Sunday, March 28, 2010
Macarthur Foundation
“If it were possible to define generally the mission of education, it could be said that its fundamental purpose
is to ensure that all students benefit from learning in ways that allow them to participate fully in public,
community, [Creative] and economic life.”
— New London Group (2000, p. 9)
Participatory Culture
For the moment, let’s define participatory culture as one:
1.With relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement
2.With strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others
3.With some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is
passed along to novices
4.Where members believe that their contributions matter
5.Where members feel some degree of social connection with one another (at the least they
care what other people think about what they have created)
Participatory culture shifts the focus of literacy from one of individual expression to
community involvement.
Rather than dealing with each technology in isolation, we would do better to take an ecological approach, thinking about the interrelationship among all of these different communication technologies, the cultural communities that grow up around them, and the activities they support
Forms of participatory culture include:
Affiliations — memberships, formal and informal, in online communities centered
around various forms of media, such as Friendster, Facebook, message boards,
metagaming, game clans, or MySpace).
Expressions — producing new creative forms, such as digital sampling, skinning and
modding, fan videomaking, fan fiction writing, zines, mash-ups).
Collaborative Problem-solving — working together in teams, formal and informal,
to complete tasks and develop new knowledge (such as through Wikipedia, alternative
reality gaming, spoiling).
Circulations — Shaping the flow of media (such as podcasting, blogging).
Access to this participatory culture functions as a new form of the hidden curriculum, shaping which youth will succeed and which will be left behind as they enter school and the workplace
Three concerns, however, suggest the need for policy
and pedagogical interventions:
The Participation Gap — the unequal access to the opportunities, experiences, skills, and
knowledge that will prepare youth for full participation in the world of tomorrow.
The Transparency Problem — The challenges young people face in learning to see
clearly the ways that media shape perceptions of the world.
The Ethics Challenge — The breakdown of traditional forms of professional training and
socialization that might prepare young people for their increasingly public roles as media
makers and community participants.
the new media literacies should be seen as social skills, as ways of interacting within a larger community, and not simply an individualized skill to be used for personal expression
Web 2.0 Literacy and Secondary Teacher Education
Danielle Fahser-Herro and Constance Steinkuehler
Literacy skills honed from reading books and writing papers has long been recognized as invaluable to building and sustaining intellect. Educators are charged with strengthening literacy programs, and they typically rely on conventional practices and increased time focusing on text-based media to do so, yet their efforts have not significantly increased test scores (Baer, Baldi, Ayotte, & Green, 2007; U.S. Department of Education, 2005).
At the same time, these traditional classrooms neglect the rich digital literacy opportunities Web 2.0 tools offer to improve literacy programs and meet individual needs. This paper explores issues surrounding definitions of “new literacy” practices as they relate to Web 2.0 tools while drawing on pertinent, emerging research to discuss the value of integrating digital literacy applications in K–12 and higher education classrooms. (Keywords:
digital literacy, Web 2.0, teacher education, new literacy practices)
-authors suggest a need exists to further examine the potential value of incorporating digital media to augment curricula while acknowledging current research offers no clear-cut method to determine best practices.
-Although many examples of Web 2.0 technologies’ use in educational settings are gaining
recognition, few are studied, signifying that its novelty precludes a firm solution providing researched, credible professional development models to emulate.
-Although students may learn to decode in the early grades, this often fails to translate into reading for meaning. Without question, schools are concerned with improving literacy practices, yet increased time with texts and writing in schools has not consistently improved literacy rates.
-21st c skills movement literacy had moved beyond reading, writing, speaking, and listening to
expansive “information and communication technology” literacies including researching, evaluating, creating, collaborating, and integrating information “in order to function in a knowledge economy”
-Change increasingly defines the nature of literacy in an information age. Literacy is rapidly and continuously changing as new technologies for information and communication repeatedly
appears and new envisionments for exploiting these technologies are continuously crafted by users. (Leu, 2000, p. 743)
-New literacies can be defined as “the ability to solve genuine problems amidst a deluge of information and its transfer in the Digital Age” (Holum& Gahala, 2001, para. 3)
-Internet—real-time information, virtual environments, and wide-reaching exchanges of knowledge—can intensify communication and comprehensionand ultimately change literacy
-no firm definition of Web 2.0, a capacity for high user engagement, intellectual rigor, frequent updating, and collective knowledge sharing based on an underlying technological infrastructure of blogs, wikis, podcasts, photosharing, RSS feeds, social bookmarks, and the like (O’Reilly, 2005; Anderson, 2007)
-highly participatory culture with broad access to media production tools, meshed with ubiquitous, inexpensive, or free tools. Users capitalize less on consumption and retrieval and more on creating content
-Web 2.0 technologies relocate “expertise” by broadening the range of information sources available and encouraging collective intelligence through distributed practices of winnowing and
sifting rather than single sourcing
-Instead of standardized, individually focused, teacher-mediated curricula, literacy practices surrounding Web 2.0 technologies call for knowledge construction in a collaborative, production-oriented, somewhat nonlinear manner with access to knowledge mediated by its users.
-there is a lack of teacher pre-service that adequately deals with teaching how to integrate social media into learning, and this is also happening in the school system
-In terms of infrastructure, student-to-computer ratios as well as Internet access and
speed are greatly improving in school, yet they lag in their ability to keep pace with new digital affordances
-overall disconnect between readily available technology tools and in-school digital literacy practices remains discouraging
-The expansive influence Internet technologies have had on everyday users has outpaced education’s ability to sustain the Internet’s newly afforded literacies
-the contrast between use of the internet in the classroom and the internet at home is one of a text-privileged, teacher-guided, production as evidence of consumption vs collaborative, participative, production as genuine contribution.
-one-computer classroom controlled by the teacher, often used as a “center” for drill and practice, information retrieval, or finishing work started in a lab setting, continues to be the
prevailing reality in many new-millennium classrooms
-without a solid body of research augmenting instruction to incorporate digital literacy practices inK–12 classrooms, along with supportive teacher education and training programs, a large-scale shift in practice seems unlikely
-How do K–12 districts change practice to incorporate digital literacy skills? The answer may lie in a structure analogous to Web 2.0 itself. Grassroots efforts encapsulating collective intelligence may be teachers’ best bets
-The group decided to rework its technology program to infuse opportunities for Web 2.0 into a scope and sequence of student competencies that were not software or “tool” specific, but instead open ended and research and project oriented. They intended to thread ethics, safety, and responsible computing into the entire K–12 curriculum. When compared to district- and state-level library, media, and technology standards, the student competencies, if satisfied, exceeded standards expectations
-Jenkins et al. outline 11 new media literacies. Defined as “a set of cultural competencies and social skills that young people need in the new media landscape” (p. 4)
•Simulation: the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models
of real-world processes
• Appropriation: the ability to meaningfully sample and remix media content
• Judgment: the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information
• Transmedia navigation: the ability to follow the flow of stories and information across multiple modalities
•Negotiation: the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms (p. 4)
-District administrators have used concern over online safety and intellectual property rights/fair use, for example, to justify a surge in Internet filters, Internet safety, responsible-use education, and desktop “locks” on computers, creating apprehension in schools
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
A Shift in Teaching
retrieved March 23, 2010.
Will Richardson
Will Richardson
Weblogg-ed.comPowerful Learning Practice Network (Co-Founder)
http://tinyurl.com/djrjeg
Contact: weblogged@gmail.com
Author: Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms ( Corwin Press, 2nd Ed, July 2008)
Latest Articles:
"Footprints in a Digital Age" (Educational Leadership, November, 2008)
"World Without Walls: Learning Well With Others" (Edutopia, December 2008)
Teaching with these technologies challenges the traditional definition of teaching. Our main role in the midst of these networked learning environments is as a connector for our students, not simply content expert.
As teachers we must teach and model for our students the ability to create, grow and navigate personal learning networks in safe, ethical and effective ways.
What do these teachers have in common?
They are networked learners.
They share their practice.
The connect their students globally.
They give students voice.
They create opportunities for real work for real purposes for their students.
They learn with their students.
This is a period of Fluid Learning.
- Capture Everything
- Share Everything
- Open Everything
- Only Connect
And we are entering a period of "ubiquitous learning."
What do you think these shifts mean for your own teaching and learning?
Take this teacher's Tweet: "In Gr.8 - using Google Earth, Flickr, YouTube, bbcnews, to learn about the protests in Burma .. world at their fingertips, AS IT HAPPENS!"
Now we have the opportunity to be connectors, to bring our classrooms to the world in a variety of ways. We can find other teachers who may know more than we do. (Secret Life of Bees)
Here's another example of students learning from mentors. (Polar Science)
New Media Literacies
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pEHcGAsnBZE
NMLstaff08
November 11, 2008
Members of the research team at Project New Media Literacies discuss the social skills and cultural competencies needed to fully engage with today's participatory culture. Featuring Henry Jenkins, and produced by Anna Van Someren at Project New Media Literacies. See more NML videos at http://techtv.mit.edu/collections/new
Comments on New Literacies:
An Introduction to New Internet Literacies for Educators: Blogs, Wikis, RSS, Online Bookmarking
A number of new Internet technologies are changing the way we find, manage and distribute information. From Weblogs to Wikis to RSS to online bookmarking services, the possibilities for collaboration and sharing are almost limitless, as are the ways students and teachers can benefit in the classroom. Get an overview of the tools being used to foster this new literacy and a framework for integrating them into teaching practices.
The current educational system creates and nurtures dependent learners. Our students depend on us to:
- create the environment in which learning takes place
- tell them what they should know, when and why
- provide the context for knowing
- provide appropriate materials for learning
- assess what they know
- select appropriate ways to share what they have learned with others
The new world of learning is requires us to teach students to be independent learners, ones that are not dependent on teachers but are:
- Self-directing--we now have the ability to create our own, personal curriculum around the ideas or topics that we are most passionate about. We no longer require curriculum to be delivered to us. We need to help our students find their passions and pursue them in the context of online networks in ethical, effective, organized and safe ways. And finding a balance between the online and offline life is also a "literacy" in this age. There are so many ways to communicate these days (blogs, wikis, IM, text, etc.) that it's easy to get overwhelmed.
- Self-selecting--in this world, learning spaces are created, not provided. And teachers are not assigned, they are selected. The creation and nurturing of these highly collaborative spaces and communities is a new "literacy" that we need to help our students develop. How do we find the best teachers? How do we connect to them? How to we build communities with others that are supportive and effective?
- Self-editing--whereas most of us were educated in a world where the materials we worked with had been edited by someone else along the way, in today's world, less and less of what we read is now "edited" in the traditional sense. So, reading and writing is no longer enough; we need to develop people who are effective editors of information as well.
- Self-organizing--the Dewey Decimal system doesn't serve the online world well, so we have to organize our own stuff. To do that, we use tags and social bookmarking systems, building folksonomies where we organize the Web together.
- Self-reflecting--as we become more and more in charge of our own learning, we need to develop the ability to reflect upon and assess our own work. This "metacognitive" work can involve a number of different genres and tools.
- Self-publishing--our students will need to be literate at sharing out the work they produce because that increases the connections and conversations that can lead to further learning. Blogs, wikis, podcasts and video are among the publishing skills they will need to have.
- Self-connecting--in order to leverage the potentials of personal learning networks, our students must understand how to connect to others in safe, ethical, and effective ways.
Saturday, March 20, 2010
COGNITIVE TOOLS AND MINDTOOLS FOR COLLABORATIVE LEARNING
Beyond Technology for Technology’s Sake: Advancing Multiliteracies in the Twenty-First Century
A Five Dimensional Model for Educating the Net Generation
- The First Dimension – X Axis (Survival Strategies)
- The Second Dimension –Y Axis ( Knowledge and Comprehension): knowledge is not scarce, but meaning-making is
- The Third Dimension –Z Axis (Spatial Orientation): the ability to fly, not just drive. The principal goal of education is to create men who are capable of doing new things, not simply of repeating what other generations have done (Burkhalter, McLean, & Jones, 2004:50). Attempting to discover what students think in relation to the problems on hand, discussing their misconceptions sensitively, and giving them situations to go on thinking about which will enable them to readjust their ideas (Bell, Diagnosing students' misconceptions, 1982:6-10). Creative thinking, group problem solving and decision making, as well as the capacity to learn more and more efficiently and effectively which is inherent in 21st century skills. This means that a more sophisticated view of knowledge and learning is required than the one held in the previous industrial era because the economy is now based on selecting, processing and applying information and creating new knowledge and applications (Miller, 2000a).
- The Fourth Dimension – Time: Extending the learning process beyond the confines of the core curriculum and the walls of the classroom should be the goal of all educators to overcome the time constraints imposed by traditional classes and restrictive timetables. Emphasis is on communications including both synchronous and asynchronous methods. Students are able to access the wisdom of experts around the world and receive an answer in a relatively short period of time.
- The Fifth Dimension – Global vision: Teachers acting as gatekeepers of knowledge are threatened by the perception that learners may know more than them. Educators on the other hand strive to release these learners to construct their own knowledge so that the educator can focus on those individuals who really need their attention. Adaptability is a key facet of this stage for without it teachers are doomed to remain in a two-dimensional text-book bound world A key characteristic of the fifth dimension also involves group work and a division of labour where learners are challenged to explore lateral thinking, creativity, problem solving and innovative types of challenges. It is essential that learners are provided with real-world tools and real-world scenarios.
21st C. Learning: An Intro to the Disconnect between the organisation of schools and how humans learn
An introductory explanation of the disconnect between the organisation of schools and what the neurobiological, cognitive and behavioural sciences are discovering about how humans learn
John Abbott 2010Authentic Learning for the 21st Century: An Overview
- Real-world relevance
- Ill-defined problem
- Sustained investigation
- Multiple sources and perspectives
- Collaboration
- Reflection (metacognition)
- Interdisciplinary perspective
- Integrated assessment
- Polished products
- Multiple interpretations and outcomes
Connectivism: A learning theory for the digital age
Some significant trends in learning:
- Many learners will move into a variety of different, possibly unrelated fields over the course of their lifetime.
- Informal learning is a significant aspect of our learning experience. Formal education no longer comprises the majority of our learning. Learning now occurs in a variety of ways – through communities of practice, personal networks, and through completion of work-related tasks.
- Learning is a continual process, lasting for a lifetime. Learning and work related activities are no longer separate. In many situations, they are the same.
- Technology is altering (rewiring) our brains. The tools we use define and shape our thinking.
- The organization and the individual are both learning organisms. Increased attention to knowledge management highlights the need for a theory that attempts to explain the link between individual and organizational learning.
- Many of the processes previously handled by learning theories (especially in cognitive information processing) can now be off-loaded to, or supported by, technology.
- Know-how and know-what is being supplemented with know-where (the understanding of where to find knowledge needed).
Principles of connectivism:
- Learning and knowledge rests in diversity of opinions.
- Learning is a process of connecting specialized nodes or information sources.
- Learning may reside in non-human appliances.
- Capacity to know more is more critical than what is currently known
- Nurturing and maintaining connections is needed to facilitate continual learning.
- Ability to see connections between fields, ideas, and concepts is a core skill.
- Currency (accurate, up-to-date knowledge) is the intent of all connectivist learning activities.
- Decision-making is itself a learning process.
- Media, news, information. This trend is well under way. Mainstream media organizations are being challenged by the open, real-time, two-way information flow of blogging.
- Personal knowledge management in relation to organizational knowledge management
- Design of learning environments
Emerging Technologies for Learning
Portrait of a Profession: Teaching and Teachers in the 21st Century
Chapter Six: Technology and Professional Development
Allen D. Glenn
In Chapter Six, Allen Glenn outlines the need for ongoing, sustained professional development for teachers in the realm of emerging technologies. He explores the necessity for using emerging technologies for professional development and the challenges of facilitating learning using new social media and other online tools. Unprecedented access to the World Wide Web is challenging the teaching profession, but there are enormous opportunities as well.
Professional development opportunities, both formal and informal abound when it comes to technology. In a recent search, there were over 900,000 websites with reference to “teacher professional development.” Examples of informal resources include the North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (http://www.ncrel.org) and the George Lucas Educational Foundation (GLEF) (http://ww.glef.org). Quality professional development, according to the National Commission on Teaching and America's Future (NCTAF) states that there are several guidelines for quality professional development, including:
• connected to, and derived from teachers' work with their students
• sustained, ongoing, intensive, and supported by peers and school leaders
• organized around collective problem solving
• responsive to social and educational priorities at every jurisdictional level
Glenn notes that technology belongs to today's youth, and shapes their expectations about learning and how they interact. Students anticipate continual connectivity via social networks. Teachers today know that technology is not “a fad” that will go away. What is clear is that sustained, continual professional development is necessary to keep up with the technological demands, but how can this take place when there is so little time?
After a summation of the history of professional development, Glenn observes that technology is ever-changing, and that keeping up is almost impossible. While he is correct, his focus, in my opinion, narrows to learning how to use the tools, not the pedagogical methodology that facilitates students' connecting, creating, and sharing. My belief is that the students can teach the teacher how to use the tools, but the teacher must become a “cognitive coach” in response.
In his study, Glenn notes that there are four key stages to learning how to incorporate technology:
- Emerging: exploring the potential of technology
- applying: using content based materials and tools for accessing the internet and word processing
- Infusing: teachers use technology as part of the instructional process, and students are more directly engaged
- Transforming: the classroom is learning centered, where students explore a variety of real-world problems in an inquiry-oriented learning environment
Changing a teaching style is difficult, but not insurmountable, Glenn states. Teacher philosophies about education may be challenged with a learner-centered approach that is the potential hallmark of a technology-driven curriculum. Research also shows that teachers resist technology that doesn't match the context in which they work, and do not address the problems related to their classrooms. Grant (1996) suggests the following for effective technology professional development:
- vision of technology as an empowering tool
- stimulate reflective practice and be grounded in the context of teaching
- exemplify our deepest beliefs about learning: inquiry, collaboration, and discourse
- value and cultivate a culture of collegiality
- provide continual opportunities for formal and informal learning
- provide opportunities for meaningful teacher leadership roles to emerge
- enable teachers to shape their own learning
When teachers personalize computer tools, a sense of ownership and a positive attitude is the result.
To use digital technologies a teacher needs a variety of learning and support activities:
- technical learning experiences ought to be problem based and related to actual classroom situations
- teachers need to set goals and reflect on their teaching continually
- one-on-one collaborative support should be available
- collaboration with others engaged in using tech should be available
- opportunities to read professional materials should be available
Most importantly, Glenn observes that there are a plethora of opportunities to connect, at one's own pace, via the World Wide Web, in digital communities of practice. Today's students (and teachers) expect unprecedented access to technology, no matter their comfort level. There are certain expectations that technology should be readily available, and these pressures will continue to force schools and districts in terms of budgetary considerations. Therefore, teachers should be focusing on learning “how to use technology to learn,” rather than “learn to use technology.”
Finally, in his concluding remarks, Glenn states that future professional development will allow teachers to choose from a variety of learning communities characterized by:
• long term vs short term
• continuous vs targeted
• lifelong vs short term goals
• real community vs school
• virtual vs physical
• formal vs informal instructors
• sharing virtual resources vs physical
• unscheduled vs scheduled learning
In my opinion, Glenn accurately observes that technology is fast disrupting how learning is taking place. In addition, he is correct in stating that technology must be used to learn rather than being an end unto itself. However, I did not get a sense that there was a suggestion or solution to the issue of professional development, and how it could be led, for example, by teacher leaders. He did not mention action research, a prime method of problem solving, and using technology as a fulcrum, action research could be a powerful tools for teachers. Still, the issue of time, whether physical or virtual, is in short supply when it comes to professional development.