ECI831 response artifact

This was done as a final wrap-up reflection for the ECI831 class.  A couple explanations before you watch the video:

We implemented Maplewood this year and it caught us by surprise with the amount of work involved in getting it going.  I thought I would be part of it for a couple weeks and then get back to my regular position.  But unfortunately I’m just now getting back to in December, after many miles on the road supporting secretaries and principals.  There’s a metaphor in the video for it, so I thought I better explain it.

My major project for this class was a wiki of math lessons with the new 3,6,9 implementation.  I am currently in the process of getting teachers involved in filling in the content.  But the structure is there.  You can find it at hzsdmath.wikispaces.com.  There is an allusion to it in the video as well.

Well, here is the video:

The Great Facebook Debate

I recently received an email from a teacher regarding the use of Facebook in school.

Hello Russell,
I have a question for you.  I was wondering what is your take on the use of Facebook in school, I am pretty strict making sure the students are not using it.  Today I had my principal come to my classroom and ask me why I do not let the students on Facebook. I said that a school isn’t a place for students to acess social network sites (unmonitored at that) I also said school computers are for educational use and Facebook has no educational value.  What are other school doing with this issue?

Here is my response:

Thanks for the great question.  First, I’d like to direct you to Protocol 6-60 Acceptable Use of Computers.  The following two sections come the closest to dealing with this issue.

Appendix “C”

GAMES/MULTIMEDIA:
Using the Horizon School Division and CNET EDUVPN infrastructure to access games or multimedia services for non-educational purposes is an unacceptable use of a valuable resource and is not permitted.

Appendix “J”

PERSONAL WEB SITES
Personal Web Pages will be limited to students in grades 10, 11, and 12. The student must have parent and administration/supervising teacher’s approval before they post their web page to the Internet. These sites must conform to the acceptable use policy and to the Horizon School Division Communication Protocol – 1-50.

As you can see, Appendix C is very clear that the computers are not to be used for non-educational purposes.  Appendix J states that students will not be allowed to post personal websites without prior parent and teacher approval.  Since Facebook is a type of personal website, that means the student would not be allowed to update their status without first consulting their parents and their teacher.

This protocol was written a few years ago, and the way we interact with others via the Internet has changed drastically since then with the advent of Web 2.0.  However, it is the protocol in place that is to guide our decisions as educators.  It is my understanding that this protocol is under review, and may be changed at some point in the future, but for now, I would advise you use this protocol in it’s entirety when deciding if you should allow students to access Facebook.  It can be found in the Protocol Manual on the Horizon School Division Website.  You may also want to have a look at a few of the items in Section 4 of the Admin Manual, namely the Internet Usage Agreement procedure and form.

I would also like to give my personal take on things.  The following comments are my own, and do not necessarily reflect division policy.

There is a great debate surrounding the use of Facebook, Youtube, and other “social” sites in schools.  Some want them opened up wide, others want them locked right down.  And there is pretty much every opinion in between.  For now, I will set aside the (in)appropriateness of the content and focus on the educational value side of things.  For me, it’s more so about “on-task behavior” than it is about whether Facebook has educational value or not.  Whether it is Facebook or a comic book, teachers need to decide how much off-task behavior is acceptable.  Should we ban comic books because they distract students?  Perhaps a better analogy to facebook would be a letter from a friend.  Would we tell a student they shouldn’t bring a letter from their friend to school because it will distract them from their studies?  I don’t believe we would.

I don’t feel it is efficient to work non-stop all day, and I think most would agree with me.  Short breaks are needed throughout the day to give the mind and body a chance to rejuevenate.  That’s why we have recesses.  The amount of time and frequency of breaks needed vary by the individual.  So I guess the question becomes WHEN is Facebook appropriate.  During recess only?  For only a couple minutes during a class?  If a student had a letter from their friend out and was reading it all day and not focussing on their work, then I would ask them to keep it at home.  But if they read it during recess, I wouldn’t have a problem with it.

So I guess for me it isn’t a question of whether Facebook has “educational value” or not.  There are many things that happen in schools that cannot be linked directly to curricular outcomes, and I don’t see a problem with that.  The focus of schools still needs to be on the curriculum, but we can’t expect students to shut off the rest of their lives and only think about the curriculum from 9:00-3:30 everyday.  Monitoring the amount of off-task time a student spends is the key, whether that off-task time is spent on Facebook, visiting with their friends, or doodling.

So now comes the question of the appropriateness of the content.  I see many more shades of grey in this area.  We all recognize that pornography, violence, vulgar language, and hate are content we want to keep out of our schools, whether they are entering the school through the Internet or some other medium.  The problem with Facebook, Youtube, and other social sites is that the site itself does not define the content.  Social sites are, by definition, sites where the content depends on the people using them.  Whether Facebook brings in that inappropriate content or not depends on what the students’ friends post.  For this reason, many schools have banned social sites.  The content is just too unpredictable.

We owe our students a certain standard of care, and must execute our due diligence in preventing inappropriate content from entering the school. However I think we would be fooling ourselves if we thought we could be 100% successful in this effort 100% of the time.  It is my personal belief that in educating the whole child, we must teach them what is socially appropriate and what is not.  In the computer room, where every aspect of the world is just a click away, this requires our presence, physically and mentally, in the room with the students.  Due to staff numbers and building size, it isn’t always possible in every school to have a teacher on supervision in the computer room at recess and noon hour.  And in these cases, I think it is quite appropriate to not allow students on Facebook, or even on the Internet.

In the case there there is direct supervision, the question becomes what do you do when something inappropriate is posted on Facebook and they read it (or view it).  Do we simply tell them to close the browser window?  Do we discuss with them why that post was socially inappropriate?  Or do we block Facebook so students can’t go onto the site anymore and pretend that part of the world isn’t out there?

The interconnectedness of the world, vastly due to the Internet, has really muddied the waters of what is and is not the responsibility of the teacher.  I’ll try to write another post on this in a few days.

Gaming in Education

Last week, we were asked to “engage [our] inner skeptic to answer the question: Why has the use of games in the classroom become a “hot” topic in education lately?”.  Without meaning to sound negative, I have to say that I don’t think it has become a hot topic.  There are some people who are always pushing the proverbial envelope, however I haven’t seen this issue really hit mainstream education yet.  In the Ed-Tech community, Web 2.0 is old news, and perhaps the use of games is a hot topic.  But the majority of the teachers I work with (and I stress majority, not all) are just now making forays into the Web 2.0 world.  Gaming in education isn’t even on their radar yet, let alone a hot topic for them.

That being said, I will try to give some reflection on why the use of games could become a hot topic in education.  When I think of the word education, in simplest terms, I think of learning knowledge and skills which I could employ to create a product or service which could be traded for other products or services I will need or want in my life.  In other words, something I use to get a job (work) so I can make the money that I need to buy things.  When I think of gaming, in simplest terms, I think of something I do for entertainment (fun) but which does not provide me with any product or service I can trade.

Although it is obviously much more complex than that, I think many people would see at somewhat agree with those definitions.  It seems to come down to a dichotomy of work vs fun.  So when someone suggests incorporating games into education, they tend to think of it as just entertaining the students (fun), and not providing them with a worthwhile opportunity (work).

But what if it isn’t a dichotomy?  What if work could be fun?  What if fun could be work?  Some cynics might say this is just a childhood dream, but I do think it is possible.  Especially if you consider successfully meeting a challenge fun.

Increasing knowledge accessibility results in the loss of knowledge depth?

A teacher sent me a page from the Globe and Mail to read today.  Unfortunately I can’t send a link to the online article as it requires a subscription.  But it is from Page A21 of the September 12, 2009 edition, and is titled “Information-rich and attention-poor” by Peter Nicholson.  The article discusses how the increased access to information has created a scarcity in attention, and whether those two can be reconciled.

The portion of the article that caught my particular attention says:

“…the value of traditional expert authority is itself being diluted by the new incentive structure created by information technology that militates against what is deep and nuanced in favour of what is fast and striped-down.

The result is the growing disintermediation of experts and gatekeepers of virtually all kinds.  The irony is that experts have been the source of most of the nuggets of knowledge that the crowd now draws upon in rather parasitic fashion – for example, news and political bloggers depend heavily on a relatively small number of sources of professional journalism, just as many Wikipedia articles assimilate prior scholarship.  The system works because it is able to mine intellectual capital.  This suggests that today’s ‘cult of the amateur’ will ultimately be self-limiting and will require continuous fresh infusions of more traditional forms of expert knowledge.”

This reminds me of a question that has been posed at a couple conferences I’ve been to; “If we can google it, should we be testing it?”.  At the root of this question lies the importance of having “traditional expert authority” in the future.  It would seem that if we don’t test things we can google, then we don’t create deep and nuanced knowledge and we don’t build expert authority in the future.  This would seem to stagnate the knowledge pool.  Nicholson goes on to say, “For now, the just-in-time approach seems to be narrowing peripheral intellectual vision and thus reducing the serendipity that has been the source of most radical innovation.”  However, he also writes that, “…Plato, in Phaedrus, suggested that writing would ‘create forgetfulness in the minds of those who learn to use it.’  This is a striking example of a particular kind of generation gap in which masters of an established paradigm can only see the shortcomings, and not the potential of the truly novel.”

So, will we be able to adapt and evolve to a way of creating new knowledge using the power of many minds giving small amounts of attention, or will innovation cease in a world where we don’t test the things we can google?

My three questions for Sue

Tonight in class, Sue Waters asked us to ask her 3 questions we have about blogging in education.  My first question can be found in another post from tonight regarding creating a culture where teachers feel comfortable reflecting on their practice in a public space.  I’m not sure culture is the correct word to use there, but I can’t think of a better one.

My second question surrounds the value of unstructured blogging.  In other words, can blogging lose its educational value when you don’t ask the students to blog about something specific?  Conversely, can it increase it’s educational value when you give them freedom over their blog topics?

My third question is about using the writing process in blogging.  Sue offered us a diagram that included 4 parts to a blogging cycle.  Unfortunately I can’t find that image anywhere on her blog to link to.  However, for those who attended the class, you may remember some back channelling about using the writing process in blogging.  Here’s my question(s).  Does using the writing process in blogging improve the quality of blog posts?  At the same time, does it stifle the conversation nature of blogging?

oh, and I think I am supposed to link back to her post so she gets a pingback or something.  I hope I do this right!  :S

Trackbacks and Pingbacks (un)explained

I did a little searching for an explanation of Pingbacks tonight, cuz I still didn’t have my head wrapped around it.  After reading a couple websites (learnmore.se and wordpress.org, both Delicious bookmarked with the eci831readings tag) I thought I had it figured out.  But then I went to send a trackback to Sue Waters‘ post and it didn’t seem to work, unless she has to approve it first or something.  Also, the explanations on the sites I linked to above say that only a trackback sends an excerpt of the post to the original blog, and that a pingback doesn’t.  They say that trackbacks are done manually, but pingbacks are done automatically when you link to the original post in your post.  However, I am pretty sure that when Sue did it in class tonight, she just created a link in her Moody’s post (pingback) but an excerpt showed up in the original post as a comment.  That seems to contradict what the two pages I’ve linked to say.  So I still don’t get it!  Anyone have a better explanation?

Blogging as part of Teacher PD

Reflective practice is key to growth in teacher professional development.  As part of a technology infusion project I participated in a year and a half ago, teachers I was working with were asked to keep a journal.  We didn’t want their typing skills to limit their reflections, so they weren’t required to keep a blog.  Instead, most of them kept a written journal and some typed their journal in a Microsoft Word document.  I tried to respond to their journals every two weeks, but found it wasn’t feasible.  Beyond that, I have reflected that I shouldn’t be the one (or only one) responding to their reflections.  They need to be reflecting on each others.  And ideally, having outsiders respond to their reflections.  (ie. Sue Waters‘ comments about the importance of a global audience in class today).

So in this next project we are working on with teachers, we will be asking them to keep a blog.  I think we can get around the typing speed issue by using video or audio blogs.  However… the problem I am now anticipating is teachers’ “shyness” in their blogs.  In the previous project, it was a struggle to get teachers to open up and give authentic reflections because they new we were collecting these reflections as part of a report to the board.  I am concerned with a blog that has a global audience (much broader then just a report to the board), we will only get superficial reflections.

So my question to you is, how can we create a culture where teachers feel comfortable posting authentic professional reflections for the world to read?

Non-formal and informal learning

Recent technology has created new ways to form communities in educational environments, but the fact that learning occurs in non-formal ways within these communities is not new.  In one room schools, non-formal learning occurred during recess and during whispered discussions at the back of class.  I guess I should first point out that my understanding of “formal” learning occurs when it is teacher directed.  So perhaps we need to first reflect on what our role WAS in non-formal learning environments in the past.  Since hindsight is usually pretty good, this can give us a perspective on how we can handle online non-formal learning environments and what our role is in them.

I see the teacher having a role in recess time.  It is important to give students some play time without structure, but that doesn’t mean the teacher isn’t still a part of recess time.  Often very important teachable moments are brought about through interactions on the playground.  These may not be specifically tied to the written curriculum, but they certainly are tied to the unwritten curriculum involved in ‘educating’ the whole child.  A teacher needs to be vigilant on the playground and watch for these moments, because they often pass by quickly.

Can that perspective on recess time be applied to the non-formal aspects of online learning?  I don’t think we should be ‘vigilant’ of all their online activities though social media used outside of class purposes, but we certainly should be for those we introduce and use in classes.  For example, if we want students to engage in collaborative learning through the use of wikis and blogs, we definitely need to be observing their interactions in those spaces and watching for teachable moments.

Thoughts?

Using Google Forms

I just finished using Google Forms for the first time.  It is a pretty slick way of gathering information.  I have used Google Docs before, but never the forms.  I have also used Zoho Creator, but for the purposes I was using it for, I liked Google Forms a lot better.  Has anyone used these?  What are your impressions?  Are there others out there?

I AM alive!

In case anyone is reading my blog yet, I am still alive.  But have been going straight from work to the farm and working until midnight every night.  Today I had a little time off, but decided I better get caught up on housework before my roommates kicked me out.  That’s why it is again midnight and I am just posting now.

So… last week’s presentation by Dr. Schwier was interesting, but I think I was more interested in the back channel.  I found myself not paying attention to what he was saying.  I am still undecided on this whole back channeling thing.  I have a feeling it is going to be a thread of debate that weaves its way through this entire course.

I’m not sure I understood the difference between non-formal and informal learning communities.  I will have to read the paper to figure that one out.  His studies look like they would be interesting to read, but that will have to wait until after harvest is over and Maplewood is up and running in the division!

So I will leave you with a question, not necessarily rhetorical, but one without a definite answer.  We’ve been hearing a lot lately that students live in an online world with instant updates and all that jazz.  And we have to meet them there if we want to engage them.  Is this merely a self-fulfilling prophecy, or is there truth to it?  What do you think?