Category Archives: Constructivism

Who’s Watching YOUR Space?

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This is a great encapsulation of the OCLC Symposium: How do we operate as educators and information professionals? If you haven’t joined the conversation, or become part of the action, then it really is time to start.

We need to learn how to experience these technologies and put them into practice!

Click on the link to go to YouTube – the owner of the video does not allow this video to be embedded into a blog!

This is the 3-minute version of the most recent OCLC Symposium at ALA Midwinter 2007. More than 400 people attended this discussion of social networking practices and trends on January 19, 2007 in Seattle, Washington. Michael Stephens, Instructor, Graduate School of Library and Information Science at Dominican University and author of Web 2.0 & Libraries: Best Practices for Social Software, was moderator. The expert panel included: Howard Rheingold, a leading thinker on the cultural, social and political implications of communications media and virtual communities; danah boyd, PhD candidate at the School of Information at the University of California, Berkeley and Fellow at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg Center for Communications; and Marc Smith, Senior Research Sociologist, who leads the Community Technologies Group at Microsoft Research. The full video (2:23:19) can be viewed at http://www.oclc.org/index/symposium

Our Schools are Flat

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Warlick: Our Schools are Flat

Originally uploaded by mstephens7.

David Warlick shares his presentation from the SLJ leadership summit, and I really appreciated this particular image. I picked this up from Michael Stephen’s Flickr collection – I’ve got him in my list of contacts.

So this image shows how not only schools are flat but we are getting flat too! From David to Michael to Judy, via flickr, and the blogging template embedded within Flickr, which I am testing now.

I am also reading The World is Flat by Thomas L Friedman. Wow!

He says in his introduction:

It is now possible for more people than ever to collaborate and compete in real time with more other people on more different kinds of work from more different corners of the planet and on a more equal footing than at any previous time in the history of the world – using computers, e=mail, fiber-optic netowrks, teleconferencing, and dynamic new software.

I am also listening in to the Fireside Chat of the K12 online conference via Skype!

Whether we like it or not our world is flat, and all the better for it,  when we recognise the amazing power of this new information landscape.

Graphical images everywhere!

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Another librarian in comics, this time The Librarian, from the made-for-TV movie, Return to King Solomon’s Mines.

Flynn Carson, guardian of mystical artifacts scattered throughout world history! Originally appearing in the hugely popular made-for-cable film “The Librarian: Quest for the Spear”, Carson is back and this time his mission is to prevent the powerful Key of Solomon from falling into the hands of a ruthless warlord! He is joined in his quest by Emily Davenport, a beautiful fellow scientist who may be his only hope to locate the legendary Mines of King Solomon before it is too late!

Not to be outdone by movies and comics, we also have the microsoft powered LiveSearch of Ms Dewey – leaving many of us wondering if this new interface actually works!

Take a look and enjoy!

But it does have potential doesn’t it? in making the knowledge work of information seeking fun in the first instance and bringing a new interface to searching which just might hook kids?

It is a real ‘information’ problem – a globe of information – and the only discussion in some circles revolves around how to engage students with use of technology tools, forgetting that engagement involves cognitive and affective domains – i.e. I seek, I get confused, I want help, I don’t undersand, etc. While it is vital to learn to integrate technology and Web 2.0 thinking, it is also a gross error to assume that using technology = using our intelligence to full capacity.

Human knowledge is complex and requires deep thinking – and sometimes a deep capacity to search, find, sort and synthesise information, viewpoints and knowledge. 21st century wisdom builds on all that came before.

Let’s not forget the cognitive dimension of Web 2.0 and technology integration – and lets have fun with Ms Dewey and King Solomon’s mines.

Learning Agenda Web 2.0 style

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While some of my colleagues are at the Australian Computers in Education conference in Cairns, I am catching up on another batch of marking for Charles Sturt University before flying out to HongKong for a very well earned rest. When I get back it will almost be time for the Global Summit, where I hope to see a few of my fellow bloggers.

John Connell will join us at Catholic Education, before the Global Summit, ‘in conversation’ and to inspire us with his work in Scotland. Might have a podcast to share afterwards if John is happy with the idea. If you haven’t dipped into John’s blog, I highly recommend it. I have no idea how one person can think and write so much, but be assured that you will be challenged by the diversity of his posts.

I’ve been doing some writing for the office in the last couple of weeks, teasing out ideas around future directions and our learning agenda. One concept that has tested thinking for a few people has been around the whole issue of learning management systems (LMS) and virtual learning environments (VLE). Funnily enough some of my colleagues get stuck on debating semantics and how to describe systems that we are rolling out for our schools. As if describing the system will somehow make it more worthwhile or more relevant?

In fact, what we should be focussing on is the Web 2.0 world of our students and their personal learning environments (PLE). Remember, its a combo-world. In Macca’s sales speak – we are constantly ‘upsizing’ and offering ‘fries with that’ because we have to!

Today we can deliver TO student expectations beyond the LMS and VLE that have emerged in recent times as the answer to learning for a 21st century technology world.

The emergence of Web 2.0 and social software moves us beyond the use of integrated LMS or VLE to social networking and education immersed in the future world of our students. No use debating which LMS to buy, or what a VLE is! Understand MySpace and you will understand the shape, meaning, value, future directions of student learning.

In fact, any discussion of the educational value of LME or VLE, and the integration or separation of social software must must be grounded in new ‘MySpace pedagogy’ and must include a genuine understanding by educators of the Web 2.0 world of our net-savvy students.

I suggest that we need a combination of a number of tools: a management system, personal tools and social networks. Our integrated solution requires this personal learning environment, because the very nature of what our students do and how they use online spaces extends their learning beyond the classroom and the present …. right into the future …. for life and for lifelong learning.

In fact, ‘Web 2.0 as platform’ is the natural implementation and platform for 21st century learning.

It’s time to dream the impossible dream and leap beyond the context of our current understandings.

Flexibility and personalisation are at the core of our re-purposing of education. If students think about the internet as a virtual locker, backpack and notebook, then we must create flexible learning environments which support the use of multipe resource tools, including Web 2.0.

If we do this, then we will have a learning framework that is Web 2.0, 24/7, global, contextual, personalised, real, physical, virtual, and visceral.

We’ll help our students be passionate about their personalised learning!

Now, off to HongKong :-)

MySpace additions – wow networking!

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Following up from my post on Social Networking Explained

…..it is good to find that my group of schools will be encouraged to take a more postive approach to the value and purposes of social networking right down to flexible use of MySpace.

Back on Tuesday 17 May at a K-12 School Library network meeting, Jan and myself raised the matter of MySpace and tried to encourage people at the meeting to take a positive view of the opportunities that MySpace represents. My post MySpace and School Libraries resulted in some feedback to me from some teacher librarians saying that they had changed their view of MySpace and were now looking at how to develop a better approach.

So of course this recent post by Jane’s E-Learning Pick of the Day on Zapr reminded me of the highly flexible possibilities that MySpace or similar offer.

zaprEasy communication and transfer of information is what MySpace is all about. Zapr includes a MySpace Zapr Link Tool . Zapr lets you create links to any files on your PC. Then you can send these links to friends (via email or IM) and they can get the files directly from your computer via their browser.

Is this important. You bet! Jan at Delaney College explains that students are using MySpace for storing their learning ideas and learning resources. They are bamboozled when they get to school and suddenly can’t access their own work, their own files, and continue right on with the learning from where they left off the night before.

You might like to add Jan’s del.icio.us to your network, or Jan’s del.icio.us work with teachers to your network. Thanks to Jan for sharing her enthusiasm.

Cut and paste literacy

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Reading through some of the Sites of Current Interest to Me from John Connell:the Blog led me to Rough Type and a comment about a paper published about My Space. The paper stands in contrast to the lack of dialogue about MySpace in educational circles. (Partly this is because some schools block access, so by blocking they think that usage goes away; partly it is because they have never heard of MySpace; partly this is because they see MySpace as being irrelevant)

Whether its plagiarism, or creativity, or school intranets, or learning spaces – looking at student behaviours in MySpace is essential if we are to work with the potential of technology and the potential of our kids to create a ‘new future’. Ogh…I know ‘new future’ sounds cliched…but whatever your term for future planning, MySpace and it’s ilk are here and ready to be our advisors and help shape our understandings.

The paper is an indepth analysis of elements of MySpace with important ideas for our understanding of literacy in this Web 2.0 space.

Is illiteracy the new literacy? Berkeley’s Dan Perkel writes, in a paper, Cut and Paste Literacy, on MySpace profiles: “A social perspective of literacy helps show that a part of [the] problem in this framing of copying and pasting as a literacy practice is that it does not neatly fit within common educational practices. From the perspective of the social niche of traditional schooling, to copy and paste is to plagiarize, unless there is careful attribution of sources …

‘All Your Own Work’ in a Web 2.0 World

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I attended an a full day seminar organised by ALSANSW looking at the issue of Plagiarism in light of the NSW Board of Studies unit “Working with Others” soon to be compulsory for testing in Year 10. My task was to provide a context for thinking about plagiarism which included an understanding of the Web 2.0 world of students and teachers.

Apart form ‘showcasing’ Web 2.0 my aim was to encourage teachers and teacher-librarians to re-examine what it means to create a community of enquiry for themselves and for their students…by participating in new forms of information organization and sharing…..like social bookmarking, wiki, and blogs. We have to recognize the level of social networking that kids engage in more and more, and the fact that information seeking will sometimes take place via instant messenger, myspace or other social ways.

With Web 2.0 the purpose and function of learning as defined by teachers needs revision. Maybe……..

The purpose of learning should…

  • Be informed by connections and communication
  • Promote open sharing of knowledge
  • Allow for individuals making decisions on their own

The function of learning should be….

  • About being a member of the community of practice
  • Recognize that all spaces are learning places

Perhaps Web 2.0 learning is defined by three things:

Focus

  • On identity
  • Who we are in society

Framework

  • Multitasking multi-modal environment
  • Virtual learning mode

Future

  • Personal integrity and social contribution
  • Individuality and creativity

A very interesting day, with some curious interactions and comments afterwards. The one that made me chuckle was “we are never going to use these [Web2.0] technologies”.

Hmm, a bit like the network meeting I organised back in Term 4, 1995. Some ‘system’ representatives came along – because I had organised a chap who brought his own computer, and who could access Ozemail at $5.00 hr and show us ‘THE INTERNET’. Yes, these visitors said to me “Judy, you shouldn’t have organised this – this internet business will never happen in schools!”.

OOPS! How about Web 2.0 then??

 

Teacher as Learner in Web 2.0

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Quarter of a year blogging! Hooray!!

OK, time for a personal whinge :-(

The last week has been a frustrating week in many ways, but the most frustrating of all has been the ‘negotiations’ I have had in discussion about my academic study program.

Supposedly in a Doctor of Science Education Program with a technology focus through Curtin University, I have come to the conclusion that unless I can find an academic environment that reflects the changing learning landscape of kids today I am totally wasting my time seeking to learn more about learning landscapes via an academic study program.

Really nice folks at the uni – don’t get me wrong – but just NOT giving me the learning extension that I need.

Here is an example – the reader for Learning Environements, which I must read (ok, I can do that) but which I also have to demonstrate that I understand (!) contains 16 papers, all from the 90s, and one only from 2001. Now you and I know that this represents Web 1.0 generation of thinkers. Even if they are ‘cool constructivist thinkers’, they are talking about a learning environment and learning landscape that is rapidly becoming irrelevant. While it is important to ground current research and learning in past knowledge and research – I do not have this option.

“You can add a bit on about Web 2.0 if you like, but do not make it the main thrust of your paper. You must demonstrate that you understand our philosophy”

Despite the fact that a previous module run by Peter Taylor extended my thinking on constructivism in marvelous ways, this time around I feel that being forced to operate in the constraints of the concepts presented in our Reader is really a great example of ‘enculturation’ and not at all about border crossing into Web 2.0 in theory and practice.

I suggest that practitioners in the field who are blogging and sharing their experiences through books, presentations, seminars, podcasts etc are teaching much more about what is possible than this academic approach to readers and stale research processes allows.

Practitioners such as Stephen Downes, Will Richardson, Doug Johnson, Stephen Abram, Michael Stephens, John Connell, Leigh Blackall, Ewen McIntosh, and Alan November are engaging with the learning needed in new environements, gathering me up in the learning as they go – something my current academic program does not do.

I suggest that attending events like The Global Summit will also help me along in my learning. I suggest that opportunities to interact with global colleagues like the event at TeachMeet06 will give me learning opportunities that no analysis of a “reader” would ever manage. How sad that I have to ‘regurgitate’ to prove that I understand.

What I have learned and continue to learn through social networking, Web 2.0 and peer to peer discussions is far superior to my current academic offerings.

My students and my schools are the priority. It is vital to innovate, have fun, and learn all at the same time…..so unless I can actively research SecondLife, or an aspect of Web 2.0 in 2007 …… that’s it to my current academic institution.

I want to thank all the wonderful people who have contributed to my professional learning – fantastic stuff for this teacher as learner.

Remix epitomises Web 2.0

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A concept I like to present when doing professional development about Web 2.0 is the idea of “remix”. If we look at millenials, we see that all their digital actions are associated with remixing and personalising of music, video, pictures, information – whatever really!

So the reappearance of Writely as a Google product, is another example of a writing tool that allows students to cut and paste, as well as combine and create, all in the one online tool. It features collaborative editing — multiple editors on the same doc at once — and can be used as the editor for writing your blog, saving out to a post instead of a file on your machine.

Writely – the Web 2.0 word processor is now accepting signups again.
We cannot escape ‘remix’ – nor would I suggest that we should! What is more critical is that educators come to better understand the shifting agenda in this ‘remix’ culture, and appreciate the strength of this approach and integrate it into our educational aims. Of course we have to work out what this means – and how ‘remix’ can be about developing creativity, fostering critical thinking, collaboration, and knowledge creation.

So a post on this topic from Sheila Webber is timely, as she alerts us to to the fact that Colin Lankshear and Michele Knobel have generously posted Chapter 3 (“New literacies: concepts and practices”) of the forthcoming 2nd edition of their book New Literacies http://www.geocities.com/newliteracies/ and on their blog they had also posted Chapter 4 (“New literacies in everyday practice”) as well.

Three experts from Part 2: New literacies in everyday practice make a good summary of my views on ‘remix’:

Until recently the idea of ‘remix’ as a practice of taking cultural artifacts and combining and manipulating them into a new kind of creative blend was associated almost entirely with recorded music.

While this remains the dominant conception of remix, its conceptual life has expanded recently in important and interesting ways within the context of increasing activism directed at copyright and intellectual property legislation.

We accept this conceptual extension of ‘writing’ to include practices of producing, exchanging and negotiating digitally remixed texts, which may employ a single medium or may be multimedia remixes. At the same time we also recognize as forms of remix various practices that do not necessarily involve digitally remixing sound, image and animation, such as fanfiction writing and producing manga comics (whether on paper or on the screen).

Learning Technology Forum

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Wednesday and Thursday this week saw Learning Technology teachers from primary and secondary schools in the Parramatta Diocese gather for a two-day forum.

The presentations from this forum will be made available via podcast – and I hope provide the links for you when they are available .

The forum was opened by Kevin Jones, and as Head of Curriculum he was able to provide some clear insights to ‘set the scene’.

Kevin focussed on the beliefs that underpin/enable/epitomise 21st century learning, and the approaches that will enable (if not ensure) quality 21st century learning. Some of the key points were about the beliefs that must drive our understanding and the staffroom approaches that help us be more effective.

The Beliefs
Learning in the 21st century is about

  • student “centredness”.
  • Student ownership
  • Student choices
  • Student responsibility

The Approach

Collaborative work practices (staffroom approaches) will help us meet the learning needs of our students.

These practices must include use of technology that enhances collaborative work practices for:

  • Programming Organisation of assessment
  • Marking to standards
  • Evaluation
  • Cross-curricular approaches

As Kevin explained, “Our approaches and practices have to reflect our beliefs about individualised learning”. “We need to think about our own approach” “We need to think about what our current practices indicate about our beliefs about learning”.

Then we will engage more effectively in how to use the tools.

I followed with a presentation on Engaging the google generation through Web 2.0. For this session I drew from the article of the same title published in SCAN, Vol 25 No 3 August 2006.