Educating the Dragon

I have been listening to Wes Fryer’s podcast on K12 Online, trying to catch up from a summer unplugged. There was much in this talk of merit, as there is in many of his podcast, but a statement he made just seemed to jump up and slap me about the face, he said:

“I don’t like the word train….who do we train? Animals. Teachers aren’t animals. Both teachers and students are both learners…. treating them as professional learners is very important.” (Wesley Fryer, 2008-02-06-speedofcreativity)

I concur.

If teachers stop learning, adapting, developing and changing their practice over time than that has got to be bad for the students.

If teachers do not remain current in their knowledge of the profession and the wider world then that has got to be bad for the students.

If teachers are weighted down by the burden we call ‘Admin’ then the enersy they have for classroom practise is drained, that has got to be bad for the students.

If teachers are overwelmed by the enormity of the work through sheer numbers of students they have responsibility for that has got to be bad for the students.

But if the teacher is,

….free from the shackles of unnecessary paperwork,

….free to support and nuture the relationships within a supportive, moderately sized classroom,

… free to seek out learning opportunites for themselves and develop professionally in a direction of their choosing,

…. free to ENJOY their chosen career.

…that has got to be good for the students.

We have got to pass on the passion, model the ideal of being a life-long learner.

After all,

“Teachers make all other professions possible.”

-Annie Belott

…Considering metacognition

I have  been reviewing Rubert Wegerif’s Litureature Review in Thinking Skills, Technology and Learning (yes, all the capitals are correct).

A few thoughts occurred to me as I read, they are kinda random so excuse me.

The ability to have ‘higher order thinking skills’ should be seperated out from having the ability to express your thinking. But then how is that possible. Thinking is considered to have a collective, social aspect to it and therefore knowing the language of thinking is just as important to thinking itself- some perhaps go as far as to say that without the ability to communicate ideas where is the value in thinking at all. My point is that, yes we should be teaching thinking skills but let’s teach communication skills too. Syncronous and asyncronous alike….

Perhaps this is where WEB2.0 comes in. There is great potential through the internet to develop communication skills. I really not that good synchronously, I need time to contemplate, and consider before replying… that’s what I like about my blog, its asynchrous. Perhaps there are others, students, who for similar reasons would prefer to develop dialalogue in this way.

Another point discussed in the paper is the development of classroom environments, making them more condusive to the development of thinking skills, turning the classroom into into a community that supports discussion and thinking. So how is this done? And what is the advantage of engaging the read/write web in this task? There are possiblilties through Skype, Elluminate and others to have experts ‘visit’ your classroom, or you ‘visit’ other classes around the country, around the world. Let’s broaden the horizons.

“One educational implication is that teaching thinking skills involves changing the social context to create conditions that at least approximate to what an ‘ideal speech situation’”(Wegerif, 2002, p.14) Does this not have Classroom 2.0 written all over it?

So, back here in the real world, with twenty-six Year3’s in my room tomorrow. What does Classroom 2.0 look like at ground level?

That’s what I’m enjoying exploring through the K12 online conference this year!

Have just finished watching Clarence Fischer classroom 2.0 presentation.  

It’s morning tea time here at my school so I’m typing as fast as I can. 

He made some great points about the ‘new classroom’ that fitted into my ideas and extended my thinking about pedagogy. 

How classroom pedagogy works, currently, is a little like that old addige about personalities being the sum of my yesterdays. Classroom Pedagogy is an evolution of ideas and strategies which appears to go in cycles if any ‘older’ teachers in my school are to be believed. 

The problem with Classroom 2.0 is that it does not fit into the cycle process it is a whole mind shift that is required. It is not something that is a fad and we will come around to it again in another few years after with finished with Intergrated learning style (or thematic study, as they used to call it)  

Clarence stated  Pedagogy- our ability and enthusiasm for this shift will go hand in hand with the support and encouragement we get ‘from the top’ (the senior management in the school- rather than the ‘the Ministry) How long can a teacher sustain their motivation if ‘the change’ is not really a change but an add on to the current, already overloaded, system. For a sustainable pedagogical shift their needs to be an attitude change. I was talking with friends not so long ago about this very issue and the importance of matching ‘Web2.0-teachers’ with ‘Web2.0-management’ – what a powerful potential for change! 

Clarence talked about this attitude change and I fully agree with his observations. We are very fortunate in
New Zealand right now. Our Minister of Education seems to have something of a Web2.0 understanding of the education community. The current Ministry Document also nod towards this shifting in education. However, I feel there is something of a time-lag between these publications, the minister’s speeches and what it looks like in the schools across
New Zealand. Should this be a grassroots movement or a directive from the top? Some combination of both is what is required, that what an attitudinal change is all about. 

The Tools, or rather access to the tools is vital, there are many more Web2.0 tools available than the few Clarence mentioned. All of them have value in the social-networking realm and many of them show great promise for the educational setting. Education and Learning are all about the relationship and the collaboration in learning that allows our students to become the ‘life-long learners’ they need to be. 

The change that is required should begin with us. If you are reading this, or have heard Clarence’s presentation then you are well on the way to making this change. We all have responsibily in our schools to ‘infect’ our staff with the desire for this radical change. 

I loved the ‘studio’ style of classroom and what I could see in the classroom with its layout and environment encouraged me to look again at my classroom, through fresh 2.0-glasses. 

What we can learners together. Let’s work like it.

In my presentation on SkypeTalkandWrite I spent very little time talking about the background to its use in the classroom. 

Skypetalkandwrite is a synchronous conferencing tool. In this book David Jonassen talks about ‘How..synchronous conferencing can be used as a mindtool.’ 

These tools are not new, back in the day there were MOOs,  MUSEs, MUSHs, MUDs some or all of these are still in use in various forms.  

Neither is skypetalkandwrite unique Microsoft Netmeeting,  CUseeME are two other examples on synchronous conferencing being used today and I’m sure there are others. 

What I’d like to focus on here is the value of the real-time communication which enables learners to become discursive members of a wider community.  As with any level of real time conversation it is important to ensure it stays on track. There is a fine line here to consider, with synchronous conferences being in nature social it is important to establish, and maintain, the purpose of the discourse to avoid the quality of conversation spiralling downwards.One of the key ways to do this is offer purposeful conversation, students require a project to engage with, an issue to debate or a problem to resolve. It is often helpful for students to share a workspace on line, it is good for then to see a product of their labours. This is where the ‘object’- the shared whiteboard provided by the TalkandWrite software comes in, it focuses the students attention on the project at had. Without a shared ‘object’ conversation can deteriorate very quickly (just like a real classroom)  

The single most powerful aspect of a synchronous conference is the immediacy. ‘Live interactions produce more motivation to contribute’ 

There are other applications out there, Web 2.0 is full of synchronous and asynchronous tools. I guess it’s what drives the social networking, the picking and choosing of applications to meet your communication needs. As I type this I was engaged in a conversation with Amanda about this very subject and I started out hoping to support my presentation with some theory but never mind. This is how I conversation went: 

Dragon09 says: Am writing a post about synchronous conferences…. any thoughts? 

Amanda says: i.e. k12 online chats?

Dragon09 says: yeah true…Skype too

Amanda says: or what Ewan talks about in his blog about being able to respond while he gives his keynote?

Dragon09 says: Sort of, but I think that is technically asynchronous cos you don’t need to be on at the same time like we are now

Amanda says: ah yes you would be right in that

Dragon09 says: Twitters an interesting one, its kinda both.. if you think about our ERO twitters yesterday, hours apart, but if you catch people on at the same time it can be…synchronous

Amanda says: definitely

Amanda says: I think that they synchronous element is important in a conference I went to Ulearn last year but didn’t have the contact other than the people i went to school with and some people i met. But after I met you and begun to have more contact with people within the conference via twitters it changed the dimension of the conference. It changed from being me thoughts between the speaker and myself to the possibility of having other peoples opinions i.e. the Helen Baxter presentation and the twitters and examples that were given in rebuttal or agreement with her presentation It meant that I was questioning and thinking during the keynote to a higher dimension than if I was just sitting there listening to HER. Make sense?

Here’s a post of Chris’….. Check it out. There is much planned for the K12online conference

Click here as they say….