Steve Wheeler wrote two very interesting blog entries.

One was “Why do I bother?” which outlined why he blogged. I can relate to his reasons. Also noteworthy are Jeff Cobb’s five reasons to reflect daily and John Connell’s slow blogging.

Wheeler also wrote about breaking the mould of education, i.e. changing it radically for the better. He cited one of his favourite “anarchists” Ivan Illich:

A…major illusion on which the school system rests is that most learning is the result of teaching. Teaching, it is true, may contribute to certain kinds of learning under certain circumstances. But most people acquire most of their knowledge outside school, and in school only insofar as school, in a few rich countries, has become their place of confinement during an increasing part of their lives. [source]

When asked who his favourite “anarchists” were, Wheeler said:

Jesus Christ, Mozart, Picasso, Van Gogh, Stockhausen, Einstein, The Beatles and Dylan Thomas…. Few of these, if asked, would have classified themselves as anarchists in the sense that they wished to ‘destroy the world’. Many of them were criticised for being mad, deluded, drug-crazed or drunken, but each of them in their own way broke the mould, enabled us to see the world in a new way, and created new concepts that made us rethink our representations of reality.

Wheeler outlines his reasons for breaking the educational mould more succinctly than I can write here.

My simple and visual mind sees the reasons in the image above. What our children need to learn has grown (is growing and will continue to grow) too large for the confines of the current educational system. The educational system needs to be recontextualized and expanded to embrace social networks and real life, instead of being simplified models and reduced to tests or exams.

Like Wheeler, I agree that schools and universities will not go away. But they should not be the only place where we think “education” takes place. To think that it does is to kid ourselves and to do our children a disservice.

I am finally on leave. It’s a much needed break!

And here is a break from my usual ranting…

Philips Research press release reveals that the company is working on an electronic skin that might one day see devices change colour like chameleons or octopi!

It’s not just phones that change colour to suit your mood or fashion sense, but kettles that change colour to indicate temperature, game consoles that suit the game being played, and of course e-paper for e-books.

But push this further and I imagine lab and classroom walls morphing into a forest, factory, or the inside of a nucleus or nuclear reactor! Ah, the possibilities…

It’s been a year since I first heard of Abilene Christian University (ACU) providing iPhones or iPod Touches for students. The link to the Chronicle article in my blog entry then seems to be broken now, but ACU still has the information up on its Website.

The Chronicle and Wired have revisited the programme at ACU. The Chronicle called it “an academic success” and both articles provided examples of how the mobile devices were used.

I liked how one professor asked his students to look for information “on the fly” (meaning “in real time”, not the insect!) and then discuss what they found. I think that it reflects how we learn and need to learn nowadays.

I was less fond of the idea of posing questions in PowerPoint and getting students to poll their answers anonymously. Yes, most students don’t speak up, but they will be active on the poll. I can attest to this with my own trainee teachers: Only a few participate during class discussions (this is after a deafening period of silence), but all will clickity-clack on keyboards as they contribute to shared documents, polls, mindmaps, etc.

The first approach integrated technology more effectively. It was an attempt to cover content dynamically and model/teach thinking skills. It also presented opportunities for students to learn how to articulate, debate and evaluate. The second approach was interactive but it kept learners in their shells. They certainly expressed themselves, but they did not move much outside their comfort zones.

I am all for learning starting with what students are first comfortable with. But we often learn most when we are put in a tight spot and have to make the effort to get out of it. Technology should be a means to an end, but the end should not be to build a tighter shell.

I just can’t let go of surface computing…

NewScientist has an article on how LEGO-like blocks might be used to bring a third dimension to touch or surface computing. The checkers example was pointless, but the photo editing application was actually useful!

The only problem I see with physical blocks is that the surface computer must be table-like. The concept doesn’t apply to surface computers that hang like pictures or are inclined like some desks.

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Get some perspective. It’s good for you!

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Schoolbuk is a platform for teachers to publish resources online. It also seems to be part of a trend to mangle spelling to create some illusion of coolness. I presume that it has not spelled school as “skool” because it has some standards to uphold.

After watching the video, I wonder how much Schoolbuk offers that Facebook already doesn’t. I doubt very much, but then I am aware that there are schools in parts of the world that ban various social networking platforms.

Another thought crossing my mind is how teachers and students use tools like Facebook socially. However, they don’t know how to use them educationally.

So Schoolbuk seems to be designed to offer the social affordances of something like Facebook while emphasizing the educational affordances. It is, as the Becta site says, an attempt to make learning personal.

But it’s all rather artificial, isn’t it? I could not help but notice how the teacher first tells them to read her blog and then reminds them to respond to blog entries. If I cast a very critical eye, I see a change in medium without much of a change in the pedagogy. I laud the teacher’s efforts to bring current news to her classroom and to develop her students’ thinking skills, but you could do the same with other media.

That said, I am sure that most of the students are motivated to use the tablet PCs, UMPCs, iPod Touches and the online platform as a whole. The classroom extends beyond the traditional four walls and fixed periods. All this seems to motivate students to get their work done, and this seems to be one of the main goals of the project.

But the kids aren’t dumb. They know that they aren’t using a real social platform. It’s one thing to attempt to engage learners, but it is another entirely to make learning meaningful. Just like it is one thing to get students to do their work, but it is another to get them to actually learn something.

One way to make learning meaningful is to make it real. The teacher in the video used current news and that is a step in the right direction.

But we still need to rethink the dominant model of schooling: Simplify content, chunk it into smaller pieces and remove real life context (because real life is messy and does not always play by the rules). Just think of how we attempt to teach languages at a fixed pace with recommended texts, conduct science “experiments” with predefined correct answers or solve math problems that don’t mirror real life.

We need to rethink schooling and act on it first before bringing in forms of technology that will not just enhance learning, but enable meaningful learning. Then, and only then, do we have the beginnings of an education for our children.

Pixel Poppers has an interesting approach on how we might use of videogames in education. The thesis of that informally written article is that some play to perform while others play to master.

The author argues that those who play to perform (or those who play games that encourage performance) become reliant on extrinsic forms of motivation like praise. On the other hand, those who play to master are more intrinsically motivated.

Instead of arguing about this dichotomy, I’d point out that games often have the potential to promote both. Of course they are limited by how they are designed, but they can be used socially and educationally for other purposes. Let me give you two examples.

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Role-playing games (RPGs) require players to go on missions or quests. But some gamers create machinima instead. My son loves the Wii LEGO series of games, but he finds some quests tough. So he enters the non-quest areas to tell stories with the characters or to experiment with their abilities. In both examples, the players leave performance mode (as defined by the article) and enter mastery mode or storytelling mode.

The outcomes and uses of games are not fixed. What educators might focus more on is how to take advantage of online games or off-the-shelf games to promote things like online collaboration and digital storytelling. Gaming experiences or phenomena can provide contexts for talking about issues or concepts in math, geography, history, etc. In other words, educators might consider using the language and culture of gamers to teach them real-world concepts.

After all, if you don’t reach them, you can’t teach them.

The Electric Educator blogged about Google-Proof Questioning: A New Use for Bloom’s Taxonomy. Like me, you might have been drawn to the Google-proofing part of his blog topic.

After reading his entry, I concluded that he made one excellent point, but skimmed on another in the process.

He suggested how teachers could use a job aid based on Bloom’s Taxonomy (below) to create questions that promoted higher order thinking (HOT). While Google enabled learners to search for information and factoids, they still had to decide on their worth and create something new from them. In other words, technology like Google allows learners to focus on HOT.

BTW, the job aid that the Electric Educator highlighted was the same one I used earlier this semester in my ICT course to show my teacher trainees how to write good specific instructional objectives. You use it outward from the centre by selecting a cognitive learning outcome, a measurable verb and an example activity.

So what did he “miss”? I thought that his blog title, while catchy, might have implied a method for teachers to fight the Googling behaviour of students or for teachers to create questions where Google could not help at all.

He did not say that, of course. In fact, Google is integral to the learning process. Google helps with the lower order thinking and tasks. But it is the teacher’s lesson design, scaffolding and overall pedagogy combined with effort on the part of students that help students think creatively and critically.

In other words, educators should WANT students to use Google (and other Internet resources). But we should also model and teach skills of analysis, evaluation and synthesis so that students internalise these methods.

In fact, I’d like to see us go as far as the Danes who have trialed the open use of the Internet during exams! Here’s a quote from that BBC article:

The teachers also think the nature of the questions make it harder to cheat in exams. Students are no longer required to regurgitate facts and figures. Instead the emphasis is on their ability to sift through and analyse information.

Minister for education in Denmark, Bertel Haarder, says: “Our exams have to reflect daily life in the classroom and daily life in the classroom has to reflect life in society.

Different context, same themes: Teach them to think. Realign learning to mirror real life.

I just read in the print copy of Digital Life (2 Dec 09) that MOE’s deal with Google Apps is worth S$650,000 a year over two years. Does that sound like a lot? No, not if you do the math.

Based on MOE’s 2008 corporate brochure, Singapore has 29,000 teachers and an annual education budget of S$8 billion. Google Apps for education is barely a drop in the bucket.

MOE’s press release on 22 Sep 09 about adopting Google Apps does not mention explicitly if students will get to use it as well. If students are included as users, how is that drop shared among all teachers and students?

MOE claims that we have a student:teacher ratio of 21:1 (paragraph 11, cough!). Simple arithmatic (29,000 x 21) tells us we have about 609,000 students. Add the number of teachers (29,000) and the total potential users is 638,000. That means that it will cost us a little over S$1 per year per user. That’s value for money… if you like playing the numbers game.

I don’t just play by numbers. How will teachers and their students use Google Apps? Will these Apps be effectively integrated into teaching and learning? While I am watching for answers, I am not waiting. Time will provide some answers, but so will action.

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I am using some of the Google Apps now (Sites, Docs, Spreadsheets, Forms, Presentations, Mail and assorted widgets) without NIE being part of the Google Apps for education picture. I am using it partly as an informal LMS, but mostly as a collaborative learning space.

I think that using it as an LMS provides my teachers-to-be with some level of familiarity. But they also explore the use of the Apps to facilitate collaborative writing, data collecting and processing, planning, designing and learning. I hope that by providing one possible model of using Google Apps, my teacher trainees can then test the ground when they are posted to schools.

I am glad to report that I see some green shoots already. A few of my trainees come up to me after class to tell me that they are setting up their own Google Site wikis or to ask me how to do something or other. I also hope to be involved in the education of in-service teachers next year under a new MOE programme. More details on that if the plan solidifies!

Some time ago, I mentioned that a teacher was not necessarily an educator. One visitor to my blog asked me what the difference was between “teacher” and “educator”.

I think most people would use the terms interchangeably. I don’t. So I thought I’d add to what I said in reply to that visitor…

A teacher probably sees him/herself as a content expert. Teachers do their jobs, do as they are told and may even be very passionate about it. Nothing wrong with that.

But an educator is a learner first, not just for the sake of learning new content but also one who learns about learning. An educator seeks not to be a content expert but a learning expert. You can teach, but your students may not learn; you need not teach in the traditional sense and your students might learn anyway. An educator learns about, from and with students.

While a teacher might attempt to fill the minds of students or prepare them for exams, an educator knows that s/he must also change mindsets. An educator emphasizes values and attitudes alongside knowledge and skills. An educator tries to prepare students for the on-going exam of life.

An educator does not attempt to provide all the right answers. An educator models how to ask creative and critical questions and how to seek answers to those questions.

So are you a teacher or an educator?