Educating the Dragon

Are we getting over it?  Or is it part of the message that needs repeating in different ways, to engage different people. TO AWAKEN A WORLD TO IT’S OWN FUTURE!!!!

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.

Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants by Marc Prensky has to be one of the most commented on concepts in recent times. I have a few issues I wish to rise regarding this piece of writing, particularly in light of how it is being used throughout the world today.

Our students have changed radically. Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach.

 Marc begins with this statement, but is it true? Have our students really changed that significantly? What is Marc basing that statement on, there is no reference to research carried out or other reading he has gleaned that piece of information from.

Today’s students – K through college – represent the first generations to grow up with this new technology. They have spent their entire lives surrounded by and using computers, videogames, digital music players, video cams, cell phones, and all the other toys and tools of the digital age.  

What a sweeping generalisation, who are they, and by ‘they’  is it really all of them, most of them, those that ‘matter’, who matters anyway, how do you measure that? So many questions.

Today’s average college grads have spent less than 5,000 hours of their lives reading, but over 10,000 hours playing video games (not to mention 20,000 hours watching TV).

 Where have these figure come from? Is a simple question of multiplying up from hours in the day, who is this based on?

Says Dr. Bruce D. Berry of

Baylor
College of Medicine.  

Who is Doctor Bruce? What is he a doctor of? What research is he basing his statement on? I quick Google search for the man in question simply refers to Marc’s other work. It was written six years ago, I guess we’ve all moved on since then.

On page 2 of  Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants Marc talks about digital language and how us ‘immigrants’ have to learn ‘digital’ like a second language…. And a language learned later in life, scientists tell us, goes into a different part of the brain. Does it? What scientists? Is learning to work an ipod really the same as learning a second language? Perhaps Marc is taking his analogue a little too far?

 Digital Immigrants don’t believe their students can learn successfully while watching TV or listening to music, because they (the Immigrants) can’t.  

Is this statement really true? I know the second part is (for me anyway) but that doesn’t mean the first part is. Where’s the study to back up this claim?

My own preference for teaching Digital Natives is to invent computer games to do the job, even for the most serious content.  

It is good to here Marc talk about his own preferences and what an innovative way of going about teaching. Good on you Marc, My issue, rather is the way his statement has been taken by companies, educators and motivational speakers to turn the realm of education into one big game.

Does this mean that we can ignore Marc’s work? That is simply an interesting picture and can be dismissed out of hand? I would suggest the answer is still NO.

Firstly, if you sat there nodding while you read thinking, either “yep, that’s my son/ daughter” or “those are my clueless teachers he’s talking about.” then that has some merit, and it gains more weight if lots of folks around the globe are nodding away with you and me.

Secondly, since its publication  the title of the book has:

 24,000 hits on Google 251 blog posts about “Digital Natives, Digital Immigrants” on Technoratithe most recent on my writing this being 13 hours ago. That is 6 years after its publication. 

Finally, when read in the contexts of books such as Growing Up digital by Don Tapscott or The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman it is given some weight, reflected, as it were from these publications. 

Is it a scholarly work? Probably not. Is it a well written opinion piece? Perhaps. Does it serve as a wake up call for academia and governments to take a serious look at education? Most definitely.

I blogged about it ages ago, Vicki Davies commented and David Warlick showed interest too.

It finally happened, in little old
Flaxmere, New Zealand. The Kid’s Conference.

Kimi Ora, Flaxmere Primary,
Iron Gate and Peterhead came together to showcase what they have been doing with ICT over the past couple of months. We had groups of children demonstrating how Google SketchUp, Art Rage and PowerPoint worked, we had some working with a green screen and my kids showed off their Talk and Write work with Taradale Intermediate School.

What a buzz, kids sharing with kids, teaching each other and enthusing about the possibilities of these applications and tools.

Sitech were on hand to add their input into proceedings and provided additional hardware so thanks for that Kevin.

But it was the kid presenters who really made the day. I was so proud of them all. There enthusiasm for it all practically brought tears to my eyes.

Just a thought from the day, part of a discussion I had with team members down there.

We were talking about how important it is that ALL levels of education jump on board with the new move to Web 2.0 otherwise I’ll enthuse my 7 year olds and get them thinking about broader contexts and incorporating technology use in their work but then they have a further 11 years of School 1.0 to have all that drained from them. Fortunately that is not happening in Flaxmere as the whole Cluster is part of the Sitech Champion Schools Programme, dedicated to teacher PD in the area of technology, so as teachers across the year levels become up-skilled our kids will continue to have those technology opportunities in their learning. (for other pictures from the conference click here)

I sense they are quite privileged in that regard. Are other areas in
New Zealand/ around the globe experiencing what we are in Flaxmere?

Here it is, my second effort after “Why teach technology?” into the TeacherTube zone of inspiring teachers to investigate the Pandora’s box that is Web 2.0.

I was culling my folder entitled “Web discussions” where I store past posts and bits and pieces I’ve cut and pasted for use later on. I came across the words included in me second video presentation; I think I got them off Durff’s Blog, if it wasn’t from there it was someone similarly thoughtful, observant and insightful, but it sounds like Durff to me. Anyway here it is entitled: “School 1.0 v School 2.0 “On your marks…””

Teaching Sagittarian will laugh at me as I still am unable to embed my own videos and Miguel of Around the Corner will no doubt roll his eyes at me as, yes, I used PhotoStory3 yet again. I’m not sure this presentation is going to give Vicki Davies the ‘chills’ like last time, but them I feel this is more of a Die Hard 2 moment rather then a Godfather II. What do you think?

Download: School 1.0 v School 2.0 “On your marks…”

Teaching Sagittarian check this out, I DID IT! (Thanks to the new embed feature for WordPress on TeacherTube )