Educating the Dragon

If sharing is the threat now…. What is hyper-civilisation going to look like when my kid hits college? Surely there is a premise here of get on board or get out of the way… Society is clearly heading down a certain path with technology and all it’s plug-ins. I have known for a long time that students are needing to understand the place of the internet and its tools for a productive economic life in the future but I have not really understood WHY before now. And according to Mark Pesce its because if they fail in grasping this stuff they will be disavantaged more than if I had never learnt to read or write.

The future looks nothing like democracy because democracy which sort to empower the individual is being obsolest by a social order that hyper empowers them.

Mark Pesce

 Below is the contents of an emailI recieved today regarding computer collaboration in the workplace:

Listed below are some applications of computer collaboration that I have been involved in.

1.       Remote PC Control – Software Vendor Debugs their program - 1998
 
An engineering application was crashing unexpectedly. After going through all helpdesk options, the problem could not be solved. The software developers got involved to try and understand why the problem was occurring. They had not seen it before. The software developer was in India and had contacted me on a number of occasions to get more information.
 
In the end – a PCAnywhere session was set up so they could take control of the PC with the problem. This took about 5 attempts from my companies IT department to setup my computer with a static IP address inside the corporate network. Once it was set up – I was able to talk to him on the phone and demonstrate the problem so he could see it happening. Then I left him to solve it. When I returned, the problem had been found. It was to do with the NZ time regional setting that was at +13 hours (daylight savings) which was causing an overflow error in the code. We were the only ones in New Zealand using it which is why they had not seen it before. Note: during the time he was on the computer he could have got access to a number of detailed and sensitive IP documents – because the PC was logged on under my account. A certain amount of trust has to be involved. See problems section below.
 
2.       Sharing a PC session – Software Vendor Debugs their program – 2007
 
Again, a software company (in Israel) was struggling to solve/understand a problem we were having. By using LogMeIn a session was created where we could work together to demonstrate and understand the problem. The client companies IT department needed to be involved as well – as security settings were suspected as part of the problem. Three people were able to share the same computer session. I was on a VPN connection using MS RDP in Havelock North, the IT person in Christchurch was on the same computer using DameWare. The software developer was in Israel was also on using LogMeIn. We were able to demonstrate the problem first hand. It eventuated that the feature we were using and having problems with was not widely used and I suspect not properly tested before release of the software. The software developer was now forced to release a new version since it clearly did not work. Because we had all people present at the same time, they could not hide behind a ‘try this, try that’ stalling tactic as is often the case with really tough problems.
 
3.       Sharing a computer session while on the phone.
 
Applications such as DameWare, RealVNC and others can often be used to control the same PC and enhance an otherwise ‘voice only’ telephone conversation.
 
Problems
 
Problems I have encountered using computer collaboration.
 

• Time Zone – difficult with New Zealand in particular

• Firewalls, proxy servers, routers and other network equipment that gets in the way. Setting up a session can take a long time and involve IT departments – which makes it take even longer. Often it takes several attempts to get everything going. Companies are worried about compromising network security.

• Collaboration often leads to poor planning and understanding. People can become overly dependent on other people to solve their problems (i.e. quickly contact person xyz instead of nutting through a problem and learning the hard, but often better, way).

•  For meeting environments (my experience is with standard multi-location video conference) communication style is often different than that for a traditional meeting. Normally paper documents, whiteboards, clear meeting leadership, body language and facial expressions are very important for complex topics and tricky negotiations. Things will no-doubt improve in the future as technology improves and travel becomes less acceptable because of cost and environmental concerns.
• Some breaches to company security policies are often inevitable as the ability to diagnosing a problem under ‘live’ data conditions is often the key to success.

In summary, I have found the best use of collaboration is as in the examples above where little bugs and other particular issues are demonstrated first hand, rather than trying to describe them using traditional emails. They can then often be solved right there and then.

I have been really finding the teaching of oral Language skills difficult over this term, particularly in the ‘using technology to enhance…’ sort of way.

But today I was teaching in an Intermediate (Y8) class today in Hastings, New Zealand who were working on ‘projects’ on oral language-

One group was practicing and a play, another looking a Shakespeare’s Macbeth. But the group I was most interested in were considering Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a dream’ speech. They have to go on Youtube and listen to the footage then they accessed the ‘script’ via the web.

They had to identify the techniques MLK used in his speech to connect with the audience and then answer some questions independently.

They needed to find out about:

Ku Klux Clan

‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’

Rosa Parks

Segregation

Civil Rights

Slavery

All through the web and then present their findings.

If I were doing this with my class I’d have them use photo Story or Voicethread to make the final presentation.

What a fantastic use of technology in the classroom context.

I must confess this session was not my creation but the teacher of the class. Well done.

For those who signed up to my twitter you’ll know I’ve been thinking about ICTPD. Well here is my full thought….. 

There is a huge difference been ‘training’ and professional development. Even so many years through the ICTPD model in
New Zealand there seems mch confusion about the two terms and they remain in the minds of most as synonymous. But that is not strictly true. Sure there is some overlap, and some need for both aspects but when training (as in the ‘how to’ aspect of ICT) is called professional development it often. In my experience anyway squeezes out the true PD ( as in the ‘considering classroom pedagogy’)  

It is often argued ‘upskilling teachers will mean they will begin to use this technology with their classes’ – this maybe true but will it have the maximum desired outcome? I think not- A class’s use of technology after such training of the teacher will remain ‘low level’ – skills oriented level. Where as the desired outcome should be  a ‘higher level use of ICT for learning’.  

Having said that if the focus is purely professional development – the teacher is more likely to be reliant on the ICT literate students to problem solve the applications.  Which may be fine for classes of older students but with juniors their use of ICT will naturally involve explicit ‘skills’ teaching.  

My thought is that the facilitators of ICTPD clusters must take a serious look at what they are providing. Perhaps it needs to be more balanced. Perhaps the balance that needs to be redressed is on a school by school, teacher by teacher basis? But having said that there still needs to be a professional development element that goes beyond up-skilling and into the heart of classroom practise.  

So I would like to leave it there for now.  

What is the most effective ICT professional development you’ve ever had?  

How do you, in your school, go beyond upskilling/ just in time training?   

What does the ‘changing pedagogy’ really look like in New Zealand schools? Or around the world for that matter?

And is there a natural desire with ICT for professional development or is ICTPD seen a ‘you must!” storm cloud of negativity?

Scott McLeod talks in this post about having too much stuff. It got me thinking about what stuff I’ve got and what stuff I’ve been promised.

Last year in my classroom I had:

Interactive Whiteboard

Data projector

Shared digital camera

School pads

My laptop

Webcam

Headset and microphone

This year I have (added to the above):

PRS – Classroom response units

Scanner

3 networked and wired computers

Wireless keyboard

What I have coming (next term):

3 or 4 laptops for children to access (replacing the networked computers)

Is it too much? Certainly the number of cables linking everything are too much.

How much would it cost to have all the above reconfigured for wireless/ Bluetooth do you think?