Category Archive for ‘Classroom2.0’ at melanie mcbride online

Archive for the 'Classroom2.0' Category

Classroom2.0: Avoiding the “creepy treehouse”

Published on April 26, 2008 in Engagement, Teaching, Learning, Classroom2.0 and Social software. 2 Comments

As today’s wired learners become increasingly alienated from an education system that is 50 years out of date, innovative teachers are exploring ways to make learning more relevant to learner’s social and cultural identities.

In addition to making learning more meaningful, these explorations have the potential to revolutionize education and transform it into something that equips learners for the social, cultural, political and professional realities of a globalised world.

But there may be a downside. Ironically, the promise of social and participatory technologies may also lead to even greater alienation when approached without pedagogical reflexivity, responsibility and transparency.

The problem of coercion and inequity must be addressed if educators plan to engage in the use of social and participatory tools in a context of institutional power and assessment. Some have called this problem the “creepy treehouse.”

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Attention rabble-rousing with Wayne Macphail

Published on April 17, 2008 in Engagement, Social media, Motivation, Web2.0, Classroom2.0 and Announcements. 0 Comments

A couple of months ago I started experimenting with the use of Twitter and other social media in my wired college classrooms. Meanwhile, out in California, Howard Rheingold was exploring the question of wired attention spans with his UC Berkeley social media class. Rheingold turned these explorations into a series of compelling vlog posts called “Training Attention.”

All of this got me thinking about the nature of engagement in a wired world. It struck me that we’re in need of some form of scaffolding for particpatory and social media use. Specifically, the creation of some sort of attention scaffolding that transports the user beyond a state of random gratification and sensory overload.

These thoughts led to an inspiring conversation with fellow educator and webby Rabble.ca columnist Wayne Macphail. Macphail turned this dialogue into a Rabble column he called “May I halve your attention please?”

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Getting educational in Second Life

Published on March 22, 2008 in gaming, Classroom2.0, Education and Announcements. 7 Comments

Back in 2003, when Second Life arrived on the internets, I was not in a position to take part. My computer wasn’t fast enough and I didn’t have the time available. Since then, I resisted joining on the grounds that it seemed really materialistic and commercial. While there were indeed interesting things happening there, what I saw seemed too close to the social hierarchies of first-life.

Over time, and as I became more involved in education, I discovered the growing numbers of educators and world changers flocking to SL. This gave me a compelling reason to invest my time there. And I finally made the plunge this weekend - four years too late but better late than never. What I found there was indeed compelling.

So there I am in the image above (note: my avatar is temporary) enjoying a conversation with a few other educators in a professor’s virtual condo. Aftewards, Smartlak and I roamed around Eduisland, Athens and a few other places. Here are some photos I took of our first adventure.

Eternally grateful to Prentiss for help getting started. Great to meet Leigh, Mal, and Fred Special thanks to Knowclue for rollerskates and Leigh for the tour of your beautiful space. Hope to meet many more geeky big brains in SL and take part in some of the forward thinking education innovation taking place there.

Yours in-world,

Verdana Madrid

2 million reasons not to Facebook through class

Published on March 8, 2008 in Future, Classroom2.0 and Education. 2 Comments

From the start of elementary school until high school graduation, students spend two million minutes preparing for their future. Director Chad Heeter’s documentary 2 Million Minutes explores the dramatic differences between the way Western students spend that time versus students in China and India.

Teaching and learning 2.0: Turn up the good, turn down the suck

Published on March 8, 2008 in Best practices, Engagement, Classroom2.0 and Education. 1 Comment

University of Texas professor David Parry is my idea of the future of education. According to Parry:

“The more we try to put those walls up, and say “I’m a professor, I only talk inside the class” the more irrelevant we become.”

I cannot agree more. This is what Paulo Freire was talking about when he talked about pedagogies of praxis (action v. theory). Especially in relation to the web. Continue reading ‘Teaching and learning 2.0: Turn up the good, turn down the suck’

Howard Rheingold: “Training attention” with wired learners

Published on February 25, 2008 in Engagement, Teaching, Learning, Classroom2.0 and Education. 0 Comments

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In his latest vlog post, Howard Rheingold addresses an increasingly difficult problem for educators: Attention in a hypermediated age. Rheingold takes things beyond the usual “let’s debate multitasking - good or bad?” to the real heart of the matter: How to focus the wired mind?

POST CONTINUATION:
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Take my Twitter survey

Published on February 17, 2008 in Web2.0, Classroom2.0 and Announcements. 2 Comments

Are you using Twitter? What do you think of it?

Do you have any ideas … about how Twitter might be used - for education, media, publishing, personal use, work, study, etc?

Having tried it in my own classroom, I’m especially interested in hearing from students, educational professionals/teachers and content producers (citizen or professional):

Click Here to take my survey

I will publish the results of this survey at the beginning of March.

Classroom2.0: Twitter, del.icio.us and participatory learning

Published on February 10, 2008 in Engagement, Learning, Web2.0, Classroom2.0 and Education. 5 Comments

I do not use a textbook. It is not that I dislike textbooks. It is that my textbook is the web. My textbook is YOU and ME and NOW.

Instead of a book, I add all relevant readings, videos or examples to my course delicious bookmarks.

That’s my virtual, live, textbook - licensed under Creative Commons. And students don’t have to blow 60 bucks on it either. And they can subscribe to this textbook using their favourite feed reader.

Right now v. back then

As I explained to my class, the most important stuff to know about the web is what’s happening RIGHT NOW. I may share a video or article in a couple of weeks that has yet to be written. Course readings are not mandatory - because I share most of the stuff in-class but secondary. If students are confused or if they want to dig deeper, they’ve got Youtube tutorials, how to’s and hundreds of articles and research supporting everything I’m talking about in the course.

For example, this past week, we watched Howard Rheingold’s most recent Vlog post about social bookmarking in which Howard explains stuff I have been talking about (but with more pizazz). Howard is a great teacher. I think it’s because Howard is an artist at heart - artists explore and play. Traditional academia is still very non-creative and non-playful/exploratory - it’s still very much a closed system where things have to be proven and approved before they are anointed with merit (the very definition of laggard). Thankfully, as Howard’s example testifies, times are changing.

Twitter for teaching and learning

In the spirit of Right Now teaching and learning, I decided to try out Twitter this week as a means of offering the students a back channel as well as an opportunity to learn more about emergent content delivery systems and build on their developing knowledge of RSS, aggregation and microformats (all new to them).

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