Showing posts with label ICT. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ICT. Show all posts
Monday, 28 February 2011
Teaching the Facebook Generation, SMH 27/02/11
An article in the Herald about "Teaching the Facebook Generation" suggests schools are wary about allowing social media to be used during class time. So how are kids supposed to learn about it - and learn with it? Tim Hawkes is still on the Herald's speed dial, and seems to be taking a sensible approach - ''Ineffective policy is to ban use; prohibition has never worked... We want to ensure that each student's electronic footprint is one they are proud of."
Roschelle, J., Pea, R., Hoadley, C., Gordin, D., & Means, B. (2000). Changing how and what children learn in schools with computer-based technologies. Children and computer technology, 10(2), 76-101.
So - the first article I have to read about IT in education is eleven years old. (Perhaps a gentle introduction to the kind of IT I will actually find in education…). It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. The study is well aware of its limitations, and is grounded in pedagogical ideals that seem pretty solid in terms of supporting children’s learning, viz
(1) active engagement,
(2) participation in groups,
(3) frequent interaction and feedback, and
(4) connections to real-world contexts
The study then gives examples of how Y2K technology can be used to put these principles into practice. Marco Torres it ain’t. The strength of the article is in identifying the main areas in which IT can be used to support learning, but, with so little idea of what connected technologies will make possible, its suggestions of how to do this are predictably limited.
1. Learning Through Active Engagement
“Students learn best by actively "constructing" knowledge from a combination of experience, interpretation, and structured interactions with peers and teachers”
– for this the study refers to Bransford. Using the “Microcomputer-Based Laboratory,” students can immediately plot graphs from their data. their mate’s graph on the bus the next morning, which jogs a vague memory of that thing they did in Bio the day before. All well and good – in fact, a bit of a jolt to remember a time before Excel – and it increases their learning gain around using graphs by 81%.
2. Learning Through Participation in Groups
Some good justification for this, too -
Social contexts give students the opportunity to successfully carry out more complex skills than they could execute alone. Performing a task with others provides an opportunity not only to imitate what others are doing, but also to discuss the task and make thinking visible. Much learning is about the meaning and correct use of ideas, symbols, and representations. Through informal social conversation and gestures, students and teachers can provide explicit advice, resolve misunderstandings, and ensure mistakes are corrected. In addition, social needs often drive a child's reason for learning. Because a child's social identity is enhanced by participating in a community or by becoming a member of a group, involving students in a social intellectual activity can be a powerful motivator and can lead to better learning than relying on individual desk work.
This seems exactly the kind of thing that web-based learning groups were made for. The study gives the example of Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environment, which apparently encourages metacognition, too. It supports ‘structured collaborative knowledge building by having students communicate their ideas and criticisms--in the form of questions, statements, and diagrams-to a shared database classified by different types of thinking. By classifying the discussion in this way, students become more aware of how to organize their growing knowledge.’
3. Learning Through Frequent Interaction and Feedback
Yup, this sounds familiar too – and predates Visible Learning by almost a decade. The graphs example above comes in again here – timely, specific feedback about what students are learning. The article suggests that boilerplate feedback responses sent via email constitute a good example, too. Pass me a bucket.
4. Learning Through Connections to Real-World Contexts
Bransford, again, on transfer. I think the main difficulty here is going to be how to identify projects that primary school children could hook up with – hopefully we’ll get some pointers there.
(1) active engagement,
(2) participation in groups,
(3) frequent interaction and feedback, and
(4) connections to real-world contexts
The study then gives examples of how Y2K technology can be used to put these principles into practice. Marco Torres it ain’t. The strength of the article is in identifying the main areas in which IT can be used to support learning, but, with so little idea of what connected technologies will make possible, its suggestions of how to do this are predictably limited.
1. Learning Through Active Engagement
“Students learn best by actively "constructing" knowledge from a combination of experience, interpretation, and structured interactions with peers and teachers”
– for this the study refers to Bransford. Using the “Microcomputer-Based Laboratory,” students can immediately plot graphs from their data. their mate’s graph on the bus the next morning, which jogs a vague memory of that thing they did in Bio the day before. All well and good – in fact, a bit of a jolt to remember a time before Excel – and it increases their learning gain around using graphs by 81%.
2. Learning Through Participation in Groups
Some good justification for this, too -
Social contexts give students the opportunity to successfully carry out more complex skills than they could execute alone. Performing a task with others provides an opportunity not only to imitate what others are doing, but also to discuss the task and make thinking visible. Much learning is about the meaning and correct use of ideas, symbols, and representations. Through informal social conversation and gestures, students and teachers can provide explicit advice, resolve misunderstandings, and ensure mistakes are corrected. In addition, social needs often drive a child's reason for learning. Because a child's social identity is enhanced by participating in a community or by becoming a member of a group, involving students in a social intellectual activity can be a powerful motivator and can lead to better learning than relying on individual desk work.
This seems exactly the kind of thing that web-based learning groups were made for. The study gives the example of Computer Supported Intentional Learning Environment, which apparently encourages metacognition, too. It supports ‘structured collaborative knowledge building by having students communicate their ideas and criticisms--in the form of questions, statements, and diagrams-to a shared database classified by different types of thinking. By classifying the discussion in this way, students become more aware of how to organize their growing knowledge.’
3. Learning Through Frequent Interaction and Feedback
Yup, this sounds familiar too – and predates Visible Learning by almost a decade. The graphs example above comes in again here – timely, specific feedback about what students are learning. The article suggests that boilerplate feedback responses sent via email constitute a good example, too. Pass me a bucket.
4. Learning Through Connections to Real-World Contexts
Bransford, again, on transfer. I think the main difficulty here is going to be how to identify projects that primary school children could hook up with – hopefully we’ll get some pointers there.
Sunday, 29 August 2010
Stephen Heppell: 21st Century Learning and its Environments
I'll put up my observations from my day with Stephen Heppell progressively, because they are in note form at the moment. First up are Stephen Heppell's top practical tips for enabling learning in today's environment
Think about how you celebrate learning, so that learning is on display. Create a sense of a place of learning:
- Label the trees with their names – more like a campus
- Get the children’s work on display – on screens, on screens leading up to the school, some schools take out billboards in the local town.
- Run a school radio station
Listen to the voice of the learners.
- Ask students how they learn better - they often have a very good idea.
- 21st century learning is ‘fuzzier at the edges’. “All the edges are a little softer”
- Harnessing kids’ capability to teach staff
- How can we work with others in the global community and hear their voices? simple eg - video screens up in the playground streaming live video to and from a sister school in Japan.
Make the learning space more playful, more personalised.
- Important to think about the physical environment - makes learning more memorable. Colour is great, in secondary or primary.
- Don't stick stuff to glass. Look on the walls - not just in the classroom - and make sure they aren't covered in lists of things you can't do.
- Get rid of projectors. For the same price you can have multiple flat screens that can be placed around a learning space, and have the option to give kids control over what they see.
Display the process of learning in a way that invites you in.
- Show the learning as it is happening, and invited feedback.
- Display drafts.
Think about the exterior learning spaces too.
- How can the bus turning area be used pedagogically?
- Label the trees
- put screens around outside
- Use video capture outside – places where you can easily capture – still camera that captures you as you go past. Great for sport.
Tuesday, 10 August 2010
Marco Torres: Good learners are givers
A couple of weeks ago now I spent a day with Marco Torres, sometime education advisor to Barack Obama, and (even more impressively) occasional director of Mythbusters. He spoke about how important it is for learners to connect with others, in order to share and co-create knowledge to solve real life, real world problems. The end product is evidence of their learning, but these connections, made through communicative technology, leave a digital trace which is also evidence of their learning.
Some points that I took away from the day -
Problems are bigger than institutions, and so are the solutions
You need a critical mass to make a difference, but it doesn’t have to be big or at your school - it can be across the world. Your colleagues don’t have to be in your physical space. US Department of Education is funding ideas not schools.
Marco was working with the World Bank. At the World Bank conference, even though it was not an education conference, all speakers said that solutions must come from kids. Adults have hang-ups that prevent them from taking risks and moving faster.
Sharing is learning, sharing is evidence of learning, sharing is evidence of passion for learning.
Using connective technologies to learn and to share learning leaves a digital trace. This can be very powerful as evidence of learning. The more hobbies you have the more iPhone apps you have, the more social networks, and the more blogs, YouTube etc you take part in, the more evidence you have that you are a continuous, self directed learner. The question that prospective school employees should be asked is, what is the evidence that you learn? If a prospective employee is really great, they don’t need a resume. Resumes are a list of nouns. It is important to hire based on verbs. Prospective employers look on the internet for what you are actually doing.
Your online activity is also evidence that you love what you do. This is important because people who love what they do work faster and also have higher levels of innovation. This is how Google hires, and how Google works.
Adults are mostly takers in an online environment. Kids are givers. Good learners are givers. Somebody who is a voracious learner is a voracious sharer: they take the information to create something. This thing that they create is evidence of their learning, and so is the process if they capture it.
This is different - it may cause discomfort. But when people are uncomfortable they have reason to learn.
Problem solving is key for 21st century learning. The important thing is to ask the right questions
Given the technology that we have, the important thing is to think about the kinds of problems we can solve.
Marco gave the example of a team challenge, in which every table was given a sheet of ‘logic problems’ e.g. ‘16 O in a P’ → 16 ounces in a pound. Marco used his iPhone to solve the problems, and finished first. Some other teachers there said, ‘That’s cheating!’ But how was this cheating? The process was not actually problem solving: the solution rested on how many people at the table had already learnt the information and could recall it. Marco just had a bigger table. Actual problem solving would be the setting of more problems.
The good questions that should be asked, that technology makes it possible to ask, include comparative analysis questions (where you have to compare data that are now easily available, or creatable - see below). These are crucial questions for today. For example: Civilian vs soldier deaths in WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Iraq - what do these tell us? If you could choose who was on your money, on what would you base your choices? If you could plan cities where they are, now, would the rules be the same as they were when they were built?
Creating data through the use of connective technology - after the New Orleans floods, Marco asked the question: Are levies wider in richer neighbourhoods? Students took the pictures and video, and created a rich database in very little time. When using connective technology, Marco notes that we need more time for reflections to get great questions.
A teacher told kids to go on YouTube and find a village that needed help. They found a village in Bangladesh that needed water. He challenged kids to solve the problem: how do you get water to the village?
Solution: They designed and created a 60 gallon barrel with hooks to drag the barrel.
Problem: They had also had a tapeworm problem.
Solution: Another school developed a tablet that kills the tapeworm as the water is rolling along in the barrel.
Problem: you can’t eat the bits of the tablet that come off in the barrel - it makes you sick.
Solution: kid at a third school stole tablet holder for putting a detergent tablet in the dryer, and adapted it for the barrel.
→ 3 schools solved the problem through the global issues network
http://www.global-issues-network.org/
Look for questions that are both creative and enable better citizenship:
A linking theme coming through the above points is that these activities also enable students to become better, more active citizens of their communities and of the world. Humanitarian design came out of challenge based approach. This involves taking maths and science to solve humanitarian problems.
The questions for challenge based learning (from KeyNote slide):
1.What can you do to solve a real problem? What does the evidence look like?
2.How can you involve students? What can happen if they plan with us?
3.What are some relevant tools strategies to solve it?
4.How will you publish the product and process?
5.What can you do to help convince the yes buts?
6.How will you market the leaning and schooling that just occurred?
7.What is a quick project idea that you could do tomorrow to head in the right direction?
8.Barriers? What are they? How can they be beaten? Problems are perceived not real.
What role does technology play in this journey?
For example: "Say you had the opportunity to make an app for the iPhone – any one you like – what would you create?" Here are some examples of good apps – they are good because they give information that is tailored to the user, and they allow the user to solve problems and to become a better citizen:
MyCongress – wherever I am (based on my gps) it tells me who are the elected officials fo that area. In the past I would have had to go through google. Now it is reformatted for me, for where I am. Everything is there. I can be a better citizen.
Citysourced How do you find the person you need to call e.g. for an abandoned car or broken pipeline or graffiti? Citisourced recognizes that you’ve taken a photo of an abandoned car, and tells you who to call – it can even send them an email, or lots, until the job gets done. Otherwise, because of lack of problem solving, problems remain. Kids can look for the problems and solve them to get points on the app. They become better citizen because of this.
wikiplace Helps find where you are, and connects you to everything you need to know about everything that is around you. eg take a photo of anything and it will tell you about it. The content is provided by users.
Association is key
The number one sign of innovative leaders is their ability to associate. This is association between people, association between ideas, etc. Schools need to promote this.
e.g. a photography assignment - if you tell kids to take a photo of a hat or a tree, they are learning about how the camera operates and how to take good pictures. But tell them to take a picture of sadness, or loneliness, and this increases their figurative language. This is increasing their ability to associate ideas, even if they don't have the skills to write an essay about it.
Some points that I took away from the day -
Problems are bigger than institutions, and so are the solutions
You need a critical mass to make a difference, but it doesn’t have to be big or at your school - it can be across the world. Your colleagues don’t have to be in your physical space. US Department of Education is funding ideas not schools.
Marco was working with the World Bank. At the World Bank conference, even though it was not an education conference, all speakers said that solutions must come from kids. Adults have hang-ups that prevent them from taking risks and moving faster.
Sharing is learning, sharing is evidence of learning, sharing is evidence of passion for learning.
Using connective technologies to learn and to share learning leaves a digital trace. This can be very powerful as evidence of learning. The more hobbies you have the more iPhone apps you have, the more social networks, and the more blogs, YouTube etc you take part in, the more evidence you have that you are a continuous, self directed learner. The question that prospective school employees should be asked is, what is the evidence that you learn? If a prospective employee is really great, they don’t need a resume. Resumes are a list of nouns. It is important to hire based on verbs. Prospective employers look on the internet for what you are actually doing.
Your online activity is also evidence that you love what you do. This is important because people who love what they do work faster and also have higher levels of innovation. This is how Google hires, and how Google works.
Adults are mostly takers in an online environment. Kids are givers. Good learners are givers. Somebody who is a voracious learner is a voracious sharer: they take the information to create something. This thing that they create is evidence of their learning, and so is the process if they capture it.
This is different - it may cause discomfort. But when people are uncomfortable they have reason to learn.
Problem solving is key for 21st century learning. The important thing is to ask the right questions
Given the technology that we have, the important thing is to think about the kinds of problems we can solve.
Marco gave the example of a team challenge, in which every table was given a sheet of ‘logic problems’ e.g. ‘16 O in a P’ → 16 ounces in a pound. Marco used his iPhone to solve the problems, and finished first. Some other teachers there said, ‘That’s cheating!’ But how was this cheating? The process was not actually problem solving: the solution rested on how many people at the table had already learnt the information and could recall it. Marco just had a bigger table. Actual problem solving would be the setting of more problems.
The good questions that should be asked, that technology makes it possible to ask, include comparative analysis questions (where you have to compare data that are now easily available, or creatable - see below). These are crucial questions for today. For example: Civilian vs soldier deaths in WWI, WWII, Vietnam, Iraq - what do these tell us? If you could choose who was on your money, on what would you base your choices? If you could plan cities where they are, now, would the rules be the same as they were when they were built?
Creating data through the use of connective technology - after the New Orleans floods, Marco asked the question: Are levies wider in richer neighbourhoods? Students took the pictures and video, and created a rich database in very little time. When using connective technology, Marco notes that we need more time for reflections to get great questions.
A teacher told kids to go on YouTube and find a village that needed help. They found a village in Bangladesh that needed water. He challenged kids to solve the problem: how do you get water to the village?
Solution: They designed and created a 60 gallon barrel with hooks to drag the barrel.
Problem: They had also had a tapeworm problem.
Solution: Another school developed a tablet that kills the tapeworm as the water is rolling along in the barrel.
Problem: you can’t eat the bits of the tablet that come off in the barrel - it makes you sick.
Solution: kid at a third school stole tablet holder for putting a detergent tablet in the dryer, and adapted it for the barrel.
→ 3 schools solved the problem through the global issues network
http://www.global-issues-network.org/
Look for questions that are both creative and enable better citizenship:
A linking theme coming through the above points is that these activities also enable students to become better, more active citizens of their communities and of the world. Humanitarian design came out of challenge based approach. This involves taking maths and science to solve humanitarian problems.
The questions for challenge based learning (from KeyNote slide):
1.What can you do to solve a real problem? What does the evidence look like?
2.How can you involve students? What can happen if they plan with us?
3.What are some relevant tools strategies to solve it?
4.How will you publish the product and process?
5.What can you do to help convince the yes buts?
6.How will you market the leaning and schooling that just occurred?
7.What is a quick project idea that you could do tomorrow to head in the right direction?
8.Barriers? What are they? How can they be beaten? Problems are perceived not real.
What role does technology play in this journey?
For example: "Say you had the opportunity to make an app for the iPhone – any one you like – what would you create?" Here are some examples of good apps – they are good because they give information that is tailored to the user, and they allow the user to solve problems and to become a better citizen:
MyCongress – wherever I am (based on my gps) it tells me who are the elected officials fo that area. In the past I would have had to go through google. Now it is reformatted for me, for where I am. Everything is there. I can be a better citizen.
Citysourced How do you find the person you need to call e.g. for an abandoned car or broken pipeline or graffiti? Citisourced recognizes that you’ve taken a photo of an abandoned car, and tells you who to call – it can even send them an email, or lots, until the job gets done. Otherwise, because of lack of problem solving, problems remain. Kids can look for the problems and solve them to get points on the app. They become better citizen because of this.
wikiplace Helps find where you are, and connects you to everything you need to know about everything that is around you. eg take a photo of anything and it will tell you about it. The content is provided by users.
Association is key
The number one sign of innovative leaders is their ability to associate. This is association between people, association between ideas, etc. Schools need to promote this.
e.g. a photography assignment - if you tell kids to take a photo of a hat or a tree, they are learning about how the camera operates and how to take good pictures. But tell them to take a picture of sadness, or loneliness, and this increases their figurative language. This is increasing their ability to associate ideas, even if they don't have the skills to write an essay about it.
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