The Internet Breaks School Walls Down

The Internet Breaks School Walls Down
by Will Richardson

No 2008-04-26 12

Magazine Title: The New Face of Learning What happens to time-worn concepts of classrooms and teaching when we can now go online and learn anything, anywhere, anytime? What happens to time-worn concepts of classrooms and teaching when we can now go online and learn anything, anywhere, anytime?

Table of Contents1 What happens to time-worn concepts of classrooms and teaching when we can now go online and learn anything, anywhere, anytime? Magazine Issue: Oct 2006: Technology in Action TOC Section: Features

Will Richardson [1]

Credit: David Julian
At some point last year, the Web welcomed its one billionth user. Demographers who study such things determined that this person was in all likelihood a twenty-four-year-old woman from Shanghai. As far as I know, no prizes were awarded.

The striking thing to me about that milestone is not the enormity of the number, however. More interesting, perhaps, is that the one billionth person to jump onto the Web could just as easily been an eight-year-old kid from Sweden or the South Bronx (or, for that matter, an eighty-year-old from South Africa) who sat down at a computer, opened a browser, and for the first time started connecting to the sum of human knowledge we are collectively building online. Furthermore, that eight-year-old had just as much ability to start contributing what she might know about horses or her hometown or whatever her passions might be, becoming an author in her own right, teaching the rest of us what she knows.

It's amazing in many ways that in just a few short years, we have gone from a Web that was primarily "read only" to one where creating content is almost as easy as consuming it. One where writing and publishing in the forms of blogs and wikis and podcasts and many other such tools is available to everyone. One where we can connect not just to content but to people and ideas and conversations as well.

This Read/Write Web, or Web 2.0, as some call it, is transforming the traditional structures of many of our most important institutions. How does business change when markets become lively conversations between the consumers who buy their products? What happens to politics when potentially every voter can give immediately direct feedback to elected representatives on important issues, or to journalism when anyone with a wireless camera phone can report on events both large and small? What happens to cultures when bloggers in Beirut and Haifa can connect while bombs fall around them?

And what happens to traditional concepts of classrooms and teaching when we can now learn anything, anywhere, anytime?

I find these questions particularly intriguing because my own learning and teaching have been transformed since I stumbled across a blog in spring 2001. I became a blogger that same day, and I've been writing and thinking and learning at Weblogg-ed.com ever since. That is where my passion for these technologies and their effects on teachers and classrooms is chronicled and archived.

Some 2,500 pieces of published writing later (with almost as many comments back from readers), I can say without hesitation that all my traditional educational experiences combined, everything from grade school to grad school, have not taught me as much about learning and being a learner as blogging has. My ability to easily consume other people's ideas, share my own in return, and communicate with other educators around the world has led me to dozens of smart, passionate teachers from whom I learn every day. It's also led me to technologies and techniques that leverage this newfound network in ways that look nothing like what's happening in traditional classrooms.

In this new interactive Web world, I have become a nomadic learner; I graze on knowledge. I find what I need when I need it. There is no linear curriculum to my learning, no formal structure other than the tools I use to connect to the people and sources that point me to what I need to know and learn, the same tools I use to then give back what I have discovered. I have become, at long last, that lifelong learner my teachers always hoped I would become. Unfortunately, it's about thirty years too late for them to see it.

The good news for all of us is that today, anyone can become a lifelong learner. (Yes, even you.) These technologies are user friendly in a way that technologies have not been in the past. You can be up and blogging in minutes, editing wikis in seconds, making podcasts in, well, less time than you'd think. It's not difficult at all to be an active contributor in this society of authorship we are building.

As usual, many of our students already know this. Kids are flocking to the Web by the millions, enthusiastically sharing music, stories, poetry, video, and pictures (some of which we'd rather not see.) They are communicating online, IMing, gaming, participating, producing. It's like using pen and paper and a printing press in digital space, and they are pushing it, stretching their imaginations, looking to us to do the same. Looking to us, as those well-documented (though still relatively rare) problems at MySpace demonstrate, to teach them how to do it well. And we educators can feel the potential.

In an environment where it's easy to publish to the globe, it feels more and more hollow to ask students to "hand in" their homework to an audience of one. When we're faced with a flattening world where collaboration is becoming the norm, forcing students to work alone seems to miss the point. And when many of our students are already building networks far beyond our classroom walls, forming communities around their passions and their talents, it's not hard to understand why rows of desks and time-constrained schedules and standardized tests are feeling more and more limiting and ineffective.

Regardless, we find this era of the maturing of the digital natives, as Marc Prensky calls them, to be a troublesome time. These technologies scare us, challenge us, and the friction between the old, closed-door classrooms and this new, open, transparent world of learning is becoming more and more apparent. Being on the Web changes things. We fear for our kids' safety, and, as educators, we struggle mightily with the way we're losing control over the content we used to own.

It feels as if the ground is shifting beneath us, and it's made us uneasy.

So our response to this new learning landscape has not been universal joy and a rush to blogging and podcasting. In many schools and even states, it's been, rather, a movement to block and bust: no blogs, no cell phones, no IM. We take away the powerful social technologies our kids are already using to learn and, in doing so, tell them their own tools are irrelevant. Or, instead of using the complex and challenging phenomenon of a site such as Wikipedia to teach the realities of navigating information in this new world, we prohibit its use. In fact, at this writing, the U.S. legislature is in the process of deciding whether schools and libraries should have access to any of the potential of the Read/Write Web at all. When you read this, blogs and wikis and podcasts (and much more) may be things that students (and teachers) can access and create only from off-campus.

Credit: David Julian
And so they might never learn to podcast like the third and fourth graders creating the podcasts in Bob Sprankle's [2] class at Wells Elementary School, in Wells, Maine. They might therefore never publish a local museum tour, an interview with a local celebrity, or an oral history about their town that a billion people could listen to. Nor will they ever get the chance to collaborate in a blog with U.S. soldiers [3] in Iraq, like April Chamberlain's students at Paine Intermediate School, in Trussville, Alabama, and learn firsthand what it's like to be a Screaming Eagle. Or share stories about the places they live at Wikiville.org.uk [4], where hundreds of kids from around the world have started writing and connecting. Or teach calculus to thousands of interested readers from around the world, as do the Canadian students in Darren Kuropatwa's [5] math class at Daniel McIntyre Collegiate Institute, in Winnipeg, Manitoba.

Nor will they fully understand what it's like to be a ubiquitous, continuous learner in a quickly changing world of information that is challenging many of the traditional structures of education. Like me, they may just have to figure that out for themselves.

Most of us now live in a world where, with access, knowledge is abundant, yet we have yet to reconsider our traditional school model, which is based on the obsolete idea that knowledge is scarce. Take a look at the more than 1,400 courses available at MIT OpenCourseWare (see the Edutopia article, "Crack the Books: Teacher, This Book's For You [6]"), which seeks to "provide free, searchable, access to MIT's course materials for educators, students, and self-learners around the world." It's an amazing array of syllabi, readings, even video lectures from professors that is out there for any of us to tap into, free of charge. It's just one of millions of places where we can learn on the Web, yet most of our students still expect "real" learning to take place only in a classroom.

This is a world where we can easily make connections to ideas and people and build potent learning networks in the process, one where leveraging these networks and tools can yield a powerful online portfolio of ideas and artifacts. Yet we teach in classrooms limited by physical walls, contrived relationships, and mind-numbing assessments. There are a billion primary sources out there -- scientists, journalists, politicians, and the like -- who may know more than we do about whatever it is we are teaching, and, for the first time, we can easily and flexibly bring them to our students to interact and learn. I was a journalism major in college, but when Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Scott Higham, from the Washington Post, mentored one of my students by interacting with her on her blog, she learned more than I alone could have taught her. Even better, we can teach our students how to make these connections themselves, to find the sources and resources they need when they need them, instead of depending on us to provide them.

This is a world where literacy is changing, where readers need to be editors. Now that anyone can publish just about anything in a heartbeat, checking for facts and relevance often occurs after publication. If you don't believe that, go to Martin Luther-King.org, which comes up in the top ten Google search results for King yet is published by a white-supremacist group and is intended solely to discredit his work through duplicity and falsehoods. (See the Edutopia article, "Online, on Alert: Teaching Students How to Interpret the Web." [7]) If our students don't know how to find that out, if we ourselves don't know how to do that, I would argue that we are illiterate. Yet our curricula include little if anything that goes beyond the basic reading, writing, and computational literacies.

This is, indeed, a changed world. From the realities of war to the fears of avian flu and the global-warming crisis, these first few years of the twenty-first century have already tested us in innumerable ways, and the tests show no sign of abating in either intensity or frequency. But I wonder whether, twenty-five or fifty years from now, when four or five billion people are connecting online, the real story of these times won't be the more global tests and transformations these technologies offered. How, as educators and learners, did we respond? Did we embrace the potentials of a connected, collaborative world and put our creative imaginations to work to reenvision our classrooms? Did we use these new tools to develop passionate, fearless, lifelong learners? Did we ourselves become those learners?

Or did we cling to old ideas, old models, and old habits and drift more fully into irrelevance in our students' eyes?

Will Richardson is the author of the weblogg-ed [8]blog, as well as learner in chief at the Connective Learning Group and the author of Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms.

Adolescence: A Critical Evolutionary Adaptation

Adolescence: A Critical Evolutionary Adaptation

Archive » Adolescence; a critical Evolutionary Adaptation
John Abbott 2008
This Paper has been written in response to an increasing concern that formal education, especially at the secondary level, is failing to meet the needs and expectations of young people for an appropriate induction into adult life and responsibilities. This is a problem apparently common to many of the developed countries. This paper will argue that a better appreciation of the biological processes involved in human learning, and the way these interact with cultural practices, could provide the theoretical basis for a complete transformation of formal educational structures.

http://www.21learn.org/site/archive/adolescence-a-critical-evolutionary-adaptation/3/

Overschooled but Undereducated

The Initiative published a pre-production of John Abbott and Heather MacTaggart’s new book Overschooled but Undereducated: Society’s Failure to Understand Adolescence in June 2008. In December 2008 Continuum Books agreed to publish the book in November 2009.

With the publication of Overschooled but Undereducated the Initiative now has, in compact form, the most complete, persuasive and concise argument for the overhaul of current systems of education and a catalyst-in-print for the reassessment of outdated thinking that governs educational policy and attitudes towards learning and schooling in the West.

The Digital Disconnect: The Widening Gap Between Internet Savvy Students and their Schools

Prepared by:
Douglas Levin and Sousan Arafeh
American Institutes for Research
For the Pew Internet & American Life Project

The Digital Disconnect: The Growing Gap Between Internet Savvy Students and Their Schools

Key findings from the study include the following:
Internet-savvy students rely on the Internet to help them do their schoolwork—and
for good reason. Students told us they complete their schoolwork more quickly; they are less
likely to get stymied by material they don’t understand; their papers and projects are more likely
to draw upon up-to-date sources and state-of-the-art knowledge; and, they are better at juggling
their school assignments and extracurricular activities when they use the Internet. In essence,
they told us that the Internet helps them navigate their way through school and spend more time
learning in depth about what is most important to them personally.
Internet-savvy students describe dozens of different education-related uses of the
Internet. Virtually all use the Internet to do research to help them write papers or complete class
work or homework assignments. Most students also correspond with other online classmates
about school projects and upcoming tests and quizzes. Most share tips about favorite Web sites
and pass along information about homework shortcuts and sites that are especially rich in content
that fit their assignments. They also frequent Web sites pointed out to them by teachers—some
of which had even been set up specifically for a particular school or class. They communicate
with online teachers or tutors. They participate in online study groups. They even take online
classes and develop Web sites or online educational experiences for use by others.
The way students think about the Internet in relation to their schooling is closely tied to the
daily tasks and activities that make up their young lives. In that regard, students employ five
different metaphors to explain how they use the Internet for school:
iii Pew Internet & American Life Project
• The Internet as virtual textbook and reference library. Much like a school-issued
textbook or a traditional library, students think of the Internet as the place to find
primary and secondary source material for their reports, presentations, and projects.
This is perhaps the most commonly used metaphor of the Internet for school—held
by both students and many of their teachers alike.
• The Internet as virtual tutor and study shortcut. Students think of the Internet as
one way to receive instruction about material that interests them or about which they
are confused. Others view the Internet as a way to complete their schoolwork as
quickly and painlessly as possible, with minimal effort and minimal engagement. For
some, this includes viewing the Internet as a mechanism to plagiarize material or
otherwise cheat.
• The Internet as virtual study group. Students think of the Internet as an important
way to collaborate on project work with classmates, study for tests and quizzes, and
trade class notes and observations.
• The Internet as virtual guidance counselor. Students look to the Internet for
guidance about life decisions as they relate to school, careers, and postsecondary
education.
• The Internet as virtual locker, backpack, and notebook. Students think of the
Internet as a place to store their important school-related materials and as a way to
transport their books and papers from place to place. Online tools allow them to keep
track of their class schedule, syllabi, assignments, notes, and papers.
Many schools and teachers have not yet recognized—much less responded to—the
new ways students communicate and access information over the Internet. Students report
that there is a substantial disconnect between how they use the Internet for school and how they
use the Internet during the school day and under teacher direction. For the most part, students’
educational use of the Internet occurs outside of the school day, outside of the school building,
outside the direction of their teachers. While there are a variety of pressures, concerns, and
outright challenges in providing Internet access to teachers and students at school, students
perceive this disconnect to be the result of several factors:
• School administrators—and not teachers—set the tone for Internet use at school.
The differences among the schools attended by our students were striking. Policy
choices by those who run school systems and other factors have resulted in different
schools having different levels of access to the Internet, different requirements for
student technology literacy skills (e.g., some schools require students to take a course
about basic computer and Internet skills, many do not have such a requirement), and
different restrictions on student Internet access.
• Even inside the most well connected schools, there is wide variation in teacher
policies about Internet use by students in and for class. In individual schools,
teachers are the ones who choose whether to make assignments that require the use of
iv Pew Internet & American Life Project
the Internet by their students, allow the use of the Internet (often as a supplement to
other sources and tools), or even forbid its use. There are often wide variances in
teacher attitudes about and uses of the Internet from classroom to classroom.
• While students relate examples of both engaging and poor instructional uses of
the Internet assigned by their teachers, students say that the not-so-engaging
uses are the more typical of their assignments. Students repeatedly told us that the
quality of their Internet-based assignments was poor and uninspiring. They want to
be assigned more—and more engaging—Internet activities that are relevant to their
lives. Indeed, many students assert that this would significantly improve their attitude
toward school and learning.
Students say they face several roadblocks when it comes to using the Internet at
schools. In many cases, these roadblocks discourage them from using the Internet as much,
or as creatively, as they would like. They note that:
• The single greatest barrier to Internet use at school is the quality of access to the
Internet. Many schools confine Internet use to certain times of the day or certain
places in the building (especially computer labs). It is also common, these students
say, for schools to place further social and technological restrictions on their use of
the Internet by, for instance, employing surveillance systems or requiring special
teacher or administrator approvals.
• While many students recognize the need to shelter teenagers from inappropriate
material and adult-oriented commercial ads, they complain that blocking and
filtering software often raise barriers to students’ legitimate educational use of
the Internet. Most of our students feel that filtering software blocks important
information, and many feel discouraged from using the Internet by the difficulties
they face in accessing educational material.
• Since not every student has access to the Internet outside of school, the vast
majority of students report that their teachers do not make homework
assignments that require the use of the Internet. Most students noted that teachers
feel it unfair to make assignments involving Internet use because some in the class do
not have access to the Internet at home. We heard of more than one occasion when a
teacher had made such an assignment only to rescind it because they worried that
those without Internet access would have difficulty.
In light of the fact that the Internet is increasingly integrated into the home and school
lives of students, and in the context of larger arguments about the use of the Internet for school,
students’ concerns can inform several policy debates about technology and education. This is
what we heard:
• Students want better coordination of their out-of-school educational use of the
Internet with classroom activities. They argue that this could be the key to
leveraging the power of the Internet for learning.
v Pew Internet & American Life Project
• Students urge schools to increase significantly the quality of access to the
Internet in schools.
• Students believe that professional development and technical assistance for
teachers are crucial for effective integration of the Internet into curricula.
• Students maintain that schools should place priority on developing programs to
teach keyboarding, computer, and Internet literacy skills.
• Students urge that there should be continued effort to ensure that high-quality
online information to complete school assignments be freely available, easily
accessible, and age-appropriate–without undue limitation on students’ freedoms.
• Students insist that policy makers take the “digital divide” seriously and that
they begin to understand the more subtle inequities among teenagers that
manifest themselves in differences in the quality of student Internet access and
use.
Of course, student use of the Internet for school does not occur in a vacuum. Students’
experiences, and those of their states, districts, schools, teachers, and parents, strongly affect how
the Internet is adopted in schools. Nonetheless, large numbers of students say they are changing
because of their out-of-school use of the Internet—and their reliance on it. Internet-savvy
students are coming to school with different expectations, different skills, and access to different
resources.
Students are frustrated and increasingly dissatisfied by the digital disconnect they are
experiencing at school. They cannot conceive of doing schoolwork without Internet access and
yet they are not being given many opportunities in school to take advantage of the Internet.
Many believe they may have to raise their voices to force schools to change to accommodate
them better. In the final analysis, schools would do well to heed the Latin writer Seneca’s words,
which ring as true today as when they were written nearly 2,000 years ago: “The fates guide
those who go willingly; those who do not, they drag.”
vi Pew

Revisiting piaget and vygotsky: In search of a learning model for technology education

Verillon, P. (2000). Revisiting piaget and vygotsky: In search of a learning model for technology education. Journal of Technology Studies, 26(1), 3-10.

Teaching digitally: A guide for integrating technology into the classroom curriculum

Tomei, L. A. (2001). Teaching digitally: A guide for integrating technology into the classroom curriculum [with CD-ROM].

Is education 1.0 ready for web 2.0 students?

Thompson, J. (2007). Is education 1.0 ready for web 2.0 students?Innovate: Journal of Online Education, 3(4).

Web 2.0: A new generation of learners and education

Rosen, D., & Nelson, C. (2008). Web 2.0: A new generation of learners and education. Computers in the Schools, 25, 211-225.

Web 2.0: A New Generation of Learners and Education on Prezi