Students Strike Back

In term 1, 2008, students in my 10th grade Information Software Technology class studied ‘networks’. In the end students had to build a PC from parts, install and OS, network via a router and exchange a file. This was the practical component. Theory revolved around a group wiki.

4 students decided to take this a step further and hooked up 4 computers to a small router and discovered that they could not play Need For Speed Carbon, due to lack of graphics card grunt. So they then figured out that they could get Counter Strike to run on what they had. Now there is a bit of work in learning that as the had assumed that things would ‘just work’. On the first day, they opened lunch time game room and made a whopping $4.00. Their business model was somewhat floored. $1 per machine per lunchtime. So they figured out that this was not going to yield the end of week pizza they we’re aiming for.

So now, 5 weeks on, they have learned quite a lot. Desire for pizza has given way to working out what new tech they can buy to diversify from Counter Strike. They decided not to buy $30 graphics cards to upgrade the PC game play. They now have about 20 PCs, and making about $50 a day with ease, so didn’t see that they could charge more, and they have plenty of happy customers.

They have also figured out what makes a ‘good customer’. So are aiming at the kids in 7th and 8th grade.

They had some problems getting kids to ‘get off’ machines at the end of their game, so have installed a ‘cyber cafe’ application (freeware) to time the use of the machines and limit each payer to 15 minutes. This save a lot of effort in coaxing players off they game. They decided this, they found the application and then they figured out how to it worked without crashing the working LAN game. They have replaced older mice, got a few new keyboards, bought network cables and even figured out the router I gave them was slow and hassled me for a better one.

These kids are not Project Based Learning – but are the kids that piloted my early explorations in Web2.0. They now readily apply skills to end product. The original learning has given way to some very clever group collaboration, business planning and economics.

They have a ‘bank account’ at school and are using that to put money in, and to take money out to buy their equipment. They have made well over a thousand dollars in 5 weeks. And before you jump up and down, the most a kid can spend is $3 on gaming, and they ensure that kids are not there everyday. So they have figured out social considerations too.

They run the room and I have no need to get involved in the day to day running. They do come and ask the odd question, but on the whole I think that if I get involved it might turn all ’schoolie’.

There are kids in there now who I’ve previously seen as ‘loners’ in the playground. They are creating new social groups. Kids in junior grades are learning from the 10th graders about networking already and it’s a growing venture. They are about to buy a Playstation 3 for the room – as they are seeing the need to diversify their operation … and working on a plan to run a prize based tournament.

All this from a bunch of old PCs that we’re sitting unloved. At times, I really think that it’s critical for teachers to stop teaching … but only when your kids have developed enough skills to be able to make more of their own decisions. This is authentic learning – and didn’t cost a cent – apart from having to go buy the Friday Pizzas (they need to budget for my fuel costs!).

Myst In Primary English

Wow how impressive is this – but its a game – obviously we can use that in our school – can we?

ParraSim takes shape

There are a number of ’systems’ that I am embedding into Classroom2.0. All the time, I want to ensure that we are offering our students and staff access to creative and useful technologies. High on the list for me is what we generically call ‘Virtual Worlds’, specifically Second Life powered worlds. We have been involved with Skoolaborate for a while now and many students are actively engaged in the development of their visual skills and modeling skills in that regard.

Working with Judy O’Connell, we established a thriving Ning Group a month or so ago, which I am really pleased to say has been joined by many in the SLEd community. SecondClassroom we hope, will be a community that will develop practical learning projects and mentor teachers who see the value of virtual worlds – not just SL – but anything which can be used to stimulate and motivate students into problem solving, thinking and using immersion technologies to learn.

Enter a conversation with Jokaydian Gnu Curry. A week or so later, our OpenSim is operational, all be it in a testing phase. Right now we’re reading as much as we can … and using the SL Client to view OpenSim.

Running on our network, we hope that we will be able to delivery a ‘grid’ to our school, and mate OpenSim with our user database to generate 900 Avatars for students. We are estimating that only 10% would be active at one time, and so the server build and network infrastructure is aimed at allowing up to 200 avatars active at one time. But this is very early days. It is great to be in frontier town! – there is so much activity around OpenSim with some very passionate Open Source developers.

There are some significant advantages over SL at this point to us, given that we are looking at High School use. Not needing a ‘currency’, control over accounts and server architecture, control over network delivery and management of the desktop client being a few.

We are aiming to be stable enough to offer this sim to the SecondClassroom community in mid-July. We have a stack of ideas to explore on how to grow and manage it … but today it was great to generate our first avatar. We then proceeded to create some test-avatars for friends to begin testing with … and so have create one avatar for each of the members of the Ramones. Can’t wait to see Dee Dee rez his first prim.

Thanks to everyone who has helped out so far, and the support and conversations I’ve had with the Jokaydian community. No least Jo Kay, to whom so many owe so much in such a short space of time.

I really hope that this sim will significantly boost the student and schools involvement in developing High School Curriculum activities with virtual worlds. The next few months are going to involve some very very late nights as the SecondClassroom community get to grips with the idea of having a TeenOpenSim.

Two Trick Ponies

In a recent network upgrade to SP3, we have also installed a ‘remote desktop’ application that allows us to control, monitor, screen share, file share etc., between IT Admin, Teachers and Students.

Observation of students in a real time activity – with zero lag over a gigabit network.

Today I watched a class who were obviously given some task that involved looking up the the term ‘topographic map’, which I can only assume they will need to know about to apply some where else.

Immediately 90% of the screens I watched did the following:

• The Googled the word ‘topographical’ or some ‘topagraphical’
• They then scrolled down until they found the wikipedia link to the word
• Next the screen rapidly scrolled up and down – I assume that they were skimming for keywords.

They invariably went back to Google and click a few other links, and this activity carried on for a few minutes, going back and forth, skimming for keywords. When the students was faced with the stark reality that they needed to read some of the Wikipedia content, not just scroll and skim. On the whole, their internet activity reverted to messing about with iGoogle, and occupying their time. They seemed reluctant to ‘read’ wikipedia – over an above skimming.

This to me highlights the need for teachers to teach students how to ‘use’ wikipedia and produce far more detailed hyper text in their lesson contructs.

Just an observation – on the use of the internet in one instance, but it would be interesting to know if there are recent studies in ‘digital attention spans’ in the digital classroom.

Students are released into the activity – but is a serious mistake to think that because the appear to be ‘on the internet’ that they are ‘learning’. While ‘digital natives’ quickly learn to ‘use’ new tools, I would suggest that after an burst of activity lasting 5 minutes or so, many students are unable to sustain reading.

I am not surprised by this, after all, being able to ’skim and trim’ from the vast amount of information offered to Educators is something I am guilty of – but at least I know what it is I ‘need to know’.

As we begin at my school the integration of ‘digital taxonomies’ into our curriculum, and as staff are beginning to get a better understanding of the ‘why’ or Web2.0 – it highlights the need for us to assist teachers in re-thinking lessons. One key memory I have when at University – was the advice ‘to prepare your lessons well’.

This now means that teachers need access, time and professional development in order to ‘prepare’ a lesson. Actvities need to consider that many students lack the ability to conduct any ’sustained’ reading online.

One solution is to use Diigo to scaffold lessons. Diigo allows you to bookmark key resources you want to share with students, highlight specific parts of the page, and to use it’s ‘post-it notes’ facility to ask students questions and to lead their reading.

We simply have to accept that students will use wikipedia as their default fact-finding site. Some observation in the classroom may discover their actual learning activity. I suspect that many students simply dis-engage after a few minutes and only return to learning if they get a peer-tip-off.

Perhaps this is why many junior high school research tasks are handed in looking so similar. If we want students to undertake ‘wide reading’ then we need to make sure that we are offering them resources and then breadcrumb trails to ensure that it appears ‘do-able’ and that they see success.

A 3000 word wikipedia article may indeed by a superb, factual and well constructed text – but unless students can use it to an applied problem or context, then they will continue to skim, cut and paste.

Where are you?

After a largely positive Head of Department staff meeting, where we showed staff a short clip of Will Richardson talking about the SHIFT, it reinforced to me the massive divide that is opening in teaching. The connected teacher is engaged in a global conversation that recognises the need to SHIFT our teaching ethos which has been so well outlined by a number of advocates such as Will, and road-mapped by a number of others – Andrew Church’s brilliant wiki about Blooms Digital Taxonomy being a stand out.

As the year progresses, it is great to see how Classroom2.0 and PBL is allowing students to access the higher order skills that Andrew outlines. What is also amazing is that for the large part, this has happened without any specific directive. Simply creating a Classroom2.0 – dropping firewalls to the bare minimum, giving kids access to scaffolded tasks in PBL and allowing them use Web2.0 facilitates this new taxonomy.

In comparison, the dis-connected teacher will cite, lack of ‘time off class’, being ‘too busy with marking’, ‘lack of access’ or quite simply a dismissal of Classroom2.0 benefits simply by labeling those doing it as ‘having too much time on their hands’, or ‘geek technocrats’.

Unfortunately, the ‘geek technocrat’ is a myth. In the last week or so, I’ve had some great conversations with Jeff, a Maths teacher in Montana. He is a great example of how a teacher is re-connecting with their own professional development, getting connected to a personal learning network, and fast tracking his skills – which in term has opened up his classroom to explore and engage in Blooms Digital Taxonomy.

Using the right tools, such as Google Reader to track comments and facilitate a pan optic view of a teachers classroom – generates time. They move way past previous expectations – faster – as the power of the network is greater than the node. Developing projects that are founded on a digital taxonomy speeds up student work. In a previous post, I have put up a group’s work – a two week project – it is easy to see that the students moved well away from low order skills – which is all too often the current ICT base line.

You do not need to be a ‘technocrat’ to compare the 1950s Blooms Taxonomy to the Digital Blooms Taxonomy to see the language being used and then reflect on what you are asking students to do.

Most Classroom2.0 advocates I know are more than willing to help ‘new’ teachers get connected, but unless they drop the idea that things are going to be delivered on a plate, held in formal sessions during school time or giving ‘time off’ to learn is a mindset that cannot be SHIFTED by policy.

All I, or anyone can do in light of this, is to work with teachers who are willing to give up some time, introduce them to the benefits and keep pushing advocacy as and when we can.

Developing a personal learning network, engaging with other educators and sharing ideas is fun. It is not ’something extra’ as 9 times out of 10 your network knows more than you when you ask a ‘new question’.

When I compare the skills and work students in our Classroom2.0 to the same projects in Classroom1.0, there is no comparison – The work, the engaged students, the skills they have and the way in which they apply these to personal or un-related problems is evidence.

If a teacher is heard to introduce a lesson as

‘Open your text book, read pages 34-44 and answer the questions on page 45′ – then they are using nothing more than the baseline learning – no matter how much knowledge is in the book – the activity itself is low order. The text book is based on Blooms Taxonomy – so it is asking the wrong questions.

Most of the things that Classroom1.0 teachers involve what Andrew describes as ‘Remembering’. [Listing, describing, locating, finding, bullet pointing, googling, summarising, explaining, classifying] activities.

Doing these activities in a computer lab – make a powerpoint, google this, make a booklet in word – is very very low level stuff. Even if they are using better applications such as Premiere, Final Cut, Photoshop etc., the task being performed – and application of that artifact – is still low order.

But lets not forget – the syllabus mandates the use of ICT in all key learning areas – so the argument of ‘I don’t have access’ is rubbish. They do. You don’t need to be on a computer 24/7 – in fact no one I know who is an ‘advocate for change’ would suggest that is a good idea. You need to ‘mash it up’ .

We are talking about re-thinking the time you have already. Be than 1 hour a week or 1 hour a day. ‘I don’t have access‘ is just one several default comments being used to avoid engagement as far as I am concerned.

This is why advocates focus on the ‘why’.

Designing, constructing, filming, remixing, podcasting, collaborating, beta-testing, networking, commenting, mashing, defending, linking, cracking, playing, reverse engineering, creating / presenting virtually … the Understanding, Applying, Analysing, Evaluating and Creating Language of the connected Classroom2.0 teacher in asynchronous with what students do out of school all the time.

Als die Nazis die Kommunisten holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Kommunist. Als sie die Sozialdemokraten einsperrten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Sozialdemokrat. Als sie die Gewerkschafter holten,
habe ich nicht protestiert;
ich war ja kein Gewerkschafter. Als sie die Juden holten,
habe ich geschwiegen;
ich war ja kein Jude. Als sie mich holten,
gab es keinen mehr, der protestieren konnte.

Students don’t really use email. They social network (MySpace et al), they communicate (Messenger, TXT), the record audio/video and share (mobile phone to peer – via phone, internet), the solve problems (Games), the construct (Second Life, Sims, Games), they present (MySpace), the remix (iPod, MP3), the select and consume (YouTube, Torrents) and they share (USB)

I think as I end this week, I’ve seen new teachers begin to advocate change … and see them un-deterred by the usual ‘not me’ get out comments. As students don’t vote, then I see part of my role in working with them to speak out for them. I realise that I then make an easy target for ignorance – but each week I meet new people, make new connections. Everyone is doing this, so the difference I think I am making in Education is no geographically limited to my school, and certainly not limited to my colleagues. I firmly believe that as we begin to embed a digital taxonomy into our physical and virtual spaces, into our curriculum and into the technology being used in schools, then this year I can see the growth in global professional development and the level of personal responsibility people are applying.

Sunday night I have 2 on-line meetings, a Newbie session to run in Second Life for Edcuators and of course attending Eurovision (which is more fun to me that watching a repeat of Frost on Channel 9).

Sure I’m a gamer – but that doesn’t mean I’m disconnected from reality – and neither will the students I work with or the teachers I’m connect with.

Are you watching Kalispell?

It is so good to start reporting on student work. Our Project Based Learning (Charter) project for our 9th Grade students (160 boys), opened for business in February 2008. We spent the previous 6 months planning it, my role being the strategic planning of the Educational Technology enviroment. I’ve blogged heaps on my vision for that during all this time. I’d like comments, but I am pretty sure that the combination of PBL (Napa) and a bespoke Web2.0 driven environment is unique at this point

So in this post, I’d like to share a student work. The cover shot shows the driving question and the following 11 pages demonstrate the multi-literacies that are embedded in the project delivery. I copped a lot of flack about my insistence that my classrooms would not be “ICT” rooms and in doing so ruffled a few feathers.

I would not install Microsoft Office, as to me it represents static skill development. Kids find it easy to knock out a powerpoint, word doco or publisher document (complete with word art – a personal pet hate).

Out browser based classroom is packed with Web2.0 links – our LMS is Moodle, with Web2.0 customisation to drive the projects. We wrote our own reporting package – as the Napa version was, at the time either un-available to us or looked liked being offered at considerable cost. So we did, as we have always done, create a ‘Home Brew’ solution. Not that Moodle is anything less than the best LMS I know – despite being FREE.

Adobe Creative Suite CS3 is the publishing and creative platform. Yes Photoshop is harder than Paint, and InDesign is harder than Publisher – but we are advocating that learning is multi-modal, so we developed in house videos, and developed a breadcrumb trail to help them learn deeper skills. We have about 4 of the 15 staff that can ‘do’ InDesign, and 1 or 2 who can produce ‘high end, graphic design’.

Im a 20 year Art Director before EdTech, so I know that CS3 is challenging, but if you are going to learn something, it might as well be the industry standard.

In 3 weeks the kids worked on their project – which is Information Software Technology mashed with Catholic Studies (the context). Kids had no previous experience of these applications. So you can imagine the moaning and complaining that we had in week 1. “I cant use it at home”, “I can’t work it” etc.,

But after a week, they stopped moaning and started to ask specific questions “How can I link this text box with that one and flow my text around the graphic in between”. Learning to ask the right question really helps get the right answer.

The above slideshow is the result of their research. The attention is ‘visual texts’ is amazing. Their selection of images, consistency of design, choice of text and application demonstrates just how well the PBL process drives students to work less on low end Blooms (stuff they can Google) and to consider ways of applying the information they find selectively to support the text and visual argument.

I particularly love the ‘identity theft’ page. The visuals on this page, the idea they portrait in them is something I’d expect from a Junior Graphic Designer, not a 15 year old student. It is clever, relevant and mature in the way they balance it with the text.

Of course no one is mandating that they use x number of words, y number of images and z number of graphs … they are choosing the balance to support the driving question.

Why power your classroom with Web2.0? – this is why, we are giving them access to tools that they use natively, we are giving the ACCESS to Social Software, BANDWIDTH to view videos in their learning and a structured LMS that scaffolds their learning and support it. When I compare this work (and there are 10 more like this I could insert here), to what we are asking 15 year olds to do in ICT based classrooms, there is a clear difference.

This goes back to my view that we often ask too many low level questions, drag topics over too much time and issues assessment tasks that hardly challenge their skills less inspire them to explore creative solutions on their own terms.

I’d really like to get comments and feedback on this work – in the context of the time frame, the end product and the level of learning that is being demonstrated. I’d love to show the students your comments – as I am keen for them to see that what they are doing in their blogs and ‘online classroom’ is “punching through the walls” as Will Richardson said recently. Its really important for them hear this feedback!

In the Wild

I’ve facilitated a year 12 HSC English task using Classroom 2.0 ethos. I was given the previous assessment task, and then worked with the two teachers to shift it to the discourse we are advocating. I have to say that there is a huge amount of trust needed for this to happen on the part of the teachers, as this is a major HSC component. I think it is important to highlight that ‘trust’ is such a critical factor in learning to change.

This project is a Ning group, and I’m using Animoto and Flickr. I’m going to do a vodcast about this in the next few days. I spoke to the teachers today, after launching the project to students. It was only 24 hours old.

I highlighted the use of Google Reader to monitor the activity and the posts kids are making. I had to highlight that the ‘power’ of this group work in not in fact the ‘blog’ entries – but the back channel converstaion between students. As a teacher, a Ning (or a blog project that is actually organised and managed well), is a live view on the previously student-exclusive discourse around the topic.

The ability for teachers to understand and add value to the comment ‘back channel’ is a key skill for the ‘connected teacher’. Anyone can swap an writing pad for a blog, there is no value in that. The back channel is the conversation, and is the heartbeat of thought.

I had to explain how to use RSS and Google Reader – but this is a small skill in comparison with getting the teachers to truely understand the ‘why’ of what they are doing. RSS does make commenting by the teacher simple and fast. In fact you simply cannot tell me that a teacher can track, comment and add value to a class of 25 individual blogs without it.

A few obvious things showed up in the Ning withing 24 hours

• Students quickly customise their space
• Students cloak their work from other students selectively
• Students extend their peer group digitally and share
• Students offer practical comment and advice – they are positive, where in their verbal classroom banter they are often very critical of each other. I found that interesting.
• Hyperlinks, embedding images, music etc., happened without instruction immediately
• The task requires an 800-1200 word dissertation to support their visual task – many had written 3 line blog posts – yet 20 line comments
• Students are more engaged in the discussion with each other – the public post is often a summary of that discussion – or – the blog post triggers the discussion.

Sue Waters is currently steering EduBlogger comment challenge and has been advocating how important peer comments are in professional development, extending Classroom 2.0 advocacy etc., Were as teachers are doing this as a challenge task, the students did it intrinsically and it is obvious that they see this as a normal line of communication.

Three students (that I really don’t know) came up to me today and commented that they were enjoying the 24 hour old project. They liked the fact that in order to succeed, that the Web2.0 tools offered a simple, immediate and fair method of production. There is no room in the task to add ‘techno-bling’. They can’t fool the teacher with digital-eye-candy. I got the feeling that the ‘middle’ kids saw the project strategy offered them a strong change of success – they did not need to be a ‘technocrat’ or ICT major to pull it off. It is pushing the middle order kids higher, and so the top end students have to work harder to maintain their status in the class order.

Students are applying their MySpace skills to the space – they dress it, customise it – want to add friends, images and audio already. This just re-affirms that we should be accessing their multi-modal skills.

It took a while but i finally got the permission to use my first image for my banner, found in Flicker by a photographer by the name of Kelapa whom yesterday i asked if i could have the permission to use his photographs and today he gave me the thumbs up.

This is a post by one student, who was working on a custom header image. I am sure that plenty of EduBloggers don’t do that! – He’s done the mature thing an even referenced it.

So this is my first – ‘model’ Classroom2.0 project – outside my own classroom – and outside of PBL.

Learning to change is a hands on experience – teachers are aware that adding tech often causes more problems than it solves unless you can pull it off with the skill set you have. Teachers point of reference for this is their past experience. If you are hoping to SHIFT, then Educational Technologist have to scaffold, hand hold, facilitate and support the project – especially by commenting students – you have to make a personal investment by being a visible participant. You have to be accessible to them in your ‘tech’ role. This frees up the teacher to focus on their passion – their subject. By being visibly involved on the Ning – you are offering the online support that gives them confidence.

I don’t believe that you can expect a teacher – even with ICT skills – or ICT training – to be able to SHIFT to a multi-modal model successfully unless they have access to someone who can facilitate and model the project. There pressure from students, parents, schools to teach/coach the HSC in such a way that students access the higher bands (5/6) is no secret. No teacher in their right mind would get involved, propose or attempt a task that is floored or too ambitious in this regard.

This project includes curriculum reform, connectedness, leveraging student’s intrinsic ‘digital’ skills, professional development and technology modeling. I am really pleased to see that the students are engaged so early – this task is due over 6 weeks! – they will probably make the baseline in 2 at this rate. The teachers will immediately see who needs help, who is not being effective or who is over reaching.

I can’t think of another way in which teachers can get such immediate access to the ‘thinking’ process that is playing out in front of them. Teachers are connected to students immediately – In my experience, once a task goes out, less than 10% of students include you in a conversation about their progress, and even then it is often a pressure situation. I can’t wait to see the post project teacher and student reflections.

I’m a Twit

You either get this or you don’t. But heres a clue : Think about how kids could explain a Web2.0 tool using Music and a Macbook – This is Photo booth! and some guy in a wig – how creative, simple and cool. Yet still somewhere as you read this, someone bought a PC. Indeed I am a Twit.

I can fly

After attending the Why and How of Web2.0. It gave a focus to the issues that as an Educational Technologist and parent – I face.

Once a teacher gets a lens to understand the SHIFT that Will (and others) talk about, they get all depressed, as the future looks bleak while they grapple with the enormity of the educational reformation that is needed – and is playing out daily. So rather than reply to the email, I booted Skype and introduced Gav to Kerry J. It was great for him to see how easy it is to connect to others who are advocating change and battling the system. I had a great Skype this morning with a great teacher in Oklahoma who is offering not only to collaborate, but also to teach Algebra on a Sunday night her time, to our kids, during Summer Break. These people are the teachers I want my kids to know in their network

So in considering PBL and Classroom2.0

There are 2 discourses here

1. The PBL method of learning – be that Napa Foundation, Buck Institute models. I am not sure teachers are actively engaged in understanding this. It is not about ‘training’ it is about changing core values and concepts that the model advocates.

2. Classroom 2.0 – with Web2.0 tools – before you can have any understanding of the Web2.0 tools on offer to educators – you have to understand the WHY. This is a completely different discourse … and very much the current one that Napa and other PBL schools are struggling to deal with – hence the current books such as ‘Reinventing PBL‘ – thanks Suzie for joining the Diigo group!. Thats the cool thing – I can talk to the author – not just read the book. I know that – that’s my first preference in asking questions, seems logical to me now.

So even if you understand PBL – the theory, not just the delivery – then you still need to understand the WHY of Classroom 2.0. Listening to Will and others, how we think about educational technology is key to beginning to understand both discourses.

Once you get the “why” and that means being part of the discussion, not just reading about it, you see immediately how Web2.0 is the best technology approach for our kids to explore PBL.

If your reading this – then I’m not really talking about you – you are part of the discourse.

This is why I built the Classroom 2.0 system as I did in my school. I know that the staff for the most part did not understand this, and probably thought I was just being uber-geeky for the sake of it.

Our classroom and professional development lies entirely in being part of this landscape. By pulling Kerry into our Skype conversation over the weekend, demonstrates how easy it is to connect with other teachers and that our peers in what we are doing for our kids, currently, lie well beyond our immediate colleagues for the most part. It is a very personal ‘journey’ as the TV likes to say.

It is not something you can ‘teach’ in a PD session, they have to understand both discourses and want to be advocates of it.

Listening to Will Richardson (and there are others) is slightly problematic – because if you agree with them, and therefore become an advocate of the SHIFT, then you realise just how inadequately we are preparing kids for life.

Sure teachers know their content – but if what they are doing is fixed in the 50s notion of Blooms Taxonomy – and not willing to engage their students by being part of the solution, then sadly – it is hard not to be left with the feeling that they are part of the problem.

This sounds harsh, as it is not their fault. But it is if they are just being belligerent about it – and many are.

Before you start thinking about Web2.0 skills then they have to understand the SHIFT – and that is a very personal thing.

If teaching is just a ‘job’ and you wanna hit the road at 3.15, and not take part in the discourse that is playing out in Twitter, Diigo, Facebook, Second Life, Skype etc., then it is not possible to ‘teach’ in a Classroom 2.0 environment effectively – you might be able to write blog post or make a podcast, but will not know why you are doing it and how to extend your classroom and as Will said ‘punch through the classroom walls’. If this is the case, you’re not doing anything new at all

Kerry called it “putting garbage in a shiny techno-wrapper”. How true that is. A blog to replace a writing book is completely wrong. It’s the back-channel, the comments and the connections – so if comments are turned off – then you miss the point.

I wish I had a fix, but all you can do is to be a participant to advocate the SHIFT. This is what everyone out there is doing, and again as Will said “the SHIFT begins with a single teacher”. You don’t need to pay for conferences to hear this. All of this is being played out online daily. You just need to take part in the discussions. But I fully appreciate that to some, this is a ‘job’ and are unwilling to go beyond their ‘thick walled classroom’. I think 1 in 50 emails/mail drops or PD sessions I do get a response. This is symptomatic of the fact that many teachers are not engaged enough. Perhaps they don’t feel empowered enough to get engaged in their own professional development sufficiently.

They are not even aware there is a ‘why’ discourse in the first place.

Everyone I know in my network did one thing. They decided to make it thier problem. This is why there is a such a rich opportunity to build a network – by and large they are not doing any of this during the school day or during ‘PD’ sessions. Its hard to imagine the number of professional hours educators are pouring into this globally – and for FREE - because they can’t now stand idle and ignore it.

Debates about how to reward teachers for being ‘great teachers’ is insulting to all those who have never asked for any reward – other than the odd email from a former student saying how great their life is and they say ‘thanks’.

I don’t take this personally when I hear the ‘reasons why not me’ – I know at least 100 teachers online who are experiencing the same issues, so take solace in their support – daily in Twitter it seems.

We have had lots of presentations to staff about all of this, we show videos as they appear on YouTube and BlipTV, and we can only try to do more of it.

It scares me to think that my own kids are going to be stuck inside the current system and realistically – they will be unless the speed of change matches the growth in technology itself. We can talk about it, show videos etc., but it all remains ‘optional‘ for teachers, where as it is ‘critical‘ for kids.

Teachers will retire and kids will be unable to succeed in the global community of the 21st century. We are no longer sending kids to work in factorys as we did in the early to mid 1900s - where bells, time cards and repetitive manual tasks is sufficient to sustain their socio-economic stats. In the 1980s-90s being able to use Mircrosoft Office meant you were ICT literate. Both of these are no longer the case, yet by and large teachers accept that it’s okay to teach towards this out dated model of what learning and ICT is today.

It is a sad reality, but what should we do today – as Van Halen said ‘right here, right now’ Allow it or advocate against it?

Isn’t that what we are charged to do? When did we stop thinking and just go to a ‘job’.

Teachers who say ‘its not my problem. The syllabus needs to change first and I’m drowning in content delivery already, so don’t have the time’ are, in fact, forcing the problem onto their students.

As a parent, if the school can’t do it, I will need to. That is what so many teachers who are advocates of multiliteracies and technology are doing – hence the rise in of home school – it is just so easy to hook kids up with a maths teacher, a history teacher or just another kid who can teach them.

We sent kids to school when they came available (back in the day) – as we believed that that school house did better job that we as parents could – now I think that I can find enough teachers online that the school house is fast becoming a symbol of the problem – certainly the layout of classrooms has not changed since the school-house opened.

Kids get social interaction – online/offline – they all have a ‘network’ - they don’t need to be stuck in a room, bored to tears, with the only localised social connection being a common reality of having creativity drummed out of them daily.

I want teachers to connect my kids to their learning – to be a gateway to knowledge – and to connect them to even better teachers – be that a 14 year old playing WoW or a ‘real’ teacher. I want them to experience ‘authentic’ learning.

My 7 year old can use Wikipedia – why make him remember crap he’s never going to use in is adult life – as Will suggested ‘because it’s on the test’. Bah. Why not let him Google it? what is the crime? Surely we need to be asking them questions that they can’t Goolge the answer in under 3 seconds.

The global education system is loosing its best teachers – they get tired of the daily fight and focus on their own kids future.

So in the mean time, we need to push the physical environments we supply to teachers and give kids the opportunities as and when we can.

Our school suffers non of the problems most advocates are facing – we have access, we have the opportunity, bandwidth, equipment and perhaps most importantly a principal that gets the SHIFT and is so supportive of the innovation some of us are doing – and do not have a firewall blocking access to the read/write web.

I see this as being core to being a professional (relevant) teacher. In industry, if you don’t move forward, you become redundant. In teaching it has been possible to do the same thing for 40 years. I bet you can think of dozens of teachers you knew at school or can cite colleges who were living proof of that.

We are getting better, but the growth in access, speed and technology is exponential. More advoates are needed if we are to meet the challenges ahead. We simply are not allowed to sit and watch. We have to engage in any way we can.

As Westley Field said last week ‘My name is Westley, I’m 48 and I can fly … please allow your kids to fly”.

Look me up on Twitter (deangroom) … talk to me in Second Life (slammed Aabye) .. Skype me (dean_groom) – look forward to extending my network!

By the way Teacherman74 aka Henny – Montana looks fabulous! Lets hope we can hook up soon! [edit] WE DID!

Team Teaching with a Leopard

Apple OSX Leopard has a very good text to speech tool. You can highlight any text on any page then have it speak using one of Apple’s latest voices. Not much is said about Apple’s text to speech, but here’s how I’ve been using it.

You enable it from the system preferences – click the icon called ’speech’. Then set a hot key for text to speech – I use ‘control+\.

As students get tired of ‘the teacher voice’ I use Leopard to team teach and do the talking for me. Being Apple, it just works, so I don’t need to fiddle with it.

I get OSX to do the narration parts for me. It grabs their attention and seems to aid recall. They appear to do more ‘active’ listening.

I gave this ago with my tech-savvy 4 year old using VoiceThread. In fact my 7 year old was asked to write a report on Tassie Devils using some Edumacator worksheet.

My daugther said she’d give it a go too. So we looked for a few photos on Google, dropped then into VoiceThread and were ready to go in a minute or so.

Next I opened the resource site I found. We thought of some ‘things we wanted to know’ and I hit the hot key. She listened once, she talked about it and asked questions, then did it again.

Next we started to record on VoiceThread and she did a recall. She is 4. She knows that she can re-record it (tech-kid) and then we did another page, this time she pressed the buttons.

Heres the result.

 So for classes where there are lots of texts, especially if you’re using and IWB, you can start to team teach with a Leopard … give it a go, it’s a no brainer.