Archive for the 'Learning' Category

Classroom2.0: Avoiding the “creepy treehouse”

AddThis Social Bookmark Button
Published on April 26, 2008 in Engagement, Teaching, Learning, Classroom2.0 and Social software. 2 Comments Print This Post Email This Post

As today’s wired learners become increasingly alienated from an education system that is 50 years out of date, innovative teachers are exploring ways to make learning more relevant to learner’s social and cultural identities.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

Continue reading ‘Classroom2.0: Avoiding the “creepy treehouse”’

Howard Rheingold: “Training attention” with wired learners

AddThis Social Bookmark Button
Published on February 25, 2008 in Engagement, Teaching, Learning, Classroom2.0 and Education. 0 Comments Print This Post Email This Post

Adblock

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:
Continue reading ‘Howard Rheingold: “Training attention” with wired learners’

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

AddThis Social Bookmark Button
Published on February 10, 2008 in Engagement, Learning, Web2.0, Classroom2.0 and Education. 5 Comments Print This Post Email This Post

twitpost.jpg

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).

Continue reading ‘Classroom2.0: Twitter, del.icio.us and participatory learning’

I do dog tricks: Educational and fun!

AddThis Social Bookmark Button
Published on February 3, 2008 in gaming, Inspirations, Learning and Classroom2.0. 0 Comments Print This Post Email This Post

dggy.gif

I do dog tricks can be used to teach kids to type - amongst other things. Try typing in simple commands (nothing too crazy!). I tried “kiss” and got a heart warming result ;-)
(via Liam - thank you!)

This is second only to Fly Guy - one of the simplest and most beautiful little games EVAR.

Click the image below (or link above) to start then follow the prompts. Arrow keys help fly guy fly away from the dreary workaday world and into his dreams … (via Bryan Alexander)

flyg.gif

Teaching and learning: Diversity is key

AddThis Social Bookmark Button
Published on November 6, 2007 in Inspirations, Engagement, Learning and Education. 0 Comments Print This Post Email This Post

Traditionally, students with learning challenges are labeled, stigmatized and streamed. Difference gets defined as deficit, and deficit comes to define identity. In some schools, this is still the case.

One of the most inspiring figures I learned about at teacher’s college is pediatric professor Mel Levine, whose original research and approaches have helped to redefine what we mean by special education. Levine’s research draws attention to the way that learning differences are typically framed as deficits - a logic that obscured the learner’s strengths. Levine identified how our traditional education system privileges one type of mind over all others. From Levine’s interview with NPR:

“Levine delivers the same message, that all people — and especially students — are wired differently. He preaches the virtues of helping kids understand their strengths and weaknesses as part of understanding the way learning works.” (NPR)

Continue reading ‘Teaching and learning: Diversity is key’

Why the word still rules

AddThis Social Bookmark Button
Published on September 25, 2007 in Literacy, Language, Future, Learning, Social software and Technology. 0 Comments Print This Post Email This Post

I’m all about words. And so is the web. If Marshall McLuhan was still around, he’d say this is no coincidence.A while back, I wrote an article about the role of McLuhan’s literacy legacy in his media theory. I argued that his identity as an English professor was not merely a pitstop on the way to media gurudom but the core of his intellectual operating system.From his forecast of the collective unconscious and his understanding of media as extensions of our sensory apparatus to the problem of narcosis and the emergence of a neo-tribalism, he saw the shape of things to come through his academic rear view mirror. For McLuhan, our play with words - arguably the cornerstone of human cognition - offered the most clues about how we organised the world in our own image. These insights are especially prescient in our current technological moment, which is all about the word.

Continue reading ‘Why the word still rules’

Do schools kill creativity?

AddThis Social Bookmark Button
Published on September 4, 2007 in Creativity, Future, Innovation, Learning, Education and Technology. 0 Comments Print This Post Email This Post

rob.jpg
Sir Ken Robinson, from his TED talk on creativity

If you haven’t done so already, you must watch Sir Ken Robinson’s wonderful TED conference talk “Do schools kill creativity.” He’s got the timing and wit of a comedian combined with the uncommon insights into future of learning and business. View it here.

According to Robinson, the problem with creativity is not that we lack it, but that we don’t really get much of a chance to nurture or explore it. And this isn’t our fault. Robinson says we’ve unlearned it as a result of traditional learning models that privilege literacy and numeracy above other forms of learning and effectively “kill” the original gift of creativity we all possess.

Continue reading ‘Do schools kill creativity?’

Participatory Media Literacy 101

AddThis Social Bookmark Button
Published on September 3, 2007 in Online resources, Learning, Participatory media and Education. 0 Comments Print This Post Email This Post

Ross Mayfield and Howard Rheingold’s Participatory Media Education Resources offers the most thorough and succinct overview of participatory media I’ve found. From the introduction:

“Recent technological changes have made much wider social changes possible: Until the end of the twentieth century, only a relatively small and wealthy fraction of the human race could broadcast television programs, publish newspapers, create encyclopedias; by the twenty first century, however, inexpensive digital computers and ubiquitous Internet access made the means of high quality media production and distribution accessible to a substantial portion of the world’s population. In 2006, more than one billion people are connected to the Internet and close to three billion people carry mobile telephones. These technological changes in accessibility of production tools and distribution media have led to social, cultural, economic, political changes in the ways people communicate, a set of technologies, practices, and skills some call participatory media