Will you take the #CoETaIL challenge?

 

[caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="549"] gratifyingly un-sexist nuclear families[/caption]

One of my most inventive colleagues teaches French by placing his students, whenever possible, in authentic language situations. When they need to learn employment vocabulary, the students each film an interview with an adult about their work and then subtitle it. I help in class with the captioning process. Last year, I enjoyed learning about the spirits distiller Madame Wagner; Herr Klensch the personal trainer and Monsieur Bettel. He's the Prime Minister of Luxembourg. Two enterprising students had secured an exclusive with our nation's CEO. I love working in small countries!

"(Technology) tools can provide students and teachers with learning that is relevant and assessment that is authentic" What is successful technology integration? on Edutopia

One great reason to accept the CoETaIL Challenge is to learn about new ways for us and our students to learn.

It is very appealing to assess our students in authentic situations, but like so much that is desirable, easier said than done. If you've worked in this way, you'll know that authentic assessment tasks are an inefficient way to achieve the traditionally narrow goals of teaching. The vocabulary of work could be imparted to these students using flash-cards and a written test. All done in 45 minutes and the syllabus bullet-point is checked off.

Instead, the task I am describing took several lessons, and homework, as well as the close attention in the classroom of my colleague, Guillaume, and me, as ed-tech coach. If you have done something similar with students, you will know, also, that movie formats, missing cables, bad sound, lost files and editing challenges are some of the obstacles on the road to success. So, though 'authentic tasks' sounds appealing, why are we taking the time and making all the extra effort, exactly? Is it worth it?

You need to decide for yourself.

Guillaume's students learned the vocabulary by formulating questions, understanding the answers and transcribing the videos; they managed their time and resources in a complex project; they practised social skills with their partner and the interviewee; they used a range of technology creatively. They ran into problems; we fixed the problems; they worked hard. The lesson in which the class all watched each other's videos was a celebration of their achievements of which the students were clearly proud. The teachers were satisfied too.

It is inescapable that the process of authentic assessment is demanding, messy and sometimes even discouraging, but there are rewards for those who stay the distance. Are you ready for the challenge?

Catalysts for understanding

If you watched the video, you now know that the Earth spins because it formed from rotating dust and nothing has stopped it so it just keeps on going. It's got nothing to do with forces, centrifugal or otherwise, nor does gravity make the Earth spin. Many former students of Physics can spout Newton's First Law of Motion, but Derek Muller's videos go beyond mere repetition of knowledge and, by first focusing on misconceptions, achieve greater understanding.

"The idea of understanding is surely distinct from the idea of knowing something." Wiggins and McTighe, Understanding by Design 2nd edition (p36)

More than just a manager

In 2018, all of the teachers in our school will be using a new learning management system (LMS). My ed-tech coach colleague and I have a full year in which to help our Upper School faculty, alongside their existing workloads, to become comfortable with the system. As a first step, we have envisaged a pilot of volunteers which will begin in August 2017. My hope for this LMS, with its myriad capabilities, is that it will not simply manage the learning, but that it will be a catalyst for change. More than simply acquiring new routines, we will explore the potential of the LMS for improving our students' learning.

We call it One to World

For nearly one year now, all of our students have brought a laptop to school every day. The learning curve has been steep, since most teachers and students had never worked in a 1 to 1 environment before. But the education has not changed very much, if at all. This is not to say that the computers are unused, rather that there isn't a strong culture of innovation. Don't get me wrong: no-one is suffering. As ever, Good Teachers + Good Students = Learning. Having gone down the road of computer-enabled learning, however, I think we should be better exploring technology's possibilities.

What should our teachers be able to do?

"The challenge is to focus first on the desired learnings from which appropriate teaching will logically follow." (p14)

The teachers will learn how to use the LMS and will know what the school wants them to do with it. Is that all? Surely there must also be understanding of how the system can support learning.

"To understand is to have done it in the right way, often reflected in being able to explain why a particular skill, approach, or body of knowledge is or is not appropriate in a particular situation" (p39).

Our teachers are not short on professional knowledge nor understanding; but many aren't familiar enough with how educational technology could help their students learn better. Our goal will therefore be to relate the mechanical processes of the new LMS to powerful educational concepts; in particular, concepts which can be enhanced by computers in the classroom.

And what might these concepts be?

[caption id="attachment_69" align="alignleft" width="300"] Image: Craig Badura[/caption]

George Couros has provided an excellent schema for how today's classroom could look. Crucially, although few of the ideas have a direct line to technology, they all can be enhanced by it.

When the Physics class used a wiki to comment constructively on each other's Energy projects; when my IB ToK students could submit any 'creative digital document' to demonstrate their understanding of Cultures; when Grade 6 students could see their Online Habits survey responses accumulate in real-time; on all of these occasions, I revelled in examples of Couros' ideas made concrete by technology.

A greater success, however, would be if they can use that knowledge gained in one situation and apply it to others.

"Understanding is about transfer... we can create new knowledge and arrive at further understandings if we have learned with understanding some key ideas and strategies" (p40)

How will we know what the teachers have learned?

What will be the evidence of learning? I'm not sure I know yet. The LMS has been purchased, but I haven't got my hands dirty with it so far. This one has a great reputation in schools. I do know that I want to use Couros' 'Today's Classroom' as part of the teachers' learning experience. There will be evidence of their Voice as they Reflect on the outcomes of their Self Assessment. I hope there will be evidence they have Thought Critically about the Problems they might solve and evidence they Chose to Innovate and to Connect with other learners.

What will be their learning experiences?

In UBD, this is the third and final stage of deciding, and since my knowledge of the evidence is incomplete due to inexperience with this LMS, I shall be developing the activities, with my coach colleague, at the start of the next school year.

On my CoETaIL projects page, I have embedded the UBD template. Being live, it will reflect the project at whichever time you read it. As I write, only the Desired Results are known, including:

Understand how new ideas (eg Couros’ ‘today’s classroom’) can be supported by the new LMS

More than knowledge, understanding will be my main criterion of success. The teaching will aim at understanding and I shall seek ways to gather evidence of:

"conceptions: that is, meanings that are general ... Without this conceptualizing, nothing is gained that can be carried over to the better understanding of new experiences" John Dewey, How we Think, 1933, p153

Paradigm Shift by the Dashboard Light (CoETaIL blog tour)

"We've got this new concept, the idea of cloud storage... it's become much more of an unremarkable thing nowadays for musicians to collaborate and be able to share their entire projects with each other across the globe." Todd Rundgren on All Songs Considered podcast.

Rundgren, who produced Meatloaf's Bat out of Hell album among many others, has been at the forefront of music technology for 50 years. From his studio in Hawaii, he uses Dropbox to work with artists anywhere in the world.

It's good to be reminded how far we have come.

CoETaIL course 2 aims to give us "the experience of a globally collaborative project". From Luxembourg, I linked up with two other colleagues working in Europe: Stephen in Milan and Valerie in Zurich. Every few days for two weeks, we met online and planned guidelines for using social media in international schools. The tools we worked with have become very familiar: Skype; Google Docs; email; phone, tablet and laptop. While sitting in our own homes, amongst our families, we worked face-to face, simultaneously on the same documents; then we made agreements and commented asynchronously, at times which suited each of us, on the others' plans. Social Media are Changing who we are is my blogpost about our project (and about my screen-free vacation that it inspired).

When, by chance, we all attended the same international conference last month, I felt I was greeting longtime friends.

It's easy to overlook how incredible this project would have seemed to teachers a generation ago. Such a collaboration could have been achieved only with plane tickets; high phone bills; envelopes and stamps.

And now, these tools are in our hands; in our pockets; in our homes; 24/7, if we allow them. Our project "Guidelines for Using Social Media in Schools" addresses the concerns we all should have about ubiquitous digital tools. Equally, it employed those same tools to blend our own ideas and experiences with the opinions of experts. Driven by our participation in CoETaIL, we experienced, as educators, what we desire for our students: the modern miracle of global collaboration.

Social Learning - it's what the Internet is for (CoETaIL blog tour)

“Is this the latest version of Windows movie maker?” Freddie asks me in class. “What is the population of Luxembourg?” Marie wants to know. “TWIF” I tell each of them. They know what I mean; they’ve heard it before.

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In answer to questions like these, others say sarcastically: “Just let me Google that for you“. The point is that the reliable and accurate answers to these questions are available to anyone in almost an instant. We no longer have to ask the teacher. TWIF stands for: That’s What the Internet is For. Just twif it, I tell the kids. And they get it.

New technology has changed our relationship with knowledge itself. Our students have access to every resource. No wonder some argue that teachers will become redundant. And yet…

…every school I have worked in looks quite like the one I went to during the industrial revolution (well, Leeds in the 1970s). Grades, tests, insular subjects, content-focused teachers. Of course, there are pockets of creativity, but they don’t add up to a bag of innovation. It’s really difficult to change things; even difficult to imagine what it would look like if they were changed on a grand scale.

There is always more than one way of looking at things.

You might sign up for CoETaIL because you’re interested in the challenges of education and change. From the start, you are immersed in many of the best ideas about teaching and learning. You join a community which is speaking the same language and asking similar questions. But you will not come away with simple answers.

In course 1, we jump right in and investigate models of educational technology. Personally, I believe that SAMR is a useful model, but it is frequently misappropriated. My PLN suggested one I prefer which I wrote about on my CoETaIL blog (Way of the SAMR eye). Making a case is an excellent way to rehearse your understanding. And the comments from the colleagues you are learning with will make you think again: they don’t necessarily agree with you.

If the education we want for our children is critical, creative and collaborative, then our learning must be like that too. Most questions aren’t googleable; instead, they lead to deeper thought and open up possibilities rather than closing them down. Most solutions are improved by the clash and compromise of difficult conversations.

CoETaIL walks this talk. You can question assumptions, express doubts, try out some new ideas, not alone but with fellow learners. If we believe our students should learn socially, then we must too.

What the 1 to 1 classroom has taught me

"Despite their growing popularity, laptops may be doing more harm in classrooms than good." (Mueller and Oppenheimer, 2014)

This grandiose conclusion was drawn when the authors tested groups of students taking notes either on laptops or longhand. "Those who wrote out their notes by hand had a stronger conceptual understanding and were more successful in applying and integrating the material than those who took notes with their laptops." (Professor Cindy May, Scientific American).

At least two important questions went unaddressed:

1. Were the subjects in the experiment equally experienced in paper and electronic note-taking? If not, maybe you are actually measuring their aptitude with the medium.


2. What do you mean by 'classrooms'? In the experiments, only podium lecturing was tested (recorded TED talks and verbatim reading of scripts). That's not what the classrooms look like in the schools I know.

What have I learned from 1-to-1?

In nearly all of the lessons I have taught since 2008, the students have used devices for nearly all of the time. Before then, not at all. I changed abruptly because my school did and I was interested to see how far I could take the new model.

You may be an interesting teacher, but you can't compete with the Internet

One sees the truth of this even in staff meetings if teachers have their device lids up. They are not paying proper attention because your brain can't process two information streams at once. In lessons, it's the same. When I talk to my students, I insist they should not be looking at their screens. A strategy which works for me has been to organise my class as an 'inverted horseshoe' with desks around the edge of the room, laptops facing outwards. This means that when I talk to the group, I can ask the students to face me and turn their backs on their screens.

And then I shut up so that they can get on with it. Ergonomically it's an advantage too. When the students are all working, I can stand in the middle of the room and get to anyone quickly. Not every colleague has been convinced, but it works for me.

You are already an expert

I had been teaching Physics for several years before I landed in a 1-to-1 classroom. The internet had become a cornucopia of excellent teaching materials. There were assessments, simulations and videos; there were resources produced by great teachers, inspired students and world-renowned physicists. I started a wiki and embedded, linked and organised all of the assets I had found, but after I had planned my courses there were many I hadn't used even though I knew they would be great for the students. I took a step back from my role as gatekeeper. I flung back the gate. No! I took it off its hinges. In their own time, the students who wanted to know more browsed the wiki and found materials which suited their learning style and because it was online, the site also welcomed up to 5 000 visitors per day.

1-to-1 intimidates many teachers because they assume that students are more comfortable with devices than adults. This may be true, but it's not important. A teacher is an expert explainer; he is knowledgeable about his subject; he knows good teaching ideas when he sees them. A good teacher who doesn't use technology (yet) is still a good teacher. Technology is just another tool he should use to become the best teacher he can be.

Let go

So technology enabled me to improve what I was giving to my students. It also freed me to interact with them in my version of the flipped classroom. Some of the instruction was flipped to the home, but more importantly, it was flipped to the virtual classroom I had made. As the students learned from my curated resources, I could spend time with those who needed support.

To do this, I had to trust in the students' wish to learn. I wasn't standing at the front commanding their constant attention. What they were doing instead is still called note-taking, but it only vaguely resembles the activity which Scientific American said laptops don't do well. Alongside their text, students dragged in images and graphs straight from the wiki. They added photos of my sketches on the whiteboard; links to my curated videos; their own found resources (which we could then add to the wiki).

open up the kitchen and the larder, not just the dining room

The traditional classroom is like a restaurant. The visitors consume what the chef produces because she has the knowledge and expertise. But what if the clientele were allowed to choose ingredients from the shelves and then prepared their own meals under the tutelage of the chef? Of course it's inconceivable; the result might be nourishing, but is unlikely to be sophisticated. This, however, is what we have done to the classroom when we gave the students access to the same resources the teachers have (but not the expertise). The metaphor sounds outrageous, which shows what a radical change education has seen.

Of course, if all we do is try to use devices to replicate the activities which were developed for paper, we will, like Professor May, be disappointed by them.

Never mind the bubbles - a future fable

Graduating Class of 2035! My name is Indira Xi. I was born, like most of you, in 2017.

This was around the time that many of our teachers themselves graduated from school. We have heard their stories of 1-to-1 classrooms; mobile devices; MOOCs and learning journeys. Looking back, it is obvious that our forebears came up with some great ideas for education, but they didn't find a way to scale them up in practice (the average completion rate of MOOCs was 15%, and for the larger enrollments, it was typically much lower). Of course, we now know how to get it up to 100%!

Back in 2017, the big technology companies (their vampiric acronym was FANG) were dabbling with algorithms, serving up content which matched the interests of their users, and they had begun to accumulate information covering many aspects of people's lives (by studying location data, they knew who 90% of all adults were spending the night with). In those years, however, they didn't yet realise what power they had!

By 2022, five years later, everything was different! The FANG engineers had introduced recursively self-improving algorithms which very quickly sharpened the personalisation of everyone's Internet experience (it took milliseconds). When the optimum content was not available, the programs set about manufacturing and distributing stories (so much more efficient than waiting for your friends to recommend the very best videos and articles). They made digitally-generated movies which varied the cast and storyline depending on the preferences of whoever was watching. The FANGS did not survive this revolution as separate entities; they united into one huge engine called Facebubble.

Then, as you know, self-improving algorithms were introduced into education and they immediately unified every MOOC into one enormous course representing the sum of all human knowledge (the type which can be taught online, at least). They used their knowledge of every past interaction to analyse each teaching moment and to perfect a learning path for anyone to learn anything and to enjoy it. They knew their students' needs through a combination of metadata, Facebubble clicks and information from wearables (pupil dilation, skin conductivity and heartrates).

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Governments were delighted. They called the new program Epystematic: a system to organise all knowledge and to personalise for each citizen exactly what society needed them to learn. Then by tweaking people's known motivations, they made the process maximally efficient. We didn't even need public exams any more: the Epystematic already knew what we could do. Universities loved that! And once the machines started calling every election result perfectly, there was no point holding votes any more. So they didn't.

Fellow students, this is the learning world we entered.

The classroom was so personalised that no two students were learning the same thing at the same time. We put on our VR goggles and Epystematic knew us better than our own parents, friends or teachers (whose role had been reduced to handing out the equipment). There was no social contact with other children in the class; why would we need anyone else when the output from our headsets was so finely tuned to our own brains? We made no choices. And the more we used Epystematic, the better it did its job. It was personalisation, but it was not personal.

This time was called, as you will remember, The Great Sedation.

So what changed?

[caption id="attachment_209" align="alignleft" width="221"] Back in the day[/caption]

After five years, in 2027, came the punk teachers and their Personal Unfiltered Network of Knowledge. There were some in every school; the punks took on the Epystematic dinosaur. Happily, they had some excellent weapons (which had been around since 2017) to help them in their battle.

Ad Nauseam, the application which simply and silently clicks on every single ad link to make the data they are gathering about us completely useless. The punks taught their students to obfuscate their digital contrail.

Solid, the decentralised web tools, built by Sir Tim Berners-Lee, which make sure that our personal information is kept in a vault so that web companies must request our permission for access when they need to consult it. The punks showed us how to take back ownership.

Wikitribune, a platform which unites journalists and volunteers to produce news stories which can be easily verified and improved.

A DIY sensibility: Inspired by the historic upheaval in music half a century earlier, the punks rejected the status quo.

The tide turned. The punks had no need of large institutions and began small independent schools which decided for themselves how they would organise their learners, like the one we are graduating from. We recognise learning as a social process; personalisation gives way to personal learning; we all have a role in deciding what and how we learn; we recognise that learning is sometimes a messy and difficult experience. And every day, our punk teachers help us negotiate that process.

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With their heads no longer in the bubble of an algorithmic feed, people started thinking for themselves again and democracy returned.

Fellow students, our journey has only just begun.

Yes, technology may be your friend, but it is only people who can teach and learn!

Beware the poison butterflies

[caption id="attachment_199" align="alignleft" width="215"] The high point of my gaming life[/caption]

Last week, teaching my Middle School students some basic coding (in the land of the blind... etc), I programmed a game, at least I think that's what it is. If you get all the way through this post, you can play when you get to the end.

For their official IB internal assessment, every ToK student must make a presentation according to stringent IB requirements. The descriptor for the top grade requires students to be sophisticated and insightful while using convincing arguments, different perspectives and an analysis with significant outcomes. A tall order.

Furthermore, the basis of the presentation is a real-life situation (RLS) which suggests to the student a knowledge question (KQ). The KQ has particular qualities: open-ended; about knowledge; in ToK vocabulary.

The stakes are high because there will be no second chance and a student's final IB score and therefore her higher education could depend on it.

why all the long faces? Let's at least make it fun!

On a whim last year, I made a set of 40 vocabulary cards for each student containing IB's prescribed 8 Ways of Knowing (green cards); 8 Areas of Knowledge (red) and 24 useful words which I selected (blue). The students have become quite used to consulting these cards during lessons and we have speculated how we could use them to make ...

...A game.

Matt Baier gamified PD at his school by:

'creating a list of skills in which our faculty should be proficient. Our challenge was determining how faculty would demonstrate their knowledge.'

This is my challenge also. Here are some elements of ToK in which students should be proficient.

1. 
   

   Real-life situation

   
   


2. 
   

   Knowledge Question

   
   


3. 
   

   ToK vocabulary

   
   


4. 
   

   Other RLSs

   
   


5. 
   

   Other KQs

   
   


6. 
   

   Arguments

   
   


7. 
   

   Perspectives

   
   


8. 
   

   Analysis

   
   

- But wait, you can't gamify unless it's electronic.

- Excuse me?

- Oh yes, it's well known that only computer games count when we are talking about gamification.

- It's true that the majority of books on this topic such as Gamify your classroom by Matthew Farber devote most of their pages to the digital realm, but the writers do not specify this medium in their discussions about game theory and the importance of play.

 - Oh, OK then.

All games share four defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system and voluntary participation (Reality is Broken, McGonigal, p21)

So we will use the vocabulary cards as a tool to help each student to construct an initial plan for her presentation. The goal is to brainstorm a structure for their assessment. The game models I am using are the card-game Patience or the digital sandbox The Sims. I have devised simple rules and a playing surface so that they can construct a network of ideas based around the vocabulary. When this stage is completed, each student will provide suggestions on a small number of the others' plans and then return to their own plan to process the feedback they have received.

It resembles in many ways a normal brainstorm, but I am trying to harness some of the elements which make games so motivating.

Everyone is a participant... A 'need to know' challenges students to solve a problem... embrace a process of testing and iteration... share their work, skill and knowledge. (Quest to Learn School website)

I hope the activity will benefit from a feeling of community in the class as they all begin the daunting quest to deliver a sophisticated and insightful presentation. Whilst every presentation must be unique (though group members will share identical grades in the end), in the preparation stage a collective effort may contribute extra dimensions to everyone's thinking (if they are prepared to see it). The ToK presentation is a non-zero-sum game, which means that no-one gains marks at the expense of anyone else - there is no strategic benefit in being competitive.

In the 1990s, a puzzle video game called Chip's Challenge was bundled with Windows. After many late nights, I completed all 149 levels. Since you can't progress to a subsequent level unless you have finished the previous one, it gave me great respect for the motivating power of mastery. Over the years, when I have considered gamifying my lessons, it is this feature of computer games that I have focused on: a testing, rather than a teaching environment.

There is an important difference between games that teach a learner how to do something and games that test what a learner already knows (The Gamification of Learning and Instruction Fieldbook, Kapp et al, p49)

Interestingly, then, the game element, which I am now implementing, is not a test but a teaching game...

... unlike 'Beware the Poison Butterflies'

 

Dewey want to Seymour Learning? It's not Godin be easy

PART 1

Does this ring a bell?

"The subject-matter of education consists of bodies of information and of skills that have been worked out in the past; therefore, the chief business of the school is to transmit them to the new generation"

This is how John Dewey (Experience and Education, p17) characterised the traditional model of schools.

In my experience, the situation has not progressed very far in the eighty years since Dewey was writing. As a teacher in the 'university-preparation' stage of an international secondary schooI, I have spent most of my time in classrooms upholding this model for which:

"the attitude of pupils must, upon the whole, be one of docility, receptivity and obedience". (p18)

The goals are fixed (we make common cause with students, parents and administrators to attain the highest scores in public examinations). We do not ask whether the examining body's criteria benefit the student, we simply train her to jump through the hoops.

Dewey then contrasted tradition with 'certain common principles' of 'new education' which are:

"cultivation of individuality ... learning through experience ... acquisition of [skills] as means of attaining ends which make direct vital appeal ... making the most of the opportunities of present life ... acquaintance with a changing world." (p19)

That description of an education will appeal to many people who read it, but since we appear to be powerless to change the goal, the means we employ to achieve it also remain largely the same as before.

PART 2

Project-based learning is inspired by Dewey's philosophy of education as a social activity. The differences between Project/Challenge/Problem based learning methods are not really significant; their similarities are the important issue. Each of them helps students to:

learn about Real-world issues

"students are pulled through the curriculum by a Driving Question or authentic problem that creates a need to know the material" (Introduction to Project Based Learning, Buck Institute of Education)

Reflect on how and what they are learning

"Judge it by what the whole system learns, and that includes the teacher." (Interview with Seymour Papert)

choose how they learn

"Emphasise student independence and inquiry" (John Larmer on Edutopia)

Sustain Focus on a topic

"Challenge Based Learning slows down the experience to allow for full participation, ongoing reflection, and self-discovery." (CBL and personalized learning, digitalpromise.org)

PART 3

But it is easy to say what is wrong with an institution; much more difficult is actually to bring about change for the better. Generations of educators have nodded along with John Dewey but, unlike most areas of society in which change has been rapid, very little progress has been made. I think this is because we are prematurely congratulating ourselves on seeing the problem, not realising that it is only the first small step in a journey with no map.

Dewey knew this:

"The general philosophy of the new education may be sound, and yet the difference in abstract principles will not decide the way in which the moral and intellectual preference involved shall be worked out in practice". (p20)

In other words, can we set some new goals? If we don't (and usually, in schools, we try to skip this most difficult step), then the change we say we want will not occur. We have people like Dewey and Papert to help us, but we must listen and let them teach us to think deeply about the reasons for what we are doing.

PART 4

Something has to give. There are only so many hours in a student's career. If you're going to do a new thing, you have to retire an old thing.

"The trend towards portfolio-based, so-called authentic assessment is very good, but it's very limited unless it goes with throwing out the content of what we're testing." (Seymour Papert)

If you've ever seen a conversation between teaching subject-specialists as they try to identify content to throw out, you'll know how hard this will be. Yet it has to happen.

Furthermore, let's not kid ourselves that projects will be easier to implement. On the contrary:

"we're going to have to work very hard to make the stuff that they're going to learn. It's not going to come about just by teaching the old stuff in a more, "constructivist" way." (Papert)

PART 5

So, like our students, we have to read; we have to work hard.

And we have to think and learn.

"Please ask someone, “what is school for?” and don’t stop asking until we can agree on the answer and start taking action" (Seth Godin in Stop Stealing Dreams)

You can read Dewey's answer in Article 2 here.

This is what my family said (and no-one mentioned exams):

• School replaces human nature with more society-friendly characteristics (in his 20s)


• School is there to prepare you for adult life. And I'm not sure it does that for our lot... (50s)


• I think school is there to teach children to read, so that they can go out and choose their reading, whether it be fiction or non-fiction, freely and independently. (50s)


• School gives children their first opportunity to live in a society away from their home surroundings and to build relationships beyond the family. (70s)

What do you think school is for?

Learning 2 integrate technology

Imagine going to an educational conference where, although technology is central, in many sessions it is not even mentioned because everyone is too busy talking about teaching and learning.

Imagine every presenter being a current educator (or student!), in touch with the concerns of their audience.

Imagine that there is no celebrity keynote speaker, nor any outsider delivering plenary talks; just those aforementioned practitioners.

Imagine a style of session in which the presenters have the freedom to give you, say, half an hour to just try stuff out or chat or read or whatever is right for you.

For a lot of teachers, that is the PD they wish they were getting.

I'm in Poland and the Learning2 Europe conference at the American School of Warsaw has just finished.

On Thursday, I signed up for Maker Your Own Learning. Right from the start, Mark and Sarah told us they wouldn't be giving much direct instruction. As a result I was a bit stuck. So I found a template to make a simple circuit on a piece of paper. I didn't know why I was doing it. But it worked, and now I could see some possibilities. The beauty is that I'd had to figure them out for myself. The final version can be seen in Sarah's tweet below. My polychromatically luminous badge is not exactly an innovative form of 21st century communications technology, but I am proud because four days later, despite much handling, it still works perfectly.

#learning2 making a stoplight badge! pic.twitter.com/RJtBMrpjZe

— Sarah Woods (@placeomanytrees) April 6, 2017

For the rest, I had a very CoETaIL time. The other sessions over the weekend I attended were with graduates Nicki Hambleton, Sonya TerBorg and Diana Beabout. Each time, technology was never far away, but it was integrated, in the words of Mary Beth Hertz, seamlessly.

"Students use technology to learn content and show their understanding of content, not just their expertise with a tool." (Hertz)

That, of course, is what technology integration should always be. I have been wondering how often my lessons look like that. I teach two widely differing classes: Grade 11 ToK (an externally assessed IB Diploma course) and Grade 6 Get Set (an introduction to the 1-to-1 classroom). My colleague Becky and I also run #islconnects (a series of workshops for teachers).

During Unit 1 of this course, I wrote a blogpost (WAY OF THE SAMR EYE) comparing the common models for evaluating tech integration.

SAMR (not my favourite);

TPACK (which I've used the least);

and PATER (which is least well-known but, being a cycle, the most effective to use, in my view).

 

Here are some learning activities involving technology which I have recently taught. I shall consider them with a TPACK eye.

Ancient Civilisation Facebook profile (bit.ly/islfacebooktemplate)

We use a facebook profile to highlight some facts about a historical figure. Aside from the factual content (which our Social Studies colleagues handled), we wanted the students to gain experience with technology: online search and citation; shared Google Drawings (the template); and simple photo-editing (the profile picture). Pedagogically, it was a challenge to manage the students juggling several tools at once while maintaining focus on the learning of history. Ideally, the students would have more choice of tool and their research questions, but we concluded that the restriction would serve our goals.

Knowledge Question Film Festival (bit.ly/tokkqff)

In a one hour lesson, we watch a playlist of clips, one chosen by each student to exemplify, as content, the sort of knowledge question ToK is interested in. The students reflected on the questions in an online back-channel. The discussion was too distracting: a victim of my desire to incorporate technology at all costs. Next time, the students will reflect alone and compare notes later. Pedagogically, a paper-based See Think Wonder would have been more appropriate.

The Power and the Point - of documents in the cloud (bit.ly/powerandpoint)

This activity has been through a number of iterations, each time giving the attendees more time to use technology to try things out. It remains a content-heavy session which is delivered largely from the front. Pedagogically, I would like to keep contact with the teachers while they implement what they have learned in their upcoming lessons.

After a foray into the upper echelons of administration, I returned to the classroom around ten years ago and was excited by the obvious possibilities inherent in educational technology. Like many other colleagues, I have consciously tried to find as many different ways as possible to integrate technology. We sometimes make mistakes and go too far. Usually, the first people to notice this failure are our students.

New ways of teaching and learning will need new ways of developing professionally in supportive and flexible models with transparent and flat organisations. I hope many teachers consider attending a Learning2 in the near future, in November in Shanghai...

...or in March 2018, I hope we can welcome you to Luxembourg is Learning2.

A great and vibrant language

getting the message across

"Mir hunn eng flott a lieweg Sprooch a mir kënnen zu Recht houfreg drop sinn"

"We have a great and vibrant language and we can rightly be proud"

(Claude Meisch, Luxembourg's education minister on schreiwen.lu and through Google Translate)

The linguistic ability of the people of Luxembourg is remarkable. Not only do many communicate fluently in French, German, English and frequently in other languages as well, but none of those is their native language. Now the government is taking measures to ensure that Luxembourgish remains strong. One of their weapons is a campaign of infographics such as this video which reassures speakers that there is often more than one acceptable spelling for words.

so what exactly is an infographic?

Our Middle School students are learning to use infographics and I have been seeking a definition which makes clear to them and their teachers what is unique about this form of communication.

The name suggests that it is a:

"visual representation of information or data" (Google Search definition)

But a photo or diagram might serve that purpose and there is more to good infographics which:

"present large amounts of data meaningfully" (Kathy Schrock in this video)

So it does something that ordinary text or an image on its own can not.

Could it even do this?

"Convey a message in such a way that context, meaning and understanding are transcended to the observer in a manner not previously experienced" (Anders Ross on instantshift.com)

[caption id="attachment_142" align="alignright" width="255"] Hot Butter Studio[/caption]

It is important that an infographic does something different from a mere poster or an essay, because otherwise why would you go to the trouble? Data is a particular mode of expressing information objectively and a good infographic will answer particular questions better than other media.

After I have explained to my students what I think an infographic is, I show them this one (right) which uses only eight words to say it better than I could in five minutes of verbosity.

I suggest that the students think of types of information in four categories:

• 
  

  facts

  
  


• 
  

  statistics

  
  


• 
  

  location

  
  


• 
  

  time and date

  
  

I show them examples, both good and bad, of different ways of displaying information depending on its category including:

• 
  

  images, icons, illustrations

  
  


• 
  

  graphs and charts

  
  


• 
  

  maps

  
  


• 
  

  timelines and processes

  
  

[caption id="attachment_144" align="alignleft" width="428"] CoETaIL graduate Reid Wilson knocks it out of the park[/caption]

We observe, however, that most infographics combine more than one type of information and display.

In the examples I show to the students, we recognise some of the rules of design such as CARP. On the one hand, we understand that these are very helpful in terms of serving the audience, but on the other, we agree that they are not laws and are frequently broken with impunity by people who understand them.

As their educational technology coach, I want to help our teachers to guide the students to make the best infographic they can. My colleague and I have adapted an existing rubric which we have been using, but for some time, I have wanted to develop new guidelines to help students to do their best work.

While most excellent infographics combine text and image, they are neither simply a colourful essay, nor just a descriptive picture. They are more than either of those.

how do i make an excellent infographic?

Rubrics are very hard to get right. The style I prefer has a small number of categories which overlap as little as possible. The IB Theory of Knowledge course assesses student work using 'global impression marking' which recognises that a rubric

"is not a checklist, ...levels of performance are not discrete... and there are always exceptions".

In other words, however comprehensive the rubric, in the end the professional judgement of a teacher is the final arbiter. For this reason, I prefer to keep them short and spend my time on giving written feedback alongside the grade.

For an infographic rubric, I am considering three domains which cover the facts (INFO); the visuals (GRAPHICS); and how they work together to present the message (INFOGRAPHIC). I have often worked with four-point achievement scales which I find give sufficient levels (and an even number forces a judgement, preventing one from sitting comfortably on the fence).

For extra inspiration, the best resource on infographics rubrics is this one where a teacher had her classes brainstorm characteristics of their favourite infographics and the hive-mind came up with a comprehensive list which I have borrowed liberally from to create my own rubric.

does the rubric work?

Last week, I was on the London Underground and saw this very attractive infographic (right). Interestingly there are no sources given for the information nor the images. I found the artist's website (it took him five weeks to draw the infographic - with a mouse). The information could be regarded as common knowledge and not requiring sources, but the presentation is exceptionally good. It passed every criterion on my rubric.

 

VLOG!

TRANSCRIPT

Every Picture Tells a Story

[caption id="attachment_118" align="alignright" width="272"] Logo created by SW on flaming text[/caption]

"We need to understand the importance of graphics, music, and cinema, which are just as powerful and in some ways more deeply intertwined with young people's culture." (George Lucas on Edutopia).

Lucas recognises of course that literacy and numeracy are important skills too; his point is that we are neglecting other fundamental means of communication. Just as language has a grammar which can be learned, so do visual ways of getting a message across. Yet our culture, which arbitrarily elevates some forms of expression such as literature and science, does not value as highly a literacy of visual communication.

"There is grammar in film, there is grammar in graphics, there is grammar in music, just like there are rules in math that can be taught. For instance, what emotion does the color red convey? What about blue? What does a straight line mean? How about a diagonal line?" (Lucas again)

---

 

I was reading for this post, immersed in ideas of visual literacy, typographical hierarchy and informivorous humans, when an email from a colleague pinged onto my screen asking me to:

"teach a short lesson on graphic design: use of color, placement, streamlining the final product…."

I've been asked this before and have squirmed because I don't feel particularly qualified to do it. The principles of design have not been a part of my education (which would not surprise George Lucas). I appreciate good design when it is pointed out to me, but I am in awe of those people who are capable of communicating beautifully (in my experience, the great majority is not capable, even some of those preaching about it).

Increasingly, my teaching colleagues allow their students to express their ideas in more visual forms than just essays, such as infographics. As with many of their PowerPoints and posters, however, students do not always maximise the graphical potential of the medium. And as teachers, we often do not provide the best examples with our text-dense slideshows, (not to mention our copyright-busting use of images).

So, in the time-honoured tradition of teachers remaining one step ahead of their students, I will prepare an online slideshow both explaining and demonstrating the principles of good design (to be taught tomorrow!).

My first piece of advice to the students will be to organise their work in three stages:

Research it > Plan it > Create it

Obviously, I must do that too. Researching, I selected four good sources of advice and extracted the main points. I also added a few ideas of my own.



In the Plan It stage, which I shall also require of the students, we organise the information. At this stage, what was a chaotic melée of data starts its transformation to a visual presentation. This brilliant image is one I shall share with the students, but it's not clear that I'm allowed to reproduce it here even with attribution. In the planning stage, I organised the information under headings which logically express my understanding. Once I knew what points I wanted to make, I sought out images which told the same story. This slideshow is what my slides looked like when I had organised the data and sought out some visual examples to make my points.



And finally, my Creation ...



I am not a professional designer (evidently), but the advent of desktop publishing and its descendants have introduced an expectation of production values even for the amateur. We have an obligation to employ the principles ourselves and to pass them on to our students. Furthermore (and I have experienced resistance from colleagues in this regard), our evaluation of student work should extend beyond the content and recognise skillful use of the medium. A project poster is not just a colourful essay. It must communicate visually, as well as textually. We must teach our students to parse the visual grammar of a presentation, not just its words. And we need a good rubric for that, but I haven't been able to find one yet.

The presentation, as you see it above, is my attempt, from a position of relative ignorance, to communicate ideas of visual literacy to our teachers and students.

How would you go about it?

How can I improve my message?

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!

 

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).