It is with trepidation that I sit to write another blog. My mid-week experiences of publishing blogs lead to this. I certainly haven't reached the stage of "geeking out" with blogs. I'm still "messing around."
I have spent a good deal of time thinking about my project sketch and how to make it as useful as possible. I wanted a project that I could use, thus it had to fit in with the curriculum I teach. A good place to start was to look ahead and see what curriculum remained to be covered this academic year. Which topics/units would lend themselves to the introduction of new media use? What would/could be done in a way that we would be doing new things in new ways? And what would be actually manageable?
Here I ran into idea block. I started to look at the Global SchoolNet and iEARN websites. WHOA! These projects were huge! Daunting! They involved dozens of schools all over the world. That set me back for a few days, knowing that I don't have the time or energy left in this school year to pull off something like that.
With time came the courage to keep searching. I looked to my RSS feeds, including one for the Flat Classroom Conference. Here I found many examples of project products that students from schools all over the world had done and presented at the Flat Classroom Conference. Viewing these videos raised my spirits because it made is seem doable to carry out a project using new media (OK, new for me!).
Then I started to think about what kind of videos would students be able to make with maybe the fewest technical glitches, hangups or hiccups? And I remembered the clip, 'The Networked Student,' shared with us during the first Saturday F2F (face to face) meeting. This style of video seems it may appeal to students because they don't have to appear on camera themselves, they don't necessarily need to be great artists and they could add the audio easily after the video is shot. I won't limit students to doing their projects in this style, but for some it may be an appealing alternative to the types of videos they may have made previously.
At this point my project sketch was coming together. I cross-referenced my idea with the list of qualities the best projects share described in chapter 4 (Strategies for Discovery) from the "Reinventing Project Based Learning" handout from the class readings to see if I would at least hit a few of these. You can see the authors' blog here. Finally I checked the NETS. It was nice to see that my idea would align with several of the NETS for students.
Now what lies ahead is to finalize the idea and see if the technology will be available for the time frame in which my students would need it for completing this project.
Yes.... moving in the right direction is satisfying! In a future blog you will find the link to my final project wiki!
Saturday, March 13, 2010
Tuesday, March 9, 2010
Changing technology, changing views
I have been wrestling with the reflection question for the past couple of days. What are the implications for teaching and learning? The report from the MacArthur Foundation, "Living and Learning with New Media," does a great job of summarizing the situation in many schools. Schools are generally conservative when it comes to change because teachers and parents are loathe to change. Many in our profession (and parents also) view social networking and gaming as time-consuming vices. Young people see them as part of their culture and identity. The establishment sees them as subversive to learning.
But... maybe we need to see them as motivation to learn! The report suggests that educators need to embrace exploration and experimentation with new technology. Recognize the values that teachers and parents have been teaching students are alive and well and being applied within the interactions children are having online.
The final paragraph of the report was powerful:
"Rather than thinking of public education as the burden that schools must shoulder on their own, what would it mean to think of public education as a responsibility of a more distributed network of people and institutions? And rather than assuming that education is primarily about preparing for jobs and careers, what would it mean to think of education as a process of guiding kids' participation in public life more generally, a public life that includes social, recreational and civic engagement?"
Sounds wonderful. But what does it look like? I've never considered myself to be the most imaginative. I am good at modifying and adapting others ideas to use for my own students. I started looking for ideas and came across the 'Flat Classroom Conference.'
Here a I found several videos with ideas that students had generated, then communicated in eye-catching multimedia presentations.
Suddenly, trying to embrace this new view doesn't seem so impossible. It will take a lot of help from our tech staff and probably for some tech savvy students, and the support from administration. (And maybe some understanding and trust from some parents?!) But it seems possible!
But... maybe we need to see them as motivation to learn! The report suggests that educators need to embrace exploration and experimentation with new technology. Recognize the values that teachers and parents have been teaching students are alive and well and being applied within the interactions children are having online.
The final paragraph of the report was powerful:
"Rather than thinking of public education as the burden that schools must shoulder on their own, what would it mean to think of public education as a responsibility of a more distributed network of people and institutions? And rather than assuming that education is primarily about preparing for jobs and careers, what would it mean to think of education as a process of guiding kids' participation in public life more generally, a public life that includes social, recreational and civic engagement?"
Sounds wonderful. But what does it look like? I've never considered myself to be the most imaginative. I am good at modifying and adapting others ideas to use for my own students. I started looking for ideas and came across the 'Flat Classroom Conference.'
Here a I found several videos with ideas that students had generated, then communicated in eye-catching multimedia presentations.
Suddenly, trying to embrace this new view doesn't seem so impossible. It will take a lot of help from our tech staff and probably for some tech savvy students, and the support from administration. (And maybe some understanding and trust from some parents?!) But it seems possible!
Monday, March 8, 2010
Maybe 'gaming' has value?
My view of computer gamers has changed over the course of the past week. A week ago I spent an hour or so with other staff members watching and discussing the first few segments of the PBS documentary, "Digital Nation." One segment focused on children in Korea that had to be sent from their homes to special camps to try and break their addiction to computer gaming. And, of course, I thought "how terrible." These games were so seductive as to get kids to spend all of their time playing online, at the cost of their home life and relationships with their families.
Then I read the segment "Geeking Out" from the MacArthur Foundation report "Living and Learning with New Media."
'People who geek out engage with media and technology in an intense, autonomous and interest-driven way.'
In the report it describes how kids have created networks that collaborate to create cheats, (cheating in a video game), to find ways to beat the computer. Others learn to be fansubbers or amateur writers of subtitles for videos. But what really blew me away was the description of the linkshells for Final Fantasy XI. These people have formed a sophisticated guild.
"The participants organized the linkshell in a hierarchical system, with a leader and officers who had decision-making authority, and new members needed to be approved by the officers. Often the process of joining the linkshell involved a formal application and interview, and members were expected to conform to the standards of the group and perform effectively in battle as a team. The linkshell would organize 'camps' where sometimes more than 150 people would wait for a high-level monster to appear and then attack with a well-planned battle strategy. Gaming can function as a site for organizing collective action, which can vary from the more lightweight arrangements of kids getting together to play competitively to the more formal arrangements that we see in a group such as Cody's linkshell."
These people are demonstrating many skills that the current job market demands employees to have. They can collaborate, organize, synthesize, evaluate, create and communicate within the organization. Hitting many of the levels of Bloom's digital taxonomy. Through gaming these kids (and maybe some are not so young?) have made themselves marketable by gaining real-life skills the workplace of the future values!
Now they may need to work on the balance that is so necessary to have a happy life!
Then I read the segment "Geeking Out" from the MacArthur Foundation report "Living and Learning with New Media."
'People who geek out engage with media and technology in an intense, autonomous and interest-driven way.'
In the report it describes how kids have created networks that collaborate to create cheats, (cheating in a video game), to find ways to beat the computer. Others learn to be fansubbers or amateur writers of subtitles for videos. But what really blew me away was the description of the linkshells for Final Fantasy XI. These people have formed a sophisticated guild.
"The participants organized the linkshell in a hierarchical system, with a leader and officers who had decision-making authority, and new members needed to be approved by the officers. Often the process of joining the linkshell involved a formal application and interview, and members were expected to conform to the standards of the group and perform effectively in battle as a team. The linkshell would organize 'camps' where sometimes more than 150 people would wait for a high-level monster to appear and then attack with a well-planned battle strategy. Gaming can function as a site for organizing collective action, which can vary from the more lightweight arrangements of kids getting together to play competitively to the more formal arrangements that we see in a group such as Cody's linkshell."
These people are demonstrating many skills that the current job market demands employees to have. They can collaborate, organize, synthesize, evaluate, create and communicate within the organization. Hitting many of the levels of Bloom's digital taxonomy. Through gaming these kids (and maybe some are not so young?) have made themselves marketable by gaining real-life skills the workplace of the future values!
Now they may need to work on the balance that is so necessary to have a happy life!
Tuesday, March 2, 2010
Learn from the experts!
I have to admit, I'm finding this blogging stuff hard. For a person that seems to have plenty to say... I'm sort of blogless. Even looking at the prompt that was supposed to get us started didn't spur much action. I find I still feel very overwhelmed by all the tools and applications that are available. There's so much out there to learn and try and apply and ... just grow with. And it's growing exponentially!
So I turned to the "experts." I started reading more articles and blogs from my RSS reader. There is a self-deprecating principal that seems pretty logical. I'll avoid any logical principal cracks. Believe or not, I like my job. Some of these experts write pretty well.
But what really appeals are those that offer straight forward, easy to understand advice and suggestions.
Chris Betcher's blog has a link to his thoughts on Five Simple Skills that he feels every educator should possess as they work towards becoming 21st century facilitators. I won't give away all his secrets here, but I suggest you check them out in more detail at his site. In list form they are:
So I turned to the "experts." I started reading more articles and blogs from my RSS reader. There is a self-deprecating principal that seems pretty logical. I'll avoid any logical principal cracks. Believe or not, I like my job. Some of these experts write pretty well.
But what really appeals are those that offer straight forward, easy to understand advice and suggestions.
Chris Betcher's blog has a link to his thoughts on Five Simple Skills that he feels every educator should possess as they work towards becoming 21st century facilitators. I won't give away all his secrets here, but I suggest you check them out in more detail at his site. In list form they are:
- Learn to search
- Learn to resize and crop a digital photo
- Learn to edit video
- Learn to use a HTML editor
- Learn to think in hyperlinks.
After reading his suggestions, I started to feel a bit better. Maybe I can't claim a huge PLN yet. But I'm at least 75% of the way to having the basic skills that one of experts values. And, he uses Wikipedia too!
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