One man’s trash…
Posted by: ashleytan on: February 8, 2010
Is another man’s treasure.
[image source, used under CC licence]
A new centre in Cambridge is to study computer games and comics as forms of literature consumed by learners.
The short BBC report reveals why:
“If what we regard as trash is popular with young people, we need to know why and whether, as researchers and teachers, we can offer them something that addresses the same needs but also deals with these themes in a critical and ethical way.”
She [Professor Maria Nikolajeva, director of the centre] added many trainee teachers did not understand the significance of the latest children’s books or films when they went into the classroom.
This is something I must definitely keep tabs on!
Twitter collaboration
Posted by: ashleytan on: February 6, 2010
If you could visualize collaboration, what might it look like?
A Twitter engineer created a video to illustrate Twitter’s development over the years [source]. Remarkable!
Try not to get hypnotized in the process… unless it somehow gets you to be a better collaborator!
Individualized learning and testing
Posted by: ashleytan on: February 5, 2010
Yesterday I read two online articles that seemed separate enough, but I realized they were pointing to the same thing.
The first was Why All Educators Support Standardized Testing (Even if They Don’t Realize It). The second was Digital Tools Expand Options for Personalized Learning.
[image source, used under CC licence]
The first was provocatively titled and its premise was that historical and political baggage influenced the perception of standardized testing. The blogger then reasoned that if the baggage was removed and the form of testing was given a different purpose, specifically “to care more about child development and cognition rather than efficiency and saving money”, more teachers would jump on board.
I think that the word “standardized” is the more basic obstacle. It implies a fixed time, place and medium, as well as a one-size-fits-all manner of measurement. While these are good for the quality control of factory-produced goods, they are not neccessarily suitable for people.
On the other hand, consider how institutions like the School of One or Pershing Middle School, mentioned in the second article, approach learning and testing. The child does not adapt to the curriculum. Instead the curriculum is moulded to the child and it also moulds the child. Here’s a snippet of the report:
After introducing content, teachers can immediately test students using remote devices attached to their netbooks. Students are then assigned to appropriate practice activities or more in-depth lessons. “The wait time for getting feedback to children is sliced significantly. This is about the speed of learning and the depth of learning,” says Sarah Sullivan, the principal of San Diego’s Pershing Middle School.
How might we begin to individualize testing? The same article offers this approach:
Although the Burst program suggests only face-to-face lessons for students, its underlying assessment relies on sophisticated digital tools for gathering and analyzing data from individual students. “It’s this model of deeply analyzing the data in a way that no human teacher would have time to do, and mapping lessons to kids’ abilities, that’s fundamental to what education is going to look like in the future,” predicts Wireless Generation’s chief executive officer, Larry Berger.
Good stuff, but it sounds like something out of reach of most schools and teachers. Something that teachers can do now is what Shelly Blake-Plock does:
For several years, Shelly Blake-Plock has asked students in his Latin, English, and art history classes to summarize what they’ve learned from class and document their progress on assignments in daily blog entries… If he observes a lack of basic understanding or language skill in some students’ work, he says, he can suggest online resources and activities to get them on track.
I can vouch for this simple strategy because I do this myself when I facilitate my ICT course. Blogs give me deep insights into my teacher trainees’ thoughts, problems and interests. I look back at the RSS feeds of their blogs that I have archived since July 2007. Despite the course being long over, occasionally I will see entries of updates in their lives as teachers.
Monitoring these feeds and responding to them does not add very much more time to what I already do, which is to monitor the almost constant stream of other RSS feeds, tweets and email. It’s a digital world and we have to live, teach and learn that way to stay relevant!
Psychomotor intelligence?
Posted by: ashleytan on: February 4, 2010
Kinesthetic smarts. And a lot of failure, practice and hard work.
Teacher Trek
Posted by: ashleytan on: February 3, 2010
Ah, Sir Patrick Stewart AKA Captain Jean-Luc Picard of Star Trek, The New Generation.
In many ways, he sounds just like a digital immigrant teacher. Sir Patrick is an actor who might entertain a generation. But educators affect entire generations. I’d urge educators to boldly go where no teacher has gone before.
Energize. And make it so.
Curriculum race
Posted by: ashleytan on: February 2, 2010
[image source, used under CC licence]
My RSS reader led me to a blog entry, the chariot race called school. It was there that I discovered that the Latin root for curriculum was race or race course. I looked it up in Wikipedia, the Merriam-Webster online dictionary and Answers.com and they backed the definition up.
I sympathize with the blogger who compared curricula in Singapore schools as exhausting races to be run one after another and without any real purpose.
But I’d also add that it is not just what you race but HOW you run it and WHO you run it with. You can run a race competitively and selfishly, or you can run it collaboratively and openly. And you might have fun in the process!
Learning with & from games
Posted by: ashleytan on: February 1, 2010
[image source, used under CC licence]
This blog entry by Keri-Lee Beasley, an educator at the United World College of South East Asia, is one of the most thorough and hyperlinked. In it, she provides an overview of the benefits of educational gaming, i.e., literacy skills, critical thinking and social learning opportunities.
It’s something I will add to the quick reading list when I resume facilitating my educational gaming classes or when I conduct workshops for teachers later this year.
Under padded iPad?
Posted by: ashleytan on: January 28, 2010
The Apple iPad is officially out in the open and there are about as many follow up blog posts about it as there were before it was released. Previously, the blogs focused on rumours and hype; now the blogs focus on the actual product and the inevitable disappointments.
Is the iPad a terrible product? If you took in all the hype surrounding it, the iPad might seem underpadded. Here is one blogger’s “underwhelmed” response. But I prefer to focus on the possibilities, specifically as they apply in education.
Slate PCs (tablets with no physical keyboards) are not new and neither is multitouch, but I still think that the iPad can push education into new, fertile ground. First let us consider what we require our learners to do: They must read (or listen to or watch something) and they must write (or otherwise create in some medium).
Text entry on a screen-based keyboard might not appeal to those more accustomed to a physical keyboard. But consider what happens when we put such technologies in the hands of kids, particularly those without previous biases. They take to them like ducks to water. But if they really need a physical keyboard, there is one they can attach to the iPad.
Furthermore, kids are more adaptable than we think they are. Consider how SMS text was commonly input only via a numeric keypad. It was the most impractical way of creating messages, but young texters thought nothing of it. With the iPad, learners have a platform not only for text entry but for finger-based creation and editing of drawings, animations and perhaps movies.
One of the most exciting aspects of the iPad is the e-bookstore. First imagine not having to queue for textbooks at a bookstore and lugging them home. Then imagine carrying all the books you need in a device that can last the whole school day. A learner has access to all these books as well as Google, Wikipedia, YouTube and the wealth of resources on the rest of the Web. But I’d add that e-books need to evolve before they can push educational boundaries.
An e-book cannot simply replicate a textbook or a novel. After all, people who buy books like the touch and even the smell of books; they want to proudly display their books on shelves. An e-book must do more. At the bare minimum, an e-textbook must not only present the user with relevant photos, diagrams, animations and videos, it must allow the user to highlight chunks of text and and to take notes in spaces not bound by physical margins.
An e-book should be a living book, that is, always current and interactive. An e-book must take advantage of the medium and Internet connection so that updates to the book are done automatically. Furthermore, an e-book must allow the user to connect with other users, topic experts or even the author(s) of the chapter. This way readers can comment, clarify or discuss concepts. For example, a reader might mention he does not understand an illustration and someone else can offer help. An author can get feedback on his writing or get new book ideas from his readers.
The major barrier to iPad adoption in schools might be its price as the cheapest version costs about as much as a netbook. But then Apple products have always commanded a premium and people buy them anyway. Apple products have been favoured by educational institutions in the past and I hope that the affordances of the iPad allow Apple to return to an environment that sorely needs to innovate.
Apple fanboy’s dream school?
Posted by: ashleytan on: January 27, 2010
[image source, used under CC license]
Anyone who learns about the Apple tech in Maris Stella High School would probably say yes to the question. But only from a hardware standpoint.
There aren’t many schools here with 1:1 computing schemes. Crescent Girls School was among the first and I have heard that Anderson Secondary jumped on board last year.
I have observed 1:1 computing in CGS and was not particularly impressed. This was not because they weren’t using Apple systems but because old, tired pedagogy limited what students did in class. For example, one class used their tablet PCs to solve math word problems. But all that happened was a change in medium (from paper to screen). There was no technology-mediated student-student or student-expert communication or searching the WWW for alternative solutions or the modelling of creative and critical thinking as a result.
While the blog author mentioned the pros of having Apples on the Maris Stella campus, he also mentioned how the school limits access to Facebook and the use of wireless USB modems. Schools are entitled to do these things, but these actions limit learning opportunities and reinforce the non-real world bubble that schools get trapped in.
Yes, some workplaces limit or even ban Facebook or instant messaging. But workers find creative workarounds. If Maris Stella is doing anything to mirror the real world, it must be this! However, employers find that such tools are a necessity in today’s world. Just do an online search on how companies integrate Web 2.0 tools into their business or follow relevant RSS feeds to learn how.
I am glad that the boys in Maris Stella have such an excellent platform to build upon and learn from. I have no doubt that a few teachers are using it judiciously, creatively and effectively. But I urge the school authorities and teachers to find ways to integrate such social networking tools into curricula. After all, their students and many of their teachers are already using them socially, so why not educationally? The days of the LMS (learning management systems) are over; it is the dawn of the SLS (social learning systems).
