Educating the Dragon

I have had to remove the content of this post due to issues of privacy…..

Thank you for your words of support.

Finish the saying:

“You can lead a student to…. But you can’t make him….”

I was privileged enough today to observe a music session with some Intermediate students. I call it a ‘session’ because it felt more like a session than a lesson, with students recording tracks, dubbing, mixing, jamming and rehearsing and not necessarily in this order.

The end product apparently is still 2 weeks away. They will be recording their own version of ‘Hotel California’ or some such.

The teacher was clearly a talented musician, but then so were many in his class- Vocalists, bass players, guitars, drums to name a few.

I can’t believe he handpicked his class and pulled out all the ‘budding musicians’ from the year group. This is much more a powerful demonstration of the passion of a teacher impacting on and inspiring his students.

Isn’t it amazing what happens when you move out of your comfort zone. It appears I am not alone in the NZblogosphere to leave the classroom, permanently or otherwise.

I am now beginning a whole new adventure as an Educational Technology Advisor. It is what I have hoped to become and there appears to be some flexibility that I require right now and to be perfectly honest with you I want to see this venture grow, probably as much as the boss does! I love its vision and ethos. The whole team wants to affect change for the better in the classrooms of New Zealand, for the better, and for a bright shining future.

As you can gather, I’m rather excited about 2008… bring it on!

New Zealand Unleashed by Steven Carden  is a book that is continuing to make we think. I haven’t finished it yet but I just wanted to share with you the value in it, for everyone, and especially to us as educators in New Zealand.

 Just as The World is Flat and Growing up Digital rocked the US so this book should be a ’sit up and listen’ kinda thing for New Zealand. Whether we will or not is another matter, but we should.

 New Zealand is in a locality and has a population situation that makes innovation and change possible, with relative ease as societies go. Let’s make our educational system relevent for our students who are entering a global economy from a very unique direction.

Let’s stop apologising, play to our strengths and make a real difference.

Mindtools are a way of looking at the use of technology in the classroom. Jonassen’s book ‘Computers as Mindtools’ defines it as being able to use computers and their software in such a way as to ‘free up you mind’.

Using the computer as an intellectual partner allows those engaged to play to their strengths- machines are great at recording and recalling facts and information, the human much better at critical thinking, the creation of knowledge and the ability to reflect on their comprehension and conception of knowledge. ‘Mindtools are a media for collaboratively negociating meaning.’

So, according to Jonassen, how should computers be used in school?

Different softwares and applications come under each of these heading but broadly speaking Computers aid learning in the following way:

Supporting knowledge construction, principally by organising and representing information in a useable format.

Exploration, accessing and comparing information, much like the advance search features on Google and Yahoo.

By Doing, simulating real-life senarios or providing students with the ’sandbox’ to experiment with what can be done.

Enabling communication and collaboration, I immediately thought of wikis, blogs, skype and eliminate as online resources.

Reflecting, this is what I briefly mentioned in the opening where the student engages with the computer as an intellectual partner, freeing the student from the mundain to focus on the higher order work.

This use of technology blends well with constructivist theory, but having software used in this manner does not guarentee more effective learning environments in schools. Much pedagogical awareness by the teacher is required. Using technology, Brown (2000) argues, can sometimes can even be counter productive and destract from the construction of generative knowledge. It is insufficient for technology to simply expose students to large volumes of disorganised information. By take such information and constructing new understandings that impact upon one’s view of the world, only then does it become generative knowledge. There are broader pedagogical issues and classroom management considerations to take into account.

Let’s face it, it still always comes down to the teacher and the way they choose to engage with the technology.

Brown, M. Learning in the 21^st Century: Being critical, going deeper and thinking smarter. Computers in New Zealand Schools, 12 (3), 3-7

Jonassen, D. (2000). What are mindtools? Computers as Mindtools for school. Engaging critical thinking (2^nd ed.,pp3-20). Columbus, Ohio: Merrill.