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

By way of a literacy warm up the other day we all sat around in a circle and told a story.

There were not many rules to this game:

1. No names of people in the room are allowed

2. No more than 3 sentences spoken

3. The final sentence should be left half finished.

It was a step of faith on my part, I have not tried this with any group or class before. I was pleasently surprised. First with the ideas flowing and also the sense that the story made in the end. I found it a great warm up activity, particularly if you disperse the ‘not so imaginative’ students around the circle.

I would love it if you could play….

"Once upon a time, in a land not so far away, there lived a wollot, whose name was Fringle. Now Fringle lived in a small cave on the edge of a vast forest. There was nothing Fringle enjoyed more than…."

Well I have to say I have begun to share longer written pieces under Articles in the sidebar. I’d just like to note that I realise that ‘Articles’ is a plural even though there is but one available for your view. My first piece begins:

"In January 2006, Peterhead School became part of the ‘Champion Schools Programme’ fostered by Sitech Systems. As part of this initiative the author was given an assortment of technology; an interactive whiteboard, a sound system, and the classroom response system called PRS. Professional development sessions focused the author’s attention on the use of PRS to address the Key Competency, Thinking Skills. This paper will critically discuss the potential of a classroom response system (CRS) to develop children’s thinking skills, and in particular higher order thinking."

Read on…

…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!