Educating the Dragon

 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 had a great day today.

So many highs, it’s unreal. Firstly I actually get chance to spend time in the bloggers cafe with old friends. Then I facilite a discussion on the Did you know? material. with Allanah live blogging it. An us all working together on a google doc. Head researcher Amaanda (sic) putting in the links as we go. If you’re interested our notes on the preceedings appear on slideshare. But be warned, to read it you need to download it. With promises of added information etc being made. I spent much of yesterday asking myself, “whose Nicki Gemmel, I know that name.” In fact it was not until I got to the session did she say Nix. and the penny finally dropped. A big thank you to all those present and contributing to the discussion. And those of you who joined in the live chat. I walked out smiling. If you want liking to the google doc just comment and fix you up.

Secondly, I managed to make it to Rachel’s presentation on social bookmarking- She had 41 on her list but I recken it was closer to 50. She worked so hard!

Then the conference dinner. I was able to chat with some old friends AND made some new ones. That is always good.

I even got to the dance floor and ‘got on down’ until I caught myself dancing like my old man and promptly jigged my way off the dance floor.

It’s now 1am and I’m feeling tired but happy. Got Breakfast with Jocelyn, Allanah and Greg tomorrow…. Anyone remember where the Embassy is? Under the thingys and turn right? Turn right and go under the thingys? Best ring in the morning!

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.

 

Karen Boyes

21^st Century Learners

We so often expect for ‘me to win someone has to loose’ For so long Karen argues that has been the case in Education. Its about time we took a serious look at that. With the new possiblities through the new curriculum in New Zealand we have a opportunity to address this imbalance and make education a ‘win-win’ situation.

 

Technology is changing, REALLY fast now. Karen challenges us and asks: Are we keeping up? Are you? Am I?

Interactive Whiteboard are good and a step in the right direction but the kids very quickly ask, ‘yep…now what?” “What’s next?”

 

 

So what skills are they going to need for the 21^st century? We need to turn them into thinkers and Learners for the 21^st century.

Think of it: Wikipedia is the first port of call for information, youtube, iTunes two billion tunes available off the web. Gone are the days of “ooooo, I just bought my first stereo,/walkman.”

, access to the world…. TradeMe is fast becoming the first not the last port of call for purchases.

Everything is happening too fast.

There are six pionts that Ted McCain points to, to help us in developing the 21^st century citizen:

 

Resist the temptation to tell

Kids are different to in our day.. Opening the door through education is no longer required because now they have access. We need to teach them to inter-relate and use the information effectively. Why are we labelling kids so early when the brain matures at such a vastly different time from student to student. Educational milestones; reading this well aged 6,7,8 NUMP level 3,4,5 by such and such. They should be a guide and we rather than saying “They are not developing” we should rather scaffold their learning with the view to them ‘maturing’ in their learnnig later. (Karen said that bit better than I typed it but I hope you get the idea)

Back on track….. With Apollo 11 being only 3% ‘on target’ for its mission to the moon so our kids need to be, we as teacher spending 97% of our time on ‘course correction’.

Let them experience life and learning they have to do it for themselves; how does a child learn about ‘hot’ you can tell them off all you like be until they touch hot they won’t full understand the concept- My boy was like this, at 18 months he touched the bulb of the beside light when it had been on a couple of minutes, Now when I say ‘That’ll be hot’ he understands more fully- there is pain and discomfort involoved that he does not want to experience again.

 

Stop teaching decontextualised information

We need to give them a real world context. Dr David Sousa states that we needs to learning to:

1 make sense

2 have meaning

 

How do we get them to buy into learning?

 

Stop giving the final product of our thinking.

- Enpower them to do it.

 Why are they still dependant at Y13?

75% of tasks we do in the classroom kids should be doing. Sure we need to scaffold you can’t just expect them to that on Monday morning– Who decides what is important to learn in your classroom? You, the government or the kids! Who should decide?

 

Problems first teaching second-

Getting the children empowered through ‘role play’ Please see Edcast one or my example of Ian Jukes’ talk

 

Progressively withdraw from helping.

ICT stands for the progression towards independence : Independent , Collaborative, Teacher. Progress through the year. They become dependent and less reliant on teacher input

Re-evaluate evaluation.

Have we missed something. Is the written test enough??

Looking below the surface- what is it we are about- what is the best for their futures?

 

 

Teacher make every other profession possible- 21^st Century.

Ian Jukes “We are doing a great job in educating our kids for the 1970’s”

 

Recommended reading:

 

“The tipping point” by Malcolm Gladwell.

 

“The World is Flat”  by Thomas Friedman.

 

“A whole new Mind” by Daniel Pink

 

“The singularity is near” Ray Kurzweil

 

‘Teaching for Tomorrow’ by Ted McCain

 

“The necessity of experience” by Edward Reed

 

 

Contact details:

karen@spectrummeducation.com

www.spectrumeducation.com

I may have quit my course but my brain is still working overtime. Over the next weeks you may have to read through my ramblings about the things I have learnt. 

I want to talk about Explorers, I feel we are all explorers in new ICTs. We’re the ones experimenting in the classroom. The edublogosphere is filled with cases of people explaining and reflecting on their ever changing practises with ICT in their classrooms. We’re dealing with real experiences, real students, real observations. But what makes our observations valid? Are we engaging in critical thinking and and reflecting in the right way? Jane Nicholl’s work on Oral Language and podcasting is perhaps a good example. Many of Vicki Davies reflections are critical in nature. But much of our, mine most of all, observations and reflections are low level and classed by academia as ‘anecdotal’. My concern lies in the fact that we are all at the cutting edge, where today’s technologies meet today’s students. But the quality of our reflections, perhaps, needs to go up a notch as Falloon comments “ there has been little conclusive empirical research to prove” (Falloon, 2003, p. 23) that ICT enhances outcomes for students. If academia is dismissing our contribution as ‘anecdotal’ then that filters through to policy makers and curriculum designers. We have an opportunity to drag the educational perspective out of the industrial age and into the 21^st century, as noted by David Warlick , and others.

So do we need to be thinking about our practise in terms of Jonassen’s Mindtools, or Atkin’s papers? How relevant are these theoretical perspectives? Do we need to consider such things to draw our experiences out of the micro level and up to a macro level? Is that our job or is someone else going to pull all this anecdotal material together for us to present the 21^st century classroom perspective?  

If not us, me, then who?

Falloon, G. (1999). Developing exemplary practice: Why are some teachers better at IT than others? Computers in New Zealand Schools, 15 (1), 19-23.