Priming the Educational Pump

BEFORE anyone is going to consider using alternative technologies in learning and teaching, teacher-trainers have to ‘prime the pump’. Nothing sustainable is going to flow out from the raging torrent of internet possibilities into the classroom unless the teacher decides that it’s worth pressing the start button.

There are then some considerations that I’ve begun to build into professional learning plans.

• Teachers are unsure about the ferocity, force and form of ‘new’ media that is apparently building up tsunami like pressure!
• Opening up the classroom through new technology may flood the classroom with more problems that it set out to solve!
• There seems no obvious lever to control the valve of information, it seems to be more off and on, than controlled!
• The are no instructions on the pump, so safe operation appears unlikely!
• There is no service number to call if it doesn’t work as you expected!
• It seems like you have to press the button every 108 minutes to prevent potential disaster!
• There seems no obvious ‘off switch’ just in case it doesn’t work out – so its hard to avoid pump failure!

I don’t see much benefit these days in trying to introduce a single new idea, linked to a single new(er) technology (Webx.x @gnuchris) unless you have done a great job, priming the pump.

To me, this means working with both teachers and leadership staff to ensure that everyone is aware of what is going to happen when you hit the ‘start’ button. Including everyone who is  potentially influenced or affected by the information flow of new ideas, methods and technologies. This means having a number of well articulated plans and strategies that communicate what to expect, what do if you get stuck, how to manage the new environment and how to support people though a period of change etc,. Lack of planning is akin to kids turning on the fire hydrant to play in the water. Its very exciting for a while for those jumping through the water, but is seen as disruptive and is unsustainable, by the authorities who shut it down.

To scale better ICT use, model better practice and develop sustainable ‘habits of mind’ beyond a handful of teachers is more a process of renewal and recycling than revolution (sorry Mr Rudd). I hope to start running some free professional learning workshops at Macquarie University soon; all about pump priming – as I feel strongly that higher education (and my role in that process) must connect far more with teacher-educators in learning how to learn. I’d just like to thank Annabel for the HTAV workshop this week, which primed this post.

Learn to stand alone!

MANAGEMENT is not there to change the world, but to make sure that the goals of the organisation are met – by performing some task. Its not their ‘job’ to be innovative. That is everyone’s job – within their own ability or limits. The degree to which the NSW Institute of teachers have got this right is like all things, well discussed, for and against.

Their idea (somewhat hacked for simplicity) is that an experienced teacher mentors and models the ‘practical craft’ of teaching in the early stages of career development against – performance indicators. But we know the bar for ICT use is so low in the BOS syllabus, firewalls so oppressive, that it forces teachers to accept that there really is only one way to become registered – to follow old ideas and old management processes. We actively discourage innovators in favour of compliance.

This is a complex, time consuming process for new teachers – and a missed opportunity to embed best practice at the outset of their careers,  relying on new teachers learning old tricks.

Its frustrating to hear ‘oh, they should teach them in University’ or ‘teachers need to take the initiative’. We actively bog new teachers down in producing ‘evidence’ of teaching though the perpetuation of old ideas. They have no time to explore new ideas. Learning to stand alone in a classroom is normal.

We can do better – by pairing new teachers with EdTech people, to allow cohorts to move through a learning cycle that includes technology. The roadmap exists, the people exist – the institutions and mechanisms exist – but then I guess that’s the core issue – learning to change is hard.

The power of a BIG wiki

“WHAT comes next depends on what you, the user, makes happen There are no training wheels.”

This is a great extract line in Bering Strait School District Open Content Initiative. Its a BIG wiki, with well over 10,000 collaboratively produced pages. I really liked the Lesson Plan section, which shows a great deal of intellectual property being developed. There is also a fantasic blog, which also contains massive ‘community yummy-ness’, and has plenty of input from teachers, students and community – which has created a substantial knowledge resource – which I have to say exceed some urban efforts I have seen with millions of dollars pumped into them. This wiki is a fantastic example of what can be achieved – when people get involved.

There is a depth of authentic ‘us-ness’ about the wiki and the blog. There are great posts about getting lost in the arctic, written as a recount with passion, that really give you a sense of the area and the lives of people living up there.  This wiki and blogging community isn’t in the big cities – or in the most privalidged schools – it is in a community, who understand what it means to share ideas, stories and co-operate and discuss real issues. There is a synergy between learning and the community – based on participation.

So the next time someone says ‘I don’t have the time, resources, training etc.,’ to build a better community – then perhaps this will be a worthy example to share. To me this is what should be happening, not through motherhood statements, but living and breathing communities working towards a common goal. Its hard to imagine just how many hours and conversations have taken place in it’s development – a close network or co-production. Solving their issues is as one community comment stated ” We will get there one child at a time one, one encounter at a time”.

I wonder if communities at the ‘edge’ of society are best placed to capitalise on their community roots to do this because of their understanding of communication and connectedness in the first place.

Photo: Josephine Pete

An Intro to Social Media in Education

This is probably a fairly unremarkable ‘power point’ … as an introduction to social media I gave to general staff and students this week. I find it really hard to pitch social media in education as a dry – theory, so have tried to liven it up by having people leave comments during the presentation. I am much more comfortable with learning frameworks and nitty gritty stuff. Part of the process of delivering this kind of message, which is not ‘my’ lens – was to try get them to engage with the idea of a two-way interchange, in what is a passive presentation. I have used Etherpad, and created a live document to accompany the presentation. Sessions like these I think tend to attract ‘digital tourists’, so I am hoping to capture two voices – those attending, and perhaps some more experienced educators. It would be great if you could leave a comment on the Etherpad, to give the ‘next’ bus load of tourists some sense of conversation, as this will be a repeating session. I’ll also be giving this presentation online via Live Classroom next week … May13, 10-11am, you can register FREE here for that. I hope that you can spare some time to participate.

1, 2, 3, 4 – Which Web for me?

“Web3.0? what’s that!” Is there such a thing? Isn’t web2.0 just a way of differentiating the passive, expert driven world-wide-web of Tim Berners Lee (Web1.0) from the two-way interchange publishing and of sites such as wikipedia? So what’s next? Well it might be Web2.1, 2.2 … or Web3.0 – no one knows for sure, and everyone has a different view. What happens between now and the much talked about ’semantic’ internet that ‘learns’ from us and about us.

To many parents, the Internet is the same now as it was before, still confusing, just faster. Those who have little use for it at work have often had little exposure to how it has transformed our previous ideas of the workplace – and are less able to prepare their children at home. They rely on schools to teach them ‘digital literacy’. Even late teens have no idea of some of the spaces that their younger siblings use – though for both, it is all about strengthening  ‘friendship’ networks.

Today, being able to fax, email, print and use a word processor is no more skillful than working an ATM machine to employers, and not really ICT ’skills’, more processes.

The maturation of the internet has so far been like riding a Saturn rocket. Stage 1 was de-stabilising, took a lot of effort, noise and energy to get into cyberspace and it’s approaches and components burned up when Web2.0 offered a Stage 2 of rapid shift in the way we communicate and share digital assets – but still disorientating to many people stuggling to deal with Web1.0. Web2.0 changed our perceptions of ‘digital literacy’ from ‘information literacy’.  Fewer people are Web2.0 savvy, but for those in orbit, there is massive functionality and connectivity for almost zero effort. Stage 3 will be the re-establishment of new ’standards’ and ’skills’. Web3.0 is yet another seismic paradigm shift, but I’m not sure it will be the ’semantic’ web just yet.

Which web do our children use at school?

Schools use Web1.0 as their baseline. Virtually none are ‘Web2.0 native’ in Australia. Yes, individual classroom teachers use it – but not at the ’system’ level, we are not designing learning spaces around it. We are experimenting with some of it – and if you look at some of the media they create, you’d might be convinced that schools are ‘on the ball’. They are not. Much of Web2.0 is unsupported, un-accessible in classrooms or simply banned though vague policy. But since when has good learning got in the way of great PR.

Web2.0 is not the standard operating environment, despite its virtually ‘zero’ costs. Instead we use Web1.0 badly by blocking, filtering and failing to provide effective, systemic professional learning for teachers or school leadership. So children in school experience the digital winter. Wrong ideas, poor methodologies, un-imaginative, repetitive, predicable experiences.

According to Netpop Research, October 2008 “The research estimates that 105 million American broadband users (76%) now contribute to social media  … Photos are the most common type of information shared online … changing the face of how entertainment is defined, and giving rise to a new form of leisure built around talking, sharing, and providing opinions and perspectives.”

What does Web2.0 offer us?

Web2.0 is an ideology that manifested in tools we used to form, maintain and influence social connections, usually for free.  Web3.0 is the final stage, being explored by those digitally literate enough to have understood the impact and potential of the paradigm shifts presented in Web2.0. As we move forward, we jettison a vast section of our society and increase the digital divide. We don’t want our children to fall into this divide.

Who is paying for the upgrade?

Where we don’t like to ‘pay’ for online web-services in Web2.0, we are less opposed to mobile phone based pay-for-use content and services such as news, sport and television. We are not yet keen to return to the high costs of digital media and proprietary software – illustrated by Apples price increase on it’s iTunes business from $0.99 to $1.29 – a 30% rise in cost, which saw a 23% drop in sales.

But micro-payments are something that we do accept more readily on mobile devices and therefore will be more attractive to people developing Web3.0 business ideas.

Will schools get the upgrade?

Microsoft, April 2009 posted “If current growth trends continue, the internet will overtake traditional TV as the most consumed form of media for the first time in June 2010”, they go on to say that contend is “No longer a one-way broadcast experience, TV becomes a two way connected experience delivered via broadband to multiple screens – TV, PC, mobile” and that “see the PC move from being almost the sole provider of the internet (95%) to representing just 50% of internet usage as other web enabled or connected devices grow in popularity – such as TV, mobile phones and games consoles”.

In education, the current rush to put laptops into schools does not take into account that fact that the content creators (teachers) now hold the IP. This is the ‘upgrade’ in quality teaching and learning. They are not creating ‘for their employer’ who largely offer nothing in the way of time, equipment or training. So the content that students will learn from is increasingly ‘digital’ and licensed by the teacher, not the system. Not all students have school-based access to these teachers and resources.

How can parents connect their children with web-enhanced learning?

Mirco-payments in Web3.0 could be a sustainable way for teachers who are intrinsically motivated to use technology well – learning about IWBs, Mobiles, Virtual Worlds, Blogs, Wiki’s etc., to become micro-businesses and gives the author/creator more reason to do it. Parents could begin to select and ‘buy’ teacher developed information (which comes will massive issues about quality, copyright, ethics!).

What parents and children access right now?

Right now, most (but not all) of the stuff in Web2.0 Education is FREE. Teachers generate millions of electronic resources a year well outside of their ‘job’, for the immediate benefit of students. Most of them share it freely.

Will Web3.0 change the way children access learning?

Definitely. Much of what is ‘PC’ based will gravitate to ‘mobile’ based and lend itself to micro-payments. It is entirely possible that small micro payments to educators will appear alongside commercial models. Companies like Linden and Apple have successfully established a viable micro-payment economy, which is firmly anchored by almost nil cost of technologies building blocks. You can have a great teaching resource for $0.99 or you can spend four nights making your own.

What will make Web3.0 different to what we have now?

Web3.0 is about ideas and solutions, exploring technologies that take a further step away from traditional media ideas and revenue models. How to make micro-payments a viable global economic market-place. As early adopters succeed, they will be followed by others. In 2008, 10 million downloads in 60 days from Apple’s iPhone and iPod Touch store. That is a very attractive market.

Microsoft says “Over the next five years .. IPTV will become the norm on a TV that is really, a PC, ending the need to watch TV in real-time. Consumers will read books, newspapers and magazines on electronic devices that have Wi-Fi access. The 3D internet will become a reality, allowing consumers to virtually experience a holiday resort before they book it, on their PC or mobile phone. And smartphones will become mainstream, affordable choices. People will increasingly use mobiles as a natural port of call for web browsing, social networking, photo sharing, music, videos and other dimensions of their digital lives.?”

On the other side of this is the degree to which authors and owners of work entertain hundreds of millions of people, yet receive virtually (sic) nothing in revenue, and no one is too worried about it – as long as they can have it when they want it. It is important for students to not only respect the work of others, but to recognise that their work has a value.

Why is this important for our children?

The key point in research such as this and the Horizon report is the phrase ‘next five years’. In the next five years my kids will start High School … and I really can’t see that education is going to get past it’s old beliefs and ideology in anywhere near that time, which I find incredibly depressing. By the time they leave school, the world will be on Web X.0 and they will have had no preparation for it – as many of their teachers will have had little opportunity to learn about renewing curriculum to re-align learning with an entirely new landscape – with new models for business, hiring, development, services, marketing and so on – and this is where many of our children will be working, in jobs such as ‘demand-signal management’.

What are schools doing about it?

Will Richardson commented to me much of current global education investment is ‘old wine in new bottles’, especially in the controversial area using ‘laptops’, which leads me to really wonder how educational leaders are going to prepare my kids for a world of rapid, seismic change … when investing in people and curriculum renewal is MORE important that laptops – and that remains politically un-attractive. School are either under-estimating the size of paradigm shift, ignoring it (maybe it will go away) or investing in the wrong areas for the wrong reasons. Investment is required in people and renewal of learning strategies and frameworks to use the ‘free’ stuff that is already there. Helping school leaders establish workable solutions will lead to effective use of infrastructure and equipment. Yet laptops a already languishing in boxes as schools have no ability to deploy them effectively.

I wonder what you think will happen in your school in the next five years? What is the imperative or event that will allow change?

Yummy Ideas need flavour

Templates are the most efficient way to kill creativity in your organisation. Templates are not just the pro-formas of conformity, they are intended to provide creative boundaries in individual communication. In a world dominated by rapid change, templates offer languishing conformity. Office automation was the playground of templates. Powerpoint being the master template of all templates. You can buy thousands of templates from Office Works on CD-Rom (remember those) and when opening Word Processor documents you are prompted to choose a template. Before we offer up an new idea, we have to make a decision to use or not to use, to conform or rebel, to be guided or to be free. We create ‘visual’ templates, such as the one above. Blue and Yellow (the colours of friendly efficiency) mapped into a ‘global’ image of high-tech happy students, clutching knowledge. Our use of templates leads to constrained thinking. There are many ‘tools’ out there that promote new ways to organise information.

The corporate voice is giving way to the individual. The template is now ‘architecture’ – to create infrastucture and building tools that used to be the domain of expert programmers; web developers; engineers and media barons. They allow us to leap-frog the intellectual chasm between non-experts and experts. We don’t need our ‘amateur’ work graphically corporatised to speak with compliant tones or to remove our own identities in favour of the corporate persona. The templates of Web2.0 allow us to be individuals, using and adapting technologies to suit our own individual ideas and ways we like to communicate them.

Templates are allowing us to rapidly develop new information that are sharp and tasty ways to communicate in online spaces – they are ‘kick starters’ that we immediately customise and adapt. Spaces such as Second Life, where we un-template our avatar, a blog where we experiment with writing … all activities that are oppositional to template thinking which leads to tedious, uninspiring, unmotivating, congenial and unemotional ideas. When you think of educational communication in schools -  think about the times that you have been most inspired … because of a tasty idea not a bland proposition? Templates are designed to de-flavour and de-individualise … yummy ideas presented in flavoursome ways are what we need in education I think.

EVE of new literature

This post is something that hit the cutting room (word count) floor in the “Learning in Virtual Worlds” volume I’ve been writing with Judy O’Connell, but I think it’s worth sharing. The focus is to look at just how much you can do with a ‘free trail’ to an online game – and in fact never play the game.

Gaming online invariably offers a ‘free trial’. This is very handy for schools – who might sign students up for Mathletics, but a game such as EVE Online is unlikely to get a run. For one thing, some of the ‘content’ is a little ‘dark’, but never the less is no more apocalyptic than novels such as Bladerunner. It seems that narratives in writing, take on new ideology when played out online. But games are now online and millions of teens ‘play’ them – and socialise.

MMOs lead themselves to Digital Story Telling – and though as not seen as a ‘tool’ as such, and maybe could be added to Alan Lavine’s 50 ways to tell a story. They are both the tool and the media – the imperative to use them – is motivation and interest. We are at a point in educational technology where we should at least be exploring where virtual worlds are fitting into learning – as students increasingly move to MMOs, creating new communities as part of the social network nexus.

Clarance Fisher posted “Events are new. Events are different and exciting. Events are something we take part in and play a role in. Then when we put a bunch of events together, they build up into an experience. I would much rather that students have an “experience” of something rather than “study” something.”

EVE Online provides a range of multi-demensional experiences and within a ‘free’ trail, teachers could easily use it to engage students in a range of experiences and discussions. For example, without playing the game; create a comic strip or explore identity and representation using the narratives from the eBooks and screenshots provided in the site. Students can read the stories, or add their own new race to the back story. Of course doing any of this requires the teacher to be digitally literate themselves – and schools need to create opportunities to ‘discover’ these teaching tools.

Teachers could explore some of the narriatives; and suggest how the writer in (or is not) talking about things science is interested in, or how science affects natural evolution. EVE has a range of stories – sections of which will resonate with student interest such as

“The Kameiras are one of the products of the infamous Human Endurance Program (H.E.P.) that the Amarr ran on their Minmatar slave populace. It began as an attempt to measure the Minmatar tribes’ durability and effectiveness when it came to various labor tasks – to see how far they could be pushed before breaking, much like a tool would be stress-tested. Over time it evolved into much more than that, becoming a tale of horror for the Minmatar as Amarr scientists began to explore the true limits of their body and psyche.”

Games, far being from a waste of time, are highly motivating and well thought out. The collatoral activities such as the art; concept; stories; forums and film that many ‘fans’ create provide a rich source of stimulus materials than can be easily recycled in cross-curricula approaches. Looking beyond ‘its a game and not appropriate’ allows teachers to see that what is happening in them is much more than ‘pac-man’. The offer rich resource materials, which is often literature – outside the game, but connected with it. We have to then think that a great deal of creative expression in the future will include MMO experiences, but not be limited to it. If anything MMOs generate more artistic and creative work that crush it.

EVE Online is one example of hundreds of ‘worlds’. They offer teachers opportunities to use the ‘burr’ of motivation; to connect wider learning activities – from science to design, music to personal development. There is a dimension that can be exploited – without necessarily ‘playing’ the game itself. But we have to look beyond the prescribed texts and start to notice how literature is changing, and being used differently – and ‘building literate communities beyond the classroom”

Diigo – The power of collaborative thought

Shirky posted a very ‘oh my god’ post about the future of newspapers, weaving though it the problems faced by organisations when old ideas don’t work in new dimensions. This post becomes far more engaging for Diigo users, as there are numerous highlights though the text, with associated comments from people like Clary Burrell, who add the ‘educational’ dimension to the writing. At the time I read it, I think the blog post was up to about 900 comments with ping-backs, but the commentary though Diigo is something that I really value – when looking at the ‘power blogs’ like Shirky or Godin. Viewing the web with Internet Explorer and not Firefox is a little like listening to mono songs, verses surround sound these days. You miss the ’spacial’ nature of the information.

Diigo is a great ‘classroom’ tool – given the ability to sign on whole classes and the ability to not only bookmark and classify information, but to offer collaborative reflection. It is another tool that requires very little adaption of the standard network in schools, not does it pose a safety issue – and allows teachers to scaffold learning pathways. Teaching Diigo for pedagogy should be manditory professional learning in my view – and without doubt – any Web2.0 workshop needs to show just how powerful it can be when properly aligned in curriculum.

Solo Teaching verses Team Learning.

Today, our syllabus’ don’t dictate one class-one teacher, in fact our learning frameworks promote a holistic approach to learning. So why would we change the most fundamental school behaviour?

Keven Jarrett showed me this photo, which got me thinking about the figure at the back of this photo. We often talk about collaborative classrooms for students as a key strategy in renewing curricula. I find it hard to understand how we can talk about collaborative classrooms, when teachers are routinely isolated and herded into small rooms.

Team Learning involves ‘mashing’ up key learning areas, but using technology to bind them together.

Schools can blend computing with history, or history with humanities. Schools can set out and blend in clear statements about ’student capabilities’ – the soft skills of ethical practice; work effort; communication and self-organisation – that are outlines in the various ‘quality teaching frameworks‘ that encapsulate disciplinary learning dimensions.

• Intellectual quality
• Quality learning environment
• Significance.

Each of the Key Learning Areas in K12 have these dimensions and the DET runs regular professional learning around implimenting them – which is an excellent way to introduce Team Learning into schools.

• 2 Outcomes from the English Syllabus
• 2 Outcomes from History Syllabus
• 2 Outcomes from learning frameworks for each subject (example: HSIE)

Teachers can then take these elements and put them at the center of learning – and indeed is a cross curricula dimension to learning, advocated by the DET.

• Instructional (when students say they learn an explicit skill) – meta-cognitive understanding
• Enquiry – wrapping the activity up in an authentic problem to solve with individual and group dimensions
• Socially constructed knowledge – students and teacher pose questions that address under-pinning concepts
• Teachers collaborate to assess and mediate the learning process with students though guided enquiry.

To encourage school executives, point out the alignment with cross curricula quality teaching frameworks. Those things have a direct reporting outcome on the school, as there are no instances in policy that actually promote ’solo teaching’ in ’single’ dimensions – in any key learning area. You are in fact meeting wider school outcomes.

Technology allows synchronous and asynchronous learning in one room, or over several. We can use Social Networks such as Ning, Voice Threads, Second Life, Meet See, GTalk, Google Applications … we can aggregate content and share it with RSS and Social Bookmarking. Can the outcomes and assessment over two subjects be aligned? – Can activities be blended? – Can classes work together asynchronously?– Absolutely.

Etherpad – Live Text Collaboration

One of the common comments people make in workshops about Google Docs is ‘what if two people are editing’. Well in reality that doesn’t happen that often, and even so, Google Docs informs you … but in a real time classroom, it can be kind of annoying. Etherpad, is fantastic for classroom collaboration. It has been in closed ‘beta’ for a while and has always looks good. The ‘real’ deal is even better. Being able to work in real time, with ‘live’ text significantly changes the interaction between students when collaborating. Not only can you ’see’ who is doing what, but the digital text needs negotiation by the group. Knowledge is therefore being constructed in real time, using Etherpad at the centre of mutli-modal activities. Students could be using text books, visual resources or recording live events and dialogue. It bridged the gap between live blogging and chat, where time is the publishing criteria, to a live activity that allows students orgnise it. Best of all, there is nothing in ‘Etherpad’ that puts students at risk – it is a great tool, and will enable many classrooms to engage in ‘live’ activities – especially if the collaboration is over distance, cultures or disciplines