edutech

As a teacher you can use a number of Web 2:0 applications in the classroom….you just need to think differently……

Try some of these:

• Sam Animation – very easy web based (free) application that you can use either on a mac with the built in iSight camera or a PC with a web camera. See examples

Watch the Youtube clip below to see how fast the future is bearing down upon us….as educators we have to embrace the world as it is and let go of our tenacious hold on the past that makes us feel safe!

It is our responsibility as the educators of this current generation to find a way to bring the world in which we live (that’s all of us – not just the “Digital Natives”) into the classroom…

Whilst this clip is about commercial applications imagine what you could do in the classroom…How much fun could this be??

In this blog entry I have gathered a number of quotes from educators and others – use them as a springboard for your own thoughts about what you are learning and experiencing as you attend classes and enter into the world of education in schools. Research more if any of these people interest you or spark something in you…

1. ‘How has the world of the child changed in the last 150 years?’ … the answer is. ‘It’s hard to imagine any way in which it hasn’t changed….they’re’ immersed in all kinds of stuff that was unheard of 150years ago, and yet if you look at schools today versus 100 years ago, they are more similar than dissimilar’. Peter Senge
2. I imagine a school system that recognizes learning is natural, that a love of learning is normal, and that real learning is passionate learning. A school curriculum that values questions above answers…creativity above fact regurgitation…individuality above conformity.. and excellence above standardized performance….. And we must reject all notions of ‘reform’ that serve up more of the same: more testing, more ’standards’, more uniformity, more conformity, more bureaucracy. Tom Peters Author ‘Re-imagine’ www.tompeters.com
3. ‘Life can only be understood backwards but you have to live it forward. You can only do that by stepping into uncertainty and by trying, within this uncertainty, to create your own islands of security….The new security will be a belief that …if this doesn’t work out you could do something else’. You are your own security’. Charles Handy Business Philosopher.
4. I want my children to understand the world, but not just because the world is fascinating and the human mind is curious. I want them to understand it so that they will be positioned to make it a better place. Knowledge is not the same as morality, but we need to understand if we are to avoid past mistakes and move in productive directions. Howard Gardner
5. ‘ I am entirely certain that twenty years from now we will look back at education as it is practiced in most schools today and wonder how we could tolerated anything so primitive.’ John W Gardner
6. ‘We imagine a school in which students and teachers excitedly and joyfully stretch themselves to their limits in pursuit of projects built on their vision…not one that succeeds in making apathetic students satisfying minimal standards.’ S Papert
7. ‘It is our belief that schools in the main are entering the twenty-first century with structures and more importantly, underlying assumptions which are nineteenth century in origins, or relating to the world of the 1950 or 1960s.’ Bowring -Carr and Burnham West UK Educators
8. ‘In order to transform schools successfully, educators need to navigate the difficult space between letting go of old patterns and grabbing on to new ones.’ Deal 1990
9. ‘Until recently, education has had it backwards, caring little for the teacher… and enormously about the content. Yet it is a gifted teacher who can infect a generation with the excitement of learning.’ Aquarian Conspiracy
10. ‘We must give more attention to the interplay between the science of teaching – pedagogy – and the art of teaching… A teacher must be anchored in pedagogy and blend imagination, creativity and inspiration into the teaching learning process to ignite a passion for learning in student.’ Peyton Williams, President ASCD 2003
11. ‘School improvement is most surely and thoroughly achieved when teachers engage in frequent, continuous and increasingly concrete talk about teaching practices… capable of distinguishing one practice and it’s virtue from another.’ Judith Warren Little Education Researcher
12. Education needs to embrace radical, new and unconventional approaches to deeper teaching and learning for understanding if we want students to be equipped to flourish in an ever-more complicated world…Professor David Perkins, Harvard

There is much written about the “Digital Divide”  or the Digital Disconnect” but to date, most has been constructed by adults attempting to anecdotally make sense of where the students in our schools “are”. Increasingly, research is being based on direct feedback from students. In some schools, students are being given a voice when it comes to participating in future directions of learning….

View the following to read some current research findings and to see ways that students are being empowered to speak about how they want to learn: Do some research for yourself – speak to the students you are teaching – have a look at what you do in the world outside the classroom and ask yourself if you are bridging the divide?

http://www.pewinternet.org/PPF/r/67/report_display.asp

Recently I have been thinking a lot about teaching and how we integrate technology into the classroom. Today, after watching the “Freedom Writers” and reflecting on the Ron Clark Story, Frank McCourt’s “Teacher Man” and other stories of teaching inspiration I began to think about WHY we teach…and I believe that is something you should do every day.

It’s not the school – public or private, the holidays, the autonomy in the classroom, the Ms or Sir when you are finally recognised as a teacher….it’s what you do for each and every student who comes through your door. This may sound a little melodramatic but it IS why we teach.

The technologies we use, the ways in which we try to bring the world of our students into the classroom only makes sense if we have a connection to their world….if we open the window into their lives and share that understanding. This doesn’t mean you have to become a substitute social worker – you just have to develop a relationship with your students that opens the pathway for respect – to them and from them. Without this, there aren’t any resources, technologies etc that will make even the slightest difference to the learning that takes place in your classroom.

Read the excerpts from this book” Why we Teach” and perhaps make comments here as to why you want to teach – or reflect on what you have experienced during your prac…and watch this short video clip from the real teacher, Erin Gruwell, who inspired the movie Freedom Writers…use technologies to be creative, be adventurous – but most importantly create your own story!

In the classroom it is our responsibility to combine the wisdom we bring from the pedagocial experiences we have to the world of digitalisation in which our students live. In this, we need to let go of the feeling of being “Digital Immigrants” which in itself determines a sense of not quite belonging, not quite being “integrated” and of always being somewhat on the peripheral edge of understanding – on the outside, looking in through the frosted window into a world where we are not quite comfortable ….we have the responsibility instead, to be “Digital Crusaders” where we envision, and develop, the seamless school/classroom that enables open access to the technologies of the day to enhance learning.

When we talk about the classroom environment and how we can empower the students in our schools to “reach their potential” …… perhaps we should focus on developing a strong foundation of learning and “take the lid off” thereby, removing the measure of potential – the “lid” we seem to think exists and we all strive to achieve. Is there an actual measure of potential or are we aiming to develop life long learners without the expectations of achievement or comletion and mastery of  certain level? How can we do this by embracing the world in which our students (and indeed ourselves!) live, yet develop an understanding of lateral knowledge rather than vertical knowledge and steps of achievement. Is education a vortex of continual information, or a staircase that meets an eventual end, built by the constraints of the human mind (”Free your mind” – Morpheous from The Matrix).

Wayne Gretsky, the famous hockey player coined the original phrase; “Skate to where the puck’s going to be…not where it is.” I suppose he was trying to say that you have to anticipate the action….How does this apply to the classroom environment that we are creating? What does this mean to “you” as a teacher? To the students who are in your classrooms?

Recently, a group of teachers were discussing the “future” directions for education in a particular school…the issue of the connectedness for students was raised – is their world outside school connected to their world inside the school “walls”? This is a discussion that has been occurring for many years and in many different forums – both locally and inernationally….so, what are we doing? When is the discussion going to translate into change? Or…is the lack of connectedness as big an issue as we think? Within the coming months I will be facilitating an online discussion forum with students and student teachers around the world where this issue will be a major focus….if you would like to participate I will post the wiki/blog url to this site when it becomes available. In the meantime, consider…”how relevant is school” (to the lives of our young people)?? What are the expectations of students of today – or what should they be? Are we really preparing our students for the 21st C or for a world that has long passed? View Education Today and tomorrow and 21stC Educationto begin to explore these ideas….

Today, the classroom should be where learning comes first and the classroom has no boundaries….is this really a possibility? Can we, as educators, weave the world of the student into the classroom and system we deal with on a day to day basis?