This fantastic video (which I found via Dr. Scott McLeod) completely captures and summarizes my philosophy about 21st century education and teaching with 21st century technology. My favorite quote from the video in regards to education with 21st century technology is “death of education but it’s the dawn of learning.”
One thing that every teacher and, more importantly, administrator should take away from this video is that the current web 2.0 space is a space where students can collect data, collaborate, verify and challenge information. The Internet makes available to today’s students far more information than was available ten years ago. Yes, students can find misinformation, but they more options to challenge or verify the information they find than students have ever had before in our history. As educators we have to take advantage of the exciting new tools tat are at our disposal, if we don’t we’re putting our students at a disadvantage in the global market.
Thanks to Susie Vesper for this presentation. I think it’s something that all teachers should watch, especially those who have not yet made the connection with the power of Web 2.0 to enhance and enliven their teaching and learning programme!
I have spent the last few days putting together this presentation on ICT in education. Basically there are around 60 slides with two examples of ICT use linked to from each slide so that’s a lot of content! Let me know what you think.
This presentation about education and Global warming is by William Farren – an educator in the Dominican Republic. Interested in Global Cooling – Planning World Concerts, Creating World Change, Empowering Global Youth, then check out the Global Cooling Collective
Thanks to Clay Burell and sujokat for alerting me to this in their recent blog posts.
“Administered,designed, edited, and written by a global mix of students of varying ages, interests, voices, and points of view, Students 2.0 will feature content written by both staff writers and guest contributors. From Hawaii and Washington, from St. Louis and Chicago, from Vermont, New York, Scotland, Korea, and other points on the globe, these writings will be united in one central aspect: quality student writing,
full-voiced and engaging, about education.”
This looks to be an exciting venture by a group of committed students. Well worth visiting and watching.
You have viewed Sir Ken Robinson’s inspirational TED talk and here is another ‘WOW- look at this‘from TED Talks. The idea is that the collective images from Flickr orwherever are compiled into high resolution images that enable a threedimensional model. I liken it to Google Earth for photos. You can zoomin in high definition. An absolutely awesome idea. You can zoom in on
images, e-magazines etc and see fine detail without pixelation. Watchthe six minute video and see it for yourself.
“Photosynth creates breathtaking multi-dimensional spaces with zoom and navigation
features that outstrip all expectations. Dive into a freefall and watchas the speck becomes a high resolution image. Photosynth might utterlytransform the way we manipulate and experience digital images.”
While cleaning out my saved posts I came across this one from Doug Belshaw, which I thought might be useful for lead teachers in our cluster. It could provide useful fodder for those still walking around with blinkers on, thinking or hoping that this whole web 2.0 / school 2.0 will go away!
Read on to discover 5 ways in which we can engage learners using technology, starting with the easiest…
1. Get a blog
A blog is not a difficult thing to set up – and it’s certainly a very easy thing to use. In fact, it’s top of this list because it’s the single most effective way of communicating with students who live in an increasingly digital world.
Whilst blogs can be set up for one-way communication (by turning off comments, etc.), I would discourage that. Set out boundaries with students and, if necessary, turn on the option to moderate any comments before they go ‘live’.
While catching up on my RSS feeds I came across this from Paul Wilkinson. He began by introducing this video with this
Maybe we should change the one laptop per child project to the one cell phone per child? Might get there faster!
But then added,
Actually Now that I’ve watched this twice. I’m not sure I’m convinced. I’ll have to muse on this a bit more but something just doesn’t sit right with me. What about you? What are your thoughts? Is this inevitable? Desirable? Missing something?
Now I’m not sure if I can embed a Teacher Tube video here, so here is the url anyway. I found a You Tube version on the T4-Pay attention website where there are also links to many of the ideas mentioned in the video and other useful resources.
The You Tube blurb reads: Since most of today’s students can appropriately be labeled as “Digital Learners”, why do so many teachers refuse to enter the digital age with their teaching practices?
This presentation was created in an effort to motivate teachers to more effectively use technology in their teaching.
I have only watched snippets of this as it is taking forever to load so I’m now downloading in the hope that I will to see it properly. From my few snippets it appears to be a Did You Know type scenario. I will add comments here after I’ve had a proper look.
It’s now well after midnight and I’ve watched the video without interruption and I really liked it. It certainly has a message but the message is aimed at those who aren’t integrating web2.0 tools and ideas into their current teaching and learning programmes. The author has made good use of quotes, thinking skills, etc to support the ideas presented. It’s certainly worth a look.
Whether it’s totally the way schools will go, I’m not sure. The whole acceptance of cellphones in a school setting is a debate in itself, let alone i-pods and the like. They bring with them further issues regarding appropriate use, care and security…. But it will happen especially in the forward thinking schools.
We need teachers in our classrooms who are willing to take on the challenges of “wicked teaching” with technology, rather than those who prefer the easy road of pulling out overhead transparencies which have been “working” with kids for the last 10 to 20 years. Readers of this blog are more likely to fall into the first group, but working as I do in “the real world” of K-12 education away from the bells, whistles and magic of educational technology conferences, I know there are PLENTY of teachers in the latter group who do and will likely continue to balk at the suggestion they should find ways to use cell phones (or other types of digital technologies) with students for instructional and learning purposes.
I can only wonder at how long or if ever school administrators will see teaching in the same light as Wes.
I didn’t blog about the original or the revised version of Karl Fisch’s, Did You Know. Now there is a newer version out.
From Chris Harbeck: There is a recent “Did You Know” mashup. Original Video created by Karl Fisch, and modified by Howie DiBlasi. -Modified for Florida Educational Technology Conference. 21st Century Learning ,Global Economics and The Information Age. Technology Information & Global information- Developed for Educational Presentations…
I like the last few minutes of this movie and for what it says about todays students…. and educators. My recent experience with students and letting them have control over their product makes me firmly believe as I paraphrase David Warlick
Students need to be amplifiers of knowledge not mirrors reflecting back what we teach.
This seems to be the ‘in’ word in education here in NZ. The Ministry of Education has recently produced a little discussion booklet on the topic. In the forward, the Minister of Education states:
“Personalised learning is a way of describing the shifts that are happening in our education system as we respond to the new meaning of knowledge in the 21st century. It reflects our focus on high standards, high achievement and a commitment to life long learning. … Personalised learning involves thinking about knowledge as an active process. Students get to be informed, active participants in their own learning, they contribute to decisions about how learning works best for them, and they have a much better understanding of how they are progressing. ”
So what is new? For me it is what I and I’m sure many other teachers have been trying to implement in our class programmes for many years. Up until now I have felt hampered by our reliance on a National Curriculum and school guidelines, timetabling etc. Now with a new National Curriculum document on the horizon this may become a reality for all our students.
Personalizing the learning experience with the help of technology was a key theme at the Consortium for School Networking’s 12th annual conference, held in San Francisco March 28-30.
Let’s have a little competition at school and get ready for the future.
I will use a laptop and you will use paper and pencil. Are you ready…?
I will access up-to-date information – you have a textbook that is 5 years old.
I will immediately know when I misspell a word – you have to wait until it’s graded.
I will learn how to care for technology by using it – you will read about it.
I will see math problems in 3D – you will do the odd problems.
I will create artwork and poetry and share it with the world – you will share yours with the class.
I will have 24/7 access – you have the entire class period.
I will access the most dynamic information – yours will be printed and photocopied.
I will communicate with leaders and experts using email – you will wait for Friday’s speaker.
I will select my learning style – you will use the teacher’s favorite learning style.
I will collaborate with my peers from around the world – you will collaborate with peers in your classroom.
I will take my learning as far as I want – you must wait for the rest of the class.
The cost of a laptop per year? – $250
The cost of teacher and student training? – Expensive
The cost of well educated US citizens and workforce? – Priceless
Feel free to share this with educators, parents and stakeholders about 1:1 and the power of the seamless use of technology. It seems to sum it all up!!
Someone somewhere on the web pointed me in the direction of this site. Thank you to whoever it was! It makes interesting reading for anyone interested in Web 2.0 and future directions.
Interesting comparison of the state of the web today…and the PC industry pre-Windows: “The
Web today still resembles MS-DOS more than MS-Windows. Every website is an island, an island that knows nothing about any other website.”
Many of us in the VC community have been quietly wondering about the state of Web 2.0 innovation. We aren’t seeing much. Startup activity remains strong, but the consumer web landscape seems to be populated with the same bodies with different skins. Another video deal here; another social networking deal there, and social [feature] everywhere.
The apogee of this Web 2.0 hit me on Friday when I was having lunch with my daughter in San Francisco. There was a conversation at the table next to us between a 30-something and a 50-something, The younger was explaining to the elder that they had web site with the following attributes
Users can share any kind of information from files to photos
Storage isn’t expensive, so we don’t police it today, yet
Users can invite their friends; that’s how we get new users
We launched a few months ago and are doubling every month
We haven’t quite figured out our revenue model, but we think it is freemium (“Let me explain what that means…”)
We now know the fourth quarter of 2006 witnessed the mainstreaming of Web 2.0. It began with the YouTube acquisition, followed by a rather incumbent-centered Web 2.0 conference, culminating with the coronation of user-generated media as Time’s Person of the Year.
The notion of Web 2.0 as a wave is now rather long in the tooth, as cycles go. I believe Tim O’Reilly and John Battalle first coined the term in early 2004.
I thought one way to check the energy dissipation around “Web 2.0” would be to look at Web 2.0-centric media. Three properties that one can reasonably say are pure plays in the Web 2.0 mainstream are Techcrunch,Gigaom, and Technorati.
I found a quote today that I really do like a lot. I wanted to see what everyone else thought.
I come from the Batman era, adding items to my utility belt while students today are the Borg from Star Trek, assimilating technology into their lives.
Secondly, I don’t have to keep up, just keep open. I can’t remember if it was on a podcast or at a presentation I went to, but the speaker said, “I can handle ignorance, but I can’t handle fear.”
If a teacher is forward thinking and aware of what students will need in the future, they will use technology to get students where they need to go. from David Truss
I love the Batman and Star Trek comparison. How many forward thinking teachers are out there? Are you?
