"In order for us to prepare our students for what is without a question a future filled with networked learning spaces, we must first experience those environments for ourselves. We must become connected and engaged in learning in these new ways if we are to fully understand the pedagogies of using these tools with students. We cannot honestly discuss twenty-first century learning skills for our students until we can make sense of them for ourselves."(Richardson, 2010, px)
Digital dinosaur. In his book, The Cult of the Amateur, Andrew Keen argues that today’s internet is “killing our culture and assaulting our economy” (Keen, 2010). And somehow, this forty-something “veteran” teacher needs to find her way through this alien planet of blogs, digital portfolio’s, online learning, podcasts…the list seems endless. And here I am, plodding along the halls, roaming the vast unchartered plains of potential, trying to navigate the digital natives in their birthright land…I am the digital dinosaur.
Whether we like to admit it or not, teachers have started to experience these environments for ourselves and given in to our natural curiosity as educators to figure out how this vast universal access to knowledge will encourage our students to “learn” given their exposure to more information in a day that many only experienced in their entire lives just a mere century ago. We are connected and engaged in learning; (I remember touching my first iPhone three years ago and thinking “witchcraft!” – and now would not be without one - and I do mean that – it’s the first thing I reach for in the morning as it’s my alarm and I am rarely alone with just my thoughts in the smallest room in the house) - shuddering at the times that students were punished for trying to connect with the outside world in a classroom through a digital device and now openly embracing their natural inquisitiveness when they produce the upgraded device to solve a problem or answer a question. We are making sense of this brave new world ourselves. We see the potential and we need to “make sense of them for ourselves” – we cannot deny that this is the future that these students are facing because frankly, to quote the great Lady Gaga “baby, you were born this way!”
As I write this blog, I’ve just gotten back from the Google Southern Summit at The Lovett School, Atlanta. Three days of mind blowing thinking and concepts and as a faculty member at a one to one, newly emerging Google Apps for Education School, the buzz from my colleagues that attended has been truly dizzying and highly exhilarating. Having introduced digital portfolios for all my student work this just this academic year, I am most excited to learn more about audio and video casting. I’ve played with this a little in other ITEC courses but still have not fathomed out potential of this tool for my student’s learning. I know it’s going to be something that I may be tinkering with in isolation – while we are a one to one school and have jumped off the great ledge into the myriad of possibilities that are Google Apps for Education, there is a sense of still feeling our way carefully and the breaking of traditional teaching habits is a little difficult for many of my peers. My colleagues are in the realms of “if it ain’t broke, why fix it” as seasoned practitioners of the weighty, syllabus – terminal exam driven International Baccalaureate, our benchmark data of excellence in exam results and graduation scores speak for themselves.
But resistance is futile. David Warlick’s article A Day in the Life of Web 2.0 really resonated with my observations. Bustling into school, hauling a bag of gadgets that would make any international espionage spy proud, I traverse a hall of scattered student bodies, balancing more devices on their laps, typing furiously or laughing collectively around the funny movie of the day that managed to circumvent our school’s firewall. Strange growths emerged from many student heads post Winter Break in a vast array of colors as the Dr. Dré “Beats” headsets became the hottest trend and the epidemic of students present in body but very far away in mind continued.
I know that Web 2.0 has already changed my professional practice. In fact, it’s been changing for a long time. I could not resist including a picture in my first blog for this course – a snapshot of my Postgraduate Certificate in Computers in Education. Note the date – 1998. I’d just seen “The Truman Show” in the movies and pondered the concept of reality TV. I was a whole different person – in name and in educational nature. But then again, it was a whole different century! Teaching in a school in Northern Ireland where we had one small lab of twelve BBC computers, and one PC computer in the school connected to the Internet. BG. Before Google!
Fast-forward fifteen years. I talk and see my mom in Ireland using Skype while making dinner. She’s 3,000 miles away and about to go to bed. If we as teachers cannot see that Web 2.0 is changing our own lives and practices and don’t take on the challenge of using these new tools to engage the learner in our classrooms daily that are wired to learn this way, we do disservice to our profession. Keen may well have a point – directed incorrectly, the vast ocean of knowledge that our students have at their fingertips may well kill our culture and stifle our economy as the rest of the world moves forward.
As a geography teacher, I knew I was in trouble when I first saw Google Earth, Maps and then street-view. There is something so beautiful about the art of cartography – the raw delicate maps rolled up, the delicious smell of aging paper when unrolled and plotting the route of a hike or a journey using bearings, grid references, scale and precision location of legend markers. It’s a forgotten art but the concepts of which are so important as my students gaze on the world from space and wonder what’s happening on the ground from thousands of miles away…and their device can take them there. Web 2.0 and 21st Century teaching and learning is critical for the lifelong educational journey that these students will experience – we are entering “the main event” in the words of Carly Fiorina – “an era that will truly transform every aspect of business, of government, of society, or life. (as cited in Friedman, 2005 p.216). Get excited. Teachers will play a huge role in directing this reality!
References:
Ricahrdson, W. (2010) Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin
Keen, A (2010), The Cult of the Amateur. London, England, Nicholas Brealey Publishing
Digital dinosaur. In his book, The Cult of the Amateur, Andrew Keen argues that today’s internet is “killing our culture and assaulting our economy” (Keen, 2010). And somehow, this forty-something “veteran” teacher needs to find her way through this alien planet of blogs, digital portfolio’s, online learning, podcasts…the list seems endless. And here I am, plodding along the halls, roaming the vast unchartered plains of potential, trying to navigate the digital natives in their birthright land…I am the digital dinosaur.
Whether we like to admit it or not, teachers have started to experience these environments for ourselves and given in to our natural curiosity as educators to figure out how this vast universal access to knowledge will encourage our students to “learn” given their exposure to more information in a day that many only experienced in their entire lives just a mere century ago. We are connected and engaged in learning; (I remember touching my first iPhone three years ago and thinking “witchcraft!” – and now would not be without one - and I do mean that – it’s the first thing I reach for in the morning as it’s my alarm and I am rarely alone with just my thoughts in the smallest room in the house) - shuddering at the times that students were punished for trying to connect with the outside world in a classroom through a digital device and now openly embracing their natural inquisitiveness when they produce the upgraded device to solve a problem or answer a question. We are making sense of this brave new world ourselves. We see the potential and we need to “make sense of them for ourselves” – we cannot deny that this is the future that these students are facing because frankly, to quote the great Lady Gaga “baby, you were born this way!”
As I write this blog, I’ve just gotten back from the Google Southern Summit at The Lovett School, Atlanta. Three days of mind blowing thinking and concepts and as a faculty member at a one to one, newly emerging Google Apps for Education School, the buzz from my colleagues that attended has been truly dizzying and highly exhilarating. Having introduced digital portfolios for all my student work this just this academic year, I am most excited to learn more about audio and video casting. I’ve played with this a little in other ITEC courses but still have not fathomed out potential of this tool for my student’s learning. I know it’s going to be something that I may be tinkering with in isolation – while we are a one to one school and have jumped off the great ledge into the myriad of possibilities that are Google Apps for Education, there is a sense of still feeling our way carefully and the breaking of traditional teaching habits is a little difficult for many of my peers. My colleagues are in the realms of “if it ain’t broke, why fix it” as seasoned practitioners of the weighty, syllabus – terminal exam driven International Baccalaureate, our benchmark data of excellence in exam results and graduation scores speak for themselves.
But resistance is futile. David Warlick’s article A Day in the Life of Web 2.0 really resonated with my observations. Bustling into school, hauling a bag of gadgets that would make any international espionage spy proud, I traverse a hall of scattered student bodies, balancing more devices on their laps, typing furiously or laughing collectively around the funny movie of the day that managed to circumvent our school’s firewall. Strange growths emerged from many student heads post Winter Break in a vast array of colors as the Dr. Dré “Beats” headsets became the hottest trend and the epidemic of students present in body but very far away in mind continued.
I know that Web 2.0 has already changed my professional practice. In fact, it’s been changing for a long time. I could not resist including a picture in my first blog for this course – a snapshot of my Postgraduate Certificate in Computers in Education. Note the date – 1998. I’d just seen “The Truman Show” in the movies and pondered the concept of reality TV. I was a whole different person – in name and in educational nature. But then again, it was a whole different century! Teaching in a school in Northern Ireland where we had one small lab of twelve BBC computers, and one PC computer in the school connected to the Internet. BG. Before Google!
Fast-forward fifteen years. I talk and see my mom in Ireland using Skype while making dinner. She’s 3,000 miles away and about to go to bed. If we as teachers cannot see that Web 2.0 is changing our own lives and practices and don’t take on the challenge of using these new tools to engage the learner in our classrooms daily that are wired to learn this way, we do disservice to our profession. Keen may well have a point – directed incorrectly, the vast ocean of knowledge that our students have at their fingertips may well kill our culture and stifle our economy as the rest of the world moves forward.
As a geography teacher, I knew I was in trouble when I first saw Google Earth, Maps and then street-view. There is something so beautiful about the art of cartography – the raw delicate maps rolled up, the delicious smell of aging paper when unrolled and plotting the route of a hike or a journey using bearings, grid references, scale and precision location of legend markers. It’s a forgotten art but the concepts of which are so important as my students gaze on the world from space and wonder what’s happening on the ground from thousands of miles away…and their device can take them there. Web 2.0 and 21st Century teaching and learning is critical for the lifelong educational journey that these students will experience – we are entering “the main event” in the words of Carly Fiorina – “an era that will truly transform every aspect of business, of government, of society, or life. (as cited in Friedman, 2005 p.216). Get excited. Teachers will play a huge role in directing this reality!
References:
Ricahrdson, W. (2010) Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin
Keen, A (2010), The Cult of the Amateur. London, England, Nicholas Brealey Publishing