge of what other people were doing at that time, nor was I following world events minute by minute.

Last year, I went walking across the Belgian Ardennes for seven days. I didn’t go online at all (though, pathetically, I had my phone with me “for emergencies”). On Day 5, when I thought I’d listen to a podcast, I swiftly removed my earbuds again as I found the disembodied voices disturbing in a woodland setting. Since then, although I came home with a restful feeling, I haven’t had another Internet-free day.

For the new generation, the connected environment is the only one they have known. No doubt they find our reminiscences about house phones and encyclopedias quaint. As their educators, though, we must do our best to evaluate the advantages, but also the losses. I relish the permanently online world and its expanded horizons, but wonder whether another species of experience has become endangered, if not extinct.

Sometimes the only way to know what you have is to remove it for a while. I have tried the experiment in my leisure time, but I am curious what effect it would have in a classroom if I were to ask my students and colleagues to work without any technology at all for a time. We could analyse what difference a Screen Free Week (or day?) made to the learning without attaching a value judgement.

Every experience has value and the pre-Internet situation embodied a kind of empowering ignorance (you don’t have to know everything right now, especially about your friends). Furthermore, in experiments where participants were deprived of constant stimuli, “boring activities resulted in increased creativity” (Mann and Cadman). One of our responsibilities as educators is to ensure that through exposure to a variety of experiences our students come to know how they learn and live best. We want them to see technology as an addition to their learning toolkit, not just a new normal.

[caption id="attachment_88" align="aligncenter" width="775"] Image: SW and public domain mashup[/caption]

Digital contrails

[caption id="attachment_78" align="alignright" width="299"] SW: freely modified from Pixabay images[/caption]

Last week I overheard a conversation between some students. They were discussing one of my colleagues. A student had found his Facebook profile, and via someone else who had tagged him in a photo, they had got to some pictures of a visit to a strip club. The teacher hadn't visited the club himself, but the association had been made in the students' minds. And they were telling their friends. Teachers are sometimes dismissive of their search skills, but do not underestimate students' tenacity when they are motivated.

Like many of my colleagues, I believe that schools are well-placed to help students to make the most of the digital world. Do we have the answers? No. The best we can do is to jump in and learn along with them.

So I had a look at my Facebook profile as the public sees it (it's only three clicks away) and apparently I changed my settings a year ago because that's when the visible posts dry up. Before that, anyone who is checking up on me will see that I had just met old friends in Barcelona (and someone mentioned alcohol in the comments); I was recommending a lot of movies and books (many with challenging content); and talking about my favourite music (some really unfashionable artists). Interesting to me, but boring to almost anyone else. But should I be so relaxed or must I worry that "someone could always dig it up and use it against you" lifehacker.com?

When we talk about our 'digital footprint', this is one of the fears we have: that we inadvertently reveal information which can harm us either by our own carelessness or by the oversharing of other people in our network. If you followed me around all day in the real world and caught snatches of my conversations with all of the people I meet, you would learn things about me I hadn't intended you to find out. Along that road lies paranoia, and one solution is to have little or no public online presence at all. But that's not for me. I would rather you saw me as a rounded (even fallible) human with diverse (sometimes messy) interests than a carefully curated brand.

[caption id="attachment_79" align="alignleft" width="491"] Firefox and Linux user from Greece. They didn't ask permission, they just took it.[/caption]

Your deliberate online presence is something you are in control of. But there is a much more pernicious element to the data-set that has been generated about you that makes me think not of a footprint but of the contrail left by an aircraft. You may think you've come to this blogpost anonymously, but the server has recorded when you came, where you are in the world, what browser and computer you're using, which webpage you last visited (yes! none of their business, I know, but it's all there in the server log and accessible to the owners of the site). Those widgets that count visitors know all those things about you because your treacherous devices have told them.

"Every time you "like" something, share something, tag yourself in a photo, or click on an article on Facebook, the site collects data on you ... They also track what device you used to log on, what other app you came from, other sites you've visited, and much more." Manoush Zomorodi, Note to Self podcast

Facebook does not make it too hard to confirm that they are reliant on our data. Explaining their cookies policy, we read that cookies help Facebook to serve ads; measure how often we click on them; and gain insights into our behaviour. I learned from Note to Self that I could see what Facebook has inferred are my preferences. Most of it was accurate, though I learned that they had identified interests in alabaster and anarchism. I keenly await that targeted ad.

But Facebook's knowledge about me is tiny compared with Big Brother Google. Again, it is easy to understand why Google is interested in my data. At myactivity.google.com, I see that today, on a number of devices, in 3 different countries, I accessed 170 pages which covered this blogpost, the news, some maps and the usual aimless surfing. You'd know a lot about me if you had access to that information every day. Furthermore, have you ever been to your Google Timeline? There is a calendar and I can relive any day in the last few years including a map of where I went that day and the photos I took. Here is their almost accurate world map of my recent years on earth (they logged my 2 US roadtrips but missed the Asian trip (thanks, China!)).

[caption id="attachment_76" align="aligncenter" width="525"] Where Google thinks I've been in the last few years - mostly correct[/caption]

In his Theory of Everything podcast, Benjamen Walker observed that an ad which was "following me around on the Internet", stopped once he visited the shop and tried out the product. The thing is, it is easy to be paranoid when every day, like a jet-plane, we emit a billowing cloud of data which reveals our locations, our interests and our secrets. It is worth the while of organisations with astronomical means to recombine these scattered particles into the story of our journey though, sadly, most of their impressive effort only goes into making a bit more cash.

If we let our justifiable qualms force us into hiding behind Privacy Settings or into holding our tongue for fear of being too public, then we are the poorer for that. If we only communicate our fears to the students instead of our enthusiasm for the potential of humankind's great invention, then we fail as teachers. Whether we like it or not, our students do not have a choice about engaging in the online world, so we must make sure that we use the battery of skills we have as educators to show them how to leave a footprint that enriches their lives.

"That's kinda crazy. They don't know they gonna die one day and that stuff's still gonna be on the Internet? I wanna make something I gonna be proud of" rapper Danny Brown on the All Songs Considered podcast (at 21m 50s).

 

Plain sailing hits the buffers

[caption id="attachment_70" align="alignright" width="300"] Image: dreamstime.com[/caption]

Everything was going smoothly. I was enjoying taking part in CoETaIL; my ideas about education were being gratifyingly confirmed (like a lot of memorable PD, it's about the affirmation as much as it is about any new learning). Ideas for my project were coming together: a chance remark picked up at ISTE; the CoETaIL concepts; my new invigorating Theory of Knowledge teaching assignment. One week to go. Plain sailing. And then I hit the buffers.

The kids didn't get the memo. That's my main idea for this project. We adults (teachers, administrators, many parents) can see that education needs a reboot. We talk about it a lot (some of us) and have developed a few overlapping frameworks, succinctly captured in George Couros' 'Today's Classroom'. But, like old-fashioned Parent-Teacher Conferences, the subject of the discussion is not in the room. The adults sagely ordain how well the child is learning and what should be done to improve matters.

"Why do we have to be creative?" asked one of my students last week when I returned a piece of work in which I had asked them to "make an imaginative digital document". "Because that's what we've agreed young people need", I did not say. This exchange of views reinforced my determination to introduce my students to the ideas which we as educators address daily, but which, although they see the effects of our thinking, the students do not explicitly hear much about. (A disclaimer, here: maybe this is not your school, but it applies to several I have worked in).

"Thoughtful and knowledgeable people may disagree" about essential questions. Wiggins and McTighe, Understanding by Design, 2nd edition (2005) p342. Here's ours:

 

What education do today's teenagers need?

I was wrong to assume it would be plain sailing from there. I hit a mental roadblock. Every time I sat down to think about the activities which would serve this question and the goals I had set, I found myself planning things which I would have found boring if I were in the class. Moreover, when I checked with the rubric:

"Use of technology enhances the Unit Plan by using the computer as a research, collaboration and publishing tool, as well as a communication device", (CoETaIL project rubric)

I was in the embarrassing position for an Ed Tech Coach of trying to fit the technology into the unit and make it look like it was integrated (the mistake we counsel our teachers daily not to make). This went on for days as the deadline loomed.

Then on Friday evening, while enjoying a great jazz concert, a new idea shot into my mind. I had been devising activities which the students and I would do together in the classroom. That's not an authentic audience! But if I could get the students to express knowledgeable and reflective views on contemporary ideas about today's classroom, these could be shared with educators around the world. Someone I read this week (I've lost the source, I'll add an attribution if I find it again) explains how listening to music can help some people to concentrate by providing a low level of distraction which prevents petty thoughts from intruding on the mental activity. I can say that it definitely works for me. If you're looking for inspiration, here is the Mário Laginha Trio.

Since then, I have thought a lot more and written a lot. My UbD plan is on another page on this blog. The thinking behind the lesson is in the slideshow below.


You can read the details in the slides, but the part which I know very little about is the final "Likes League" in which I challenge the students to share their work on social networks and see who can make the greatest impression (I shall play too). I am not prescribing any medium in particular: Twitter, for example, which we educators love, is lagging behind even Google Plus as measured by our school's routers, while Snapchat is the queen of the networks (but for how long?). I would rather see the ingenuity and skill which the students give to the task than attempt to constrain them.

Will it work? I have no idea! This activity is slated for 10th to 16th November and I have been wondering if I can get other classrooms elsewhere in the world involved. I still have to think about things like hashtags and whether all Likes (Favourites, Upvotes) are, well, alike, but I'd love to have company as I set out into the unknown. I am looking for colleagues who would like to join in, or who know how to improve it or who are sure it won't work. If you know someone, please ask them to contact @steveweatherell.

[caption id="attachment_71" align="alignright" width="300"] Egret image wikimedia[/caption]

I have a few options in mind which will develop in different directions depending on the outcome of earlier activities. We must discuss the responsible use of social media. One of the upcoming topics is 'Memory as a way of knowing' and in an age where nothing online can be forgotten, the subject of digital footprint is very relevant.

In fact, even though I would be able to teach the unit tomorrow, there is a month to go, and there are areas, like the rubric which has already been through a cycle of teaching and improvement, which could still be tweaked to align with this particular assignment. That's the way it goes: you're plain sailing, you hit the buffers, you avoid the roadblock, you take flight.

Way of the SAMR eye

Steve talks to himself...

- So how did the lessons go, Steve?

- Which ones?

- You know what I mean. You’ve been procrastinating.

- I don’t call it procrastination when I’m busy with other things.

- I’ll just let that excuse hang in the air.

- OK. I’m still chasing the last five students, but all the 12 pieces of work I’ve received I’ve given feedback to and I’m very happy with them. There was the full range of grades on the IB scale, from 7 down to 1.

- I’m actually asking you to evaluate it.

- That’s what I’m doing. We finished the planned activities, and my fear that the ‘imaginative document’ I’d requested from the class would default to Google Slides in all cases proved unfounded. I got a Canva, Prezi, PDF, Pages, jpg and the rest were in Google. I gave them a mark out of 8 on the rubric I had shared at the start and commented briefly on strengths and weaknesses for each student. I haven’t shared it back to the students yet. I’m waiting for the lesson when I see them next.

- So that’s an evaluation then? Was it a good learning activity? Would you do it again? How would you improve it?

- I’m definitely keen to do it again - if only because I spent a lot of time preparing the materials; I’ve got things I would change, but I see what you’re getting at. If I’m going to evaluate it, I need to have values to compare against.

- Yes. Evaluation is more than just thinking about whether it went well or badly. You should have some sort of process.

- Well as luck would have it, I picked something up from Twitter which might help. My former colleague Matt shared an article last week while he was at Learning 2 in Vietnam.

@steveweatherell @svermeulin @irene_tanya @Txpated Another for you… (Steve, I know your love of ed tech models) https://t.co/EXRGsMs1k6

— Matt Broughton (@broughton_io) October 6, 2016

- Yes, I've heard you questioning SAMR, you heretic.

[caption id="attachment_63" align="alignright" width="331"] SAMR, TPACK, TIM, trudacot, PATER[/caption]

- My problem with SAMR is that it gives you wide abstract terms which categorise desirable outcomes, but no help with what it would look like nor how to get there. Redefinition becomes a goal in itself, when we even have difficulty defining what we already do! I tried to help my colleagues realise that every project may contain elements from S through to R. We even started a gallery of SAMR examples both from our own faculty and around the world. But it hasn't stuck as a helpful concept for teachers beginning to work with ed tech.

- And if I forced you to look at your lesson through a SAMR lens?

- Then I'd say I Augmented the task. Whichever culture in society they chose, the students had instant access to first hand accounts of the beliefs and practices. Also, they had an unlimited range of ways to express themselves imaginatively. And when we discuss the work in class and when I repeat the activity in the future, students will be able to easily consult many exemplars both in the classroom and at home. But looking at the rubric and task, I can't claim either Modification nor Redefinition since in essence it was just a written task for which students were encouraged to be creative.

- Right. So TPACK?

- To be honest, I've never used it before though it always comes up when models are discussed. As I understand it, my lesson did combine knowledge of Content (I wanted the students to consider cultures in society); Pedagogy (I considered how I would get their interest and how they would engage with the concepts); and Technology (I found the stimulus online; presented it using TED Ed; the students' work was created, shared, assessed and returned without using paper).

- But just because you are in the Sweet Spot of the Venn diagram, is that enough to say it was balanced or a good application of the three knowledges?

- No it doesn't. Now you're going to ask me about TIM, in which case I would say my learning environment was Active and my level of integration was between late Adaptation and early Infusion.

- You're being very brief with those models...

- Yes, I know, but I think they are built more as a framework for evaluation of a teacher or school's general practice. As Morpheus says, a model is not a recipe. You have to use it in the right way and although my lesson survives their scrutiny and I can think of ways in which it could score more highly, that would not necessarily make it better.

- So ditch the models...

- No, because there was another process described in the article. It's called PATER and it made a lot of sense to me.

- Aha, finally an acronym which spells a real word! So where are you on the PATER scale?

- I'm everywhere at once.

- ?????

- There is no scale, it's a cycle through Purpose, Activity Structures, Tools, Evaluation and Reflection. It recognises that we are not starting from scratch, but we are reviewing our teaching activities which already exist. Although our templates suggest that planning always starts with goals, that is an ideal which for many reasons, both practical and accidental, does not always happen. I love it when it does, but...

- That's a big topic you could perhaps cover in another blogpost. What about the 'Is it a Culture?' lesson we are discussing?

[caption id="attachment_65" align="alignright" width="300"] Those 7 elements in full[/caption]

- Right. Well by considering what my goals were for the lesson, in order to evaluate it, I realise that there was never a time when I wrote them down. There were seven ingredients which fed into the activity and each dictated a facet of the teaching and assessing, but none of them is an a priori goal. The outcome was dictated by the rubric which I adapted. The other elements all played their part too, but if we were to believe the theory, I should have stopped at number 1, identified all of my goals and then determined whether the other 6 elements were appropriate (and if they weren't, re-write the rubric, find another stimulus and so on...).

- So...

- So what PATER has helped me realise is that I didn't do it perfectly according to the template. I let the rubric dictate the teaching goals. But I don't have to feel bad about that and I shouldn't pretend that it happened otherwise. So long as I learn from it.

- Hurray!

"Finding out why we are doing what we already were doing is an exciting moment." Welcome to Night Vale by Fink and Cranor p99

[caption id="attachment_64" align="aligncenter" width="300"] SAMR + eye = samurai[/caption]

Survival of the Twittest

https://twitter.com/steveweatherell/status/782484974352080897

When talking about Twitter, there's only just enough vocabulary to write a nonsensical haiku. Knowing the lingo can get you on the first rung of the ladder. Yet not everyone gets it. I wanted to find out why.

I confess... I don't do Twitter very well. I mostly lurk; when I post, the ripples are negligible; I overthink retweeting. My total number of Tweets is in between my Follower and Following counts. My Likes broke single figures, but most of them are probably me. And I've got zero Moments (I don't even know what that is). Imagine what it would be like to have a K in one of those numbers!

But I do get it. I think I know why others love Twitter and why my work would benefit if I could fit it into my life. This week, I have been reading a lot of the good advice around, looking for the specific pieces which will help me to move up a level.

routine

"You've got to make some time to use it" (Ted Cowan @tedcowan7 quoted in Twitter: A Cultural Guidebook by Raisdana @intrepidteacher and Beasley @klbeasley).

"I skim through posts for 20 minutes each morning and afternoon." (Ferriter @plugusin in Why Teachers Should Try Twitter)

Whenever you try to fit a new activity into your busy life, something else has got to give. Let's make sure it's not sleep that gives, but even brief and immediate Twitter won't work for you if you don't give it the time. I will have to be deliberate and build it into my routine.

"Monitor the most popular hours for your Twitter followers, then concentrate your most important messages in those hours for more effective tweeting." (The Teacher's Guide to Twitter)

No. Life's too short.

patience

"Be patient, and you’ll build a group of valuable followers." (Teacher's Guide to Twitter)

"The trick is to keep putting it out there" (Louise Phinney @louisephinney in Twitter Cultural Guidebook)

https://twitter.com/steveweatherell/status/782500144335974400

curation

"I have easy access to a stream of customized information and ideas that motivate me" (Ferriter)

"Check out the follow lists of people you find interesting and connect with them." (Teacher's Guide to Twitter)

https://twitter.com/steveweatherell/status/782504199405858816

There's no excuse for a boring Twitter feed, but it doesn't happen by itself. I have been learning from other users' tricks. Interesting people follow other interesting people. Hashtags, chats, trending topics, events, lists are all places to go to find a greater concentration of quality which you can divert into your own stream.

But I follow fewer people on Twitter than I have Facebook friends and that seems the wrong way around. Twitter is not even mutual; you are unlimited in what you can choose to let in. The famous Couros brothers, followed by a quarter of a million Twitter users, also follow between them more than 100 000. They seem to me to have a more sophisticated understanding of the meaning of Twitter.

production

"(As a lurker,) you still aren't sure what is worth sharing and you filter yourself often" (Raisdana and Beasley)

"The real magic happens when you share, too." (Teacher's Guide to Twitter)

Everyone has their own Twitter landscape. Lurking is an option and if I hadn't, I would not have discovered Jing at a very early stage, nor some really great lesson ideas which I now use frequently. Others only ever seem to retweet lists. Who are we though to criticise someone else'e Twitter? But there is a distinction between the consumer and the producer and that is the line I feel I should force myself to cross. One of the beauties of Twitter is its restrictions and learning to express myself and to attract attention is a new challenge.

understanding

Technology is understood largely by metaphor. Most of its language is appropriated from other walks of life (amazingly, a lot of it pre-Gutenburg: scroll, tablet, stylus, file etc). Understanding Twitter also requires some good analogies.

"You have to view Twitter as a river. Whether you’re in it or not, the river is going by. When I have a chance to go dip my toe in, I catch a few big fish. I don’t need to know what I missed." (Patrick Green @pgreensoup in Raisdana and Beasley).

This metaphor has long appealed to me. You only see a small amount of the huge stream that flows by, but so long as you trust that it will continue and that the interesting voices will be amplified so that a great tweet you missed may well be retweeted, there is no stress in the times when you are not busy with Twitter.

But the Twitter river image also has its limits, because the feed is not just linear, (as Manuel Lima says about trees) it is also a network with links along more dimensions than just the arrow of time. What strengthens these links is the power of an idea, what Richard Dawkins called memes. By appealing to other users, everyone's ideas, including your own, are subject to a version of Darwin's Dangerous Idea: The Survival of the Twittest.

You call this 21st Century?

"Let's not just adopt technology into our schools. Let's adapt it, push it, pull it, iterate with it, experiment with it, test it, and redo it".

Marc Prensky's call to arms demonstrates how he foresaw (in 2005) that we would struggle to change our teaching to do justice to the astonishing promise of new technology. In the school where I work, we have overcome Prensky's "Big Tech Barrier" - we have gone one-to-one. But this is not the time to pat ourselves on the back: "machines are the easy part" said Doug Johnson in 2004 in the most practical book I have read about technology in schools (free download at the link).

After several years, I have returned to teaching Theory of Knowledge (ToK) because I love to do it and, as Ed Tech Coach, I want to have current experience of the challenges of the classroom. ToK is a central component of the IB Diploma and according to its aims, "encourages students to formulate answers to the question “how do you know?” in a variety of contexts". (Subject Guide). These contexts include the points of view of different cultures. The course is expressed largely in the form of open-ended questions rather than definitive statements about what students should know. For example:

"To what extent are our familiar areas of knowledge embedded in a particular tradition or to what extent might they be bound to a particular culture?"

Very few courses in Western education have ever been formulated entirely in questions. The others which have done so provided a description of the expected pedagogy. ToK teachers are free from even this constraint. What an opportunity to experiment!

So in my introductory unit, having looked at the variety of perspectives we each have, I want the students to consider how cultures affect the ways people see the world. Moving beyond ethnic cultures, I also want to consider those which arise within a society. That's the first element of my lesson.

What I do not want is a lesson in which I provide most of the information, nor do I want an unbounded discussion which would probably engage a few and silence the many (particularly since it is not the default setting for we Physics teachers).

“Engagement and motivation are products of learning about things that matter to kids, things that they see value in" (Will Richardson quoted in Wywrot)

[caption id="attachment_47" align="alignright" width="359"] The deadline looms[/caption]

"Relevance and agency over learning" are the solutions, says Richardson, and "creative assignments". So that's the second and third elements. Next was the timely publication in the Guardian of the documentary Gun Nation. The phrase 'gun culture' came to my mind and I thought I had found the stimulus for my lesson. I realised simultaneously that I could build some activities around the video using TED Ed which is a powerful tool I have been wanting to use with students for some time. Furthermore, in Week 1 of CoETaIL I had looked at the Rubrics for Bloom's Digital Taxonomy on Andrew Churches' Educational Origami wiki. For the creative assignment I have in mind, Andrew's Digital Publishing rubric fits my bill, but it needed a degree of adaptation to become my own Digital Document rubric (with grateful attribution).

If you've been keeping count, that's six elements, to which I'll add one more:

1. Cultural perspectives in the ToK course;


2. Relevance and student agency;


3. Creative assignments;


4. Gun Nation documentary as a stimulus;


5. TED Ed as a medium;


6. Digital rubric;


7. Our One to World learning environment.

Take seven elements and react to form the Is it a culture? activity

We are in the middle of the activity right now, so evaluation would be premature. But to return to the wisdom of Doug Johnson, Never Assume.



 

 

The day I learned...

[caption id="attachment_33" align="alignright" width="321"] An example of an analogue medium[/caption]

One of my most memorable learning experiences happened during the year I worked as a journalist on a radical newspaper. I had reported in a few boring and literal sentences a city council meeting at which subsidies for kids’ clothing were cut. The kindly editor added a preliminary sentence: “Conservative Councillors would rather see children in rags than help striking miners”. Since that day, I have approached writing differently and purposefully wielded a blue pencil when students have submitted lacklustre opening sentences.

"What are the moments in your PK-12 education that were transformative, or had the most lasting impact on you?"

This question, posed by Alex Hernandez, was what took me back to my reporting days. He calls them 'signature learning experiences' and wonders: "what might a school look like if it were comprised largely of signature experiences?". My understanding of the exceptional nature of SLEs suggests that it is not an attainable goal.

But it resonates with a belief about education I have which sets the bar a little lower. My idea seems too simple to call a philosophy or theory. It is this: We learn when the experience is memorable. I can picture the time the construction of the Arabic word for 'library' was explained to me; Salvador Dali's obsession with ants; how James Clerk Maxwell derived the speed of light; an elusive chord in an Iggy Pop song. Each time, there was a sense of joy at making connections which has been transmitted to the present day.

[caption id="attachment_38" align="aligncenter" width="420"] Four things I'll never forget.Sources: ants, wave, iggy[/caption]

 

As I say, this seems a very simple thing, almost tautological: you learn when you remember the experience. In this view, it is not the 'knowledge' which is memorable, but the process of acquiring it. Crucially, we are talking about an interaction between people. So the experience is subjective and occurs within the mind of the learner inspired by the teacher (a teacher in the broadest sense: in one of my examples it was a good friend; in another, a YouTuber). And we cannot define what types of lesson will spark the tinder; any experience: an inquiry-based project; a skilfully scaffolded explanation; a telling mnemonic might do the job.

So my job as a teacher is to organise my students' learning experiences so that they are most likely to remember them. This is more than 'making learning fun' or 'easy', rather it is about interest, engagement, relevance, challenge. It can even be "painful" (Thomas and Brown). Making it memorable is what I think we should do. How is the next question, but this post would become too long.

[caption id="attachment_40" align="alignright" width="201"] Can't wait to read this[/caption]

In A New Culture of Learning, Thomas and Brown suggest that traditional schools "are ill equipped to deal with a world of constant change" and "treat education like a machine". The 'New Culture' can be seen as "a one room school house that scales to a global world with an almost unlimited set of resources". They recognise, however, that "the roots of modern education in the West have their start in the Socratic method, which was all about questions and seldom about answers". So it's not that we must do new things we've never done before. We already know what good learning looks like, because everyone recognises the feeling of revelation when it happens to them. But we seem to lose sight of that knowledge very easily when the grading tail wags the learning dog.

In addition to the traditional utensils of the classroom such as discussion, explanation and demonstration, I now also have technology in my arsenal. The question I frequently address these days is: How can technology, along with everything else, assist me in making the learning experience memorable? I am not short of opportunities, since:

“there are many ideas and topics that have always been important but were left out of traditional school curricula because they were too difficult to teach and learn with only paper, pencil, books, and blackboard. Some of these ideas are now accessible through creative use of new digital technologies.” (Resnick in Krueger).

[caption id="attachment_39" align="alignleft" width="200"] That moment when it sticks[/caption]

Using the old media of typewriters and notepads, I learned an important lesson about engaging an audience. Now, composing on a blogging platform, I have many more means at my disposal to make the message more compelling.

Surely it should be the same in the classroom.

 

Taxonomy Domine

When I went for breakfast at the ISTE conference one day last June, I picked up more than just muffins and coffee. ISTE's best-kept secret was finally out: the 2016 Standards for Students in handy poster format. I tweeted them out.

— Steve Weatherell (@steveweatherell) June 27, 2016

So was it worth the wait? After 9 years, ISTE has given the Standards a big shake-up. Firstly, the bar has been set higher, and no longer do we merely "use technology to learn". No, we are promoting "Transformative learning with technology".



And it's true! The new Standards are very far-reaching, including whole new skills and abilities which we expect good teaching to bring to our students. For example, there is a new category: Computational Thinking. Of course, it could all just be wishful thinking. Just saying something is transformative, does not make it so. But as I plot my path through CoETaIL Course 1, I feel that the new Standards (a taxonomy, if you will) are very timely.

[caption id="attachment_26" align="alignleft" width="213"] Bloom's Taxonomy updated 1990[/caption]

 

This week I became re-acquainted, once again, with the work of Dr Benjamin Bloom who pops up whenever I am studying education.

The most interesting aspect of the 1990 revision of Bloom's taxonomy is how Synthesis is promoted and re-branded. It becomes Creating. Whereas 'synthesis' suggests a use of raw materials to make a new product, 'creation' implies an extra ingredient - something which wasn't there before. Perhaps the difference is only semantic, but the decision to put Creating at the top of the ladder is significant.

Few people in 1990 could have foreseen how, within a couple of decades, it would be commonplace to be able to create artifacts: films; sound recordings; multimedia objects using one and the same portable machine. But Bloom's revised taxonomy anticipated the changes in education which ubiquitous digital technology makes possible.

 

[caption id="attachment_28" align="alignright" width="160"] 3 steps to heaven[/caption]

I read about another hierarchical taxonomy in Living and Learning with New Media. According to this analysis, kids, on their own and without the help of adults, hang out with technology, then mess around and finally geek out. It's a hopeful vision, but the reality about the geek stage which is "intense, autonomous, and interest-driven" (p. 28), is that:

"these kinds of youths are a small minority among those we encountered" (p. 28)

That is not a startling revelation to many of us who work with 21st century youth. Although some of my students are much more skillful and dexterous than me in their daily use of their devices, in other ways they are limited in what they do. They have acquired certain habits such as efficiently consuming and generating social media, but they do not necessarily learn new skills unless they offer immediate rewards (why would they?). This innate conservatism is invisible to many of my colleagues who regard their students as masters of the new devices, but it is important for the teachers to realise that it is so.

For otherwise, what would we need teachers for? Thankfully, search engines have taken over some of the bottom-rung Bloom skills. And there are web-services which allow anyone to cobble together a basic explanatory video. This leaves us with our hands a little freer to give the students new challenges.

[caption id="attachment_29" align="alignleft" width="174"] Image credit: ladder[/caption]

Sure, student, you can bash out a quick presentation, but:

• Do you know how to find and evaluate the most reliable sources?


• Can you use visual information to engage your audience rather than riddle them with bullets?


• Will you present it in a way that your audience understands the ethical or social implications?

Google won't do that for you, but your teacher can.

Last week, in my Theory of Knowledge class, I had a clear idea of what I wanted the students to understand at the end of the lesson and I designed an activity to achieve it. I don't think I did a good job. In attempting to dictate the students' learning, I did not trust in their ability to construct it. We used the devices but as consumers when we could have been creating.

So next time we will climb the ladder.

Me, technology and delayed gratification

[caption id="attachment_23" align="alignleft" width="149"] Image: flippedclassroom.com[/caption]

This week, I considered the idea of Perspectives with my Grade 11 Theory of Knowledge students.

How do our identity and our experiences affect what and how we know things?

The students and I each prepared an online slideshow illustrating the different perspectives we believe we have. I enjoyed the process of thinking about the aspects of me which affect how I see the world. Here are the slides I shared with the students:


I have never been happier in a job than I am now as an educational technology coach. I see myself as an educator, primarily, but one who has learned a lot about the ways in which new developments in technology can enhance the learning experiences of school students. But it was not always that way...

[caption id="attachment_20" align="alignright" width="332"] Matt and Steve. Halos optional[/caption]

My closest colleague last year was a Millennial. We were doing the same work, but in at least one way our backgrounds could not be more different. Matt has spent his first three decades surrounded by computer technology and used the Internet from an early age. By the time I turned thirty, I was yet to own my first computer. In fact I was heard to observe in 1990 that "there is nothing computers can do that people haven't been doing for centuries".

But opportunity, apparently, makes the geek. In 1995 in Thailand, when the international school I joined gave each teacher a Windows desktop, I gradually discovered that every aspect of my work could be enhanced by judicious use of computers (I also learned that Duke Nukem is an endless sink of time). That's not to say computers solve every problem, rather they add a new dimension of possibilities. A year later, a colleague showed me the Internet (of which we had by then heard, even in rural Thailand) and I surfed to the brand new site I'd just read about in the newspaper: davidbowie.com (and for just one example of the surreal power of the technology, step in this time machine).

[caption id="attachment_21" align="alignleft" width="299"] We all have our own perspectives. Image MC Escher[/caption]

My journey in international education has continued, accompanied every step of the way by the amazing power of arguably humankind's greatest invention. I feel fortunate to have seen this happen in my lifetime and to have been able to use it to create and communicate with students and teachers around the world. Like many relationships, mine with technology is coloured by its history; my perspective as a user of technology is mediated by my past interactions with it.

I was prompted to think about my travels with technology when reading Jeff Utecht's reflections in Reach. Jeff describes how following blogs led him to start his own:

"With one simple click of the button, I had created my little piece of the web that would allow me to communicate and collaborate with others who were all passionate about the same thing: learning." (p. II)

In my own way, exposure to educational technology has shown me ways in which traditional education can be enhanced and then transformed by technology. This has made me passionate to share with my colleagues what I have learned. It is never easy, because we are all to some extent trapped in the ingrained perspectives of our own schooling and a lack of insight into what the future holds. I am not one of those people who will tell you 'a revolution is taking place' because I believe we have yet to shed our shackles. The fight is worth it, however.

The IB's Theory of Knowledge is almost unique as a course expressed entirely in questions rather than declarative statements of what students 'should' do. ToK encourages critical thinking and "an appreciation of the diversity and richness of cultural perspectives" according to the IBO website. As a course with an innovative approach, I feel it is the ideal place for me to employ new media to enhance and enrich the experience of learning. And the way I do that will be unavoidably influenced by the way I have grown up with technology.

I look forward greatly to sharing the experience with the CoETaIL community.