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.

Video source

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.

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?

It’s almost the end of a long teaching semester. For reasons too long and boring to mention, some of my colleagues and I had to start next semester’s teaching this semester.

The two things that usually happen at the semester’s end are I fall ill and I think about what to do next. So I type now before the flu completely takes over!

One thing that doesn’t usually happen at the end of semester is a huge grading load to process during the break and before the second half of the course resumes next year. This is why I found Siemen’s recent comments on grading and evaluation particularly relevant. Some snippets:

Grading is a waste of time. We only do it in schools and universities. It’s a sorting technique, not truly an evaluation technique. Iterative and formative feedback is what’s really required for learning.

Agreed! Our teacher education university is still in sorting mode but for reasons that are no longer relevant. Why? First, they are selected by interviews (coarse sorting). Second, a few bad apples that beat this filter or the trainees who cannot handle teaching will drop out on their own (self sorting). Third, the sorting is only based on academic results. If anyone wants to sort them out, do so along the lines of their values and attitudes because they must be role models and lifelong learners (yes, values and attitudes can be measured). Lastly, even after they are sorted, teacher trainees graduate and end up in schools irrespective of their grades. It is not as if A-grade teachers end up in some schools and C-grade teachers end up in another. So why sort at all?

Siemens concludes with:

The authors of the HASTAC post are not trying to do away with grading (as I would suggest we should). They are trying to use technology to make grading more “modern” or “in line” with society’s needs today. I think that’s exactly the wrong way to go about it. Question the model, don’t modernize it.

Thought-provoking and something I thoroughly agree with. If you consider the concepts of assessment of, for and as learning, I’d argue that most of what we do is, at best, only assessment of learning. Furthermore, assessment is just a number. Unlike evaluation, the value of that number is not made clear.

So what’s on my agenda? This year my guiding principle as I facilitated the ICT course was to get my teacher trainees to use what their students were already using in terms of technology. Next year my approach will likely be “question the model, don’t modernize it”.

So far my EdPsych2 classes have been using Google Docs as a platform for collaboratively written articles, personal notes and activity templates. We have also used Google Presentations for (duh!) presentations, and Google Forms and Spreadsheets for surveys and class administration. Everything has been “held together” by a class wiki hosted by Google Sites.

The going has been good so far, so good that I am tempted to jump ship from PBworks. I like how well integrated elements like YouTube and Picasa are with Google Sites (they are Google’s after all). There is less lag with Google than with PBworks. But I long for page-level access control (admin, editor, writer, reader) and more templates to jazz up wikis or forms. In the latter case, a Sites-hosted wiki looks like a boxy, cream-coloured PC while PBworks looks more like a curvy Mac.

But I digress…

This week’s content, Managing Teaching and Learning Activities, is heavy and I have opted to refrain from lecturing. Instead I set up four learning stations, designed a Google Doc template for note taking and created a self-checking quiz with Google Forms. I learned how to do the last one by visiting http://www.screencast-o-matic.com/watch/cjXeqwnDe.

To clarify, the self-checking quiz is one that checks the answers, scores each answer and totals the marks. It does not help quiz takers check their answers. But it does help me see who has taken the quiz, who got which answers right or wrong, and what their final scores are.

Tools aside, the rationle for including the quiz at the end stems from the fact that learners might wander from station to station and still not learn anything. I want my teacher trainees to see the forest (activity management) and the trees (specific management strategies).

The big picture is that the lesson is designed to model some aspects activity management. It’s easy to see that forest. But they must also know the different trees that make up the forest in order to appreciate it or find their way about. The quiz (name that tree!) is a means to that end. It is just another management strategy to promote learning.

But whether they do well or not in the quiz is immaterial. I believe that teachers teach the way they are taught. So I try to use different strategies every week.

Typically I discuss technology-mediated strategies with my trainees during my ICT course, but as the content and emphasis are different in EP2, I have not done this so far. Perhaps I should find a way to work these in overtly rather than covertly…

I am experimenting with a shoutbox (from ShoutMix) in the EdPsych2 wiki that I maintain.

Screenshot of my EP2 shoutbox

Shoutboxes seem to used by Website owners to interact with visitors, for regular visitors of that site to “shout out” to other regulars, and in commercial sites for customer service and feedback. Basically its use revolves around a simple communication interface that does not require users to use email or install an instant messaging (IM) client.

My planned uses for the shoutbox are for: 1) trainee reflection at the end of class (or outside class), 2) quick announcements or notifications, and 3) IM style communications during e-learning week.

I have started the ball rolling with the first two efforts. The first is a modification of the one-minute paper technique. I value post-lesson reflections, but instead of  requiring my trainees to maintain blogs (like I normally do for the ICT course), I ask them to share their “take home” messages SMS-style. The second is an attempt to provide links to current resources like online news articles.

It’s too early to say if the first effort is worthwhile. Both my trainees and I can see what the others are saying and thinking, but they have been at it for just two sessions. I think the habit and value of reflecting concisely will take some time to sink in. I have also not yet used other one-minute paper strategies, so they have not experienced the different ways of using the platform to its fullest.

But I already know that the shoutbox is not a good place for announcements. The item that I share scrolls away as soon as a few participants use the shoutbox. That is why I have a separate “Announcements” page and an “In the Media” page in the wiki.

I’ll have more information as the weeks go by and after I conduct a survey using Google Forms to get feedback mid-course.

Video source

A while ago, I wrote about how important it is to slow down (or even stop) to think. John Connell referred to this as slow blogging. The video above reminded me of this.

My take home message from the video: Slowing things down allows us to learn new things about ourselves and the world around us.

I just read a TechCrunch article on something called Aardvark. Aardvark looks like a promising social Q&A tool, but it was the example (below) that Michael Arrington shared that caught my eye.

I had to laugh. I also thought how this was a good example of needing to know your audience.

I read this on the back of meeting my last ICT group today. This was the batch that was two weeks behind another batch, so things got confusing in terms of weekly topics. It had been a lot worse with the other course that I facilitate, EdPsych2 (EP2), overlapping by the same two weeks. I not only had to wear different hats, I had to wear different suits!

Or so I thought at first. I find myself blending the suits as I think of ways to integrate relevant forms of pedagogy and technology into the content-heavy course that is EP2. Why? It starts with knowing your audience.

I know that my audience comprises of future teachers, so I must give them opportunities to design, teach and reflect. I know that they are more technologically savvy with each passing batch. (My recent survey revealed that at least half were already users of Google Docs.)

I think I know my ICT audience pretty well as a whole. As I say goodbye to another batch of ICT classes, I am heartened by their tokens of appreciation, group photos, and their expressions on how they will miss the course. I recall some of their blog entries about how hard they are pushed to think, how their mindsets change and how much they look forward to attending class.

Now I think that if I can create half the energy and feeling for EP2, I’d be very happy!

One of the Web 2.0 tools that I have used in the ICT course is MindMeister, a collaborative, online mind/concept mapping tool. My classes used it to conceptualize the topic of cyberwellness.

The EdPsych2 course started this week. So far, I have got three out of five of my classes to introduce themselves by telling two truths and one lie about themselves. (Click the screenshot below to see a larger version.)

Doing this was not only a fun way of getting to know them, it was also an introduction to the tool that I will use next week to collect their thoughts on the concept of “disability”.

Using this tool also allowed me to illustrate my teaching philosophy. I firmly believe that the group is smarter than the smartest person in the room. Case in point: The class was able, more often than not, to correctly identify each person’s lie! It is what Surowiecki called the wisdom of crowds.

That is why I use a wiki and Google Docs. Each trainee brings some experience, knowledge and a value system to the table. I’d rather they create a potluck for all to indulge in and learn from rather than selfishly eat the same meal they have eaten over and over again.

I found this Vimeo video from a ReadWriteWeb article, You Can’t Squeeze Knowledge From a Pixel.

Video source

It has little to do with education. However, it reminded me of something I try to emphasize in the ICT course that I facilitate and am now harping on in the EdPsyII course. What makes learning meaningful is context, not isolation.

I think that teachers or curriculum planners often remove context and complexity from a problem because they think that learners cannot handle the cognitive load. As a result, the problem is simplified into what seems like more manageable chunks, but it is devoid of context. Another result is that the issues that contribute to that problem get compartmentalized and isolated from one another.

For example, the complex skill of integrating technology in education might require content knowledge, technology skills and pedagogical approaches to be blended into a coherent whole. But we tend to teach these separately because each component is so complex.

I think doing this is acceptable as long as learners get to synthesize in context. So instead of simply asking my trainees to plan for technology integration (and thus show me head knowledge), I ask them to actually teach that topic via a demonstration. I also get them to sell their ideas via a walkabout format of presentation. They are teachers after all and designing, implementing, reflecting and strategizing is their context.

In new version of the EdPsychII course that I facilitate, I notice the broad topics of classroom management and inclusiveness again broken down into parts. There is the potential the pieces to remain disjointed.

To counter that, I am requiring all five of my classes to choose a subtopic and start writing about them from the first week of class. They will not only gain expertise in one area and teach their peers about their topic, they will also be able to critically examine a particular week’s topic from their lens. (We are using a Google wiki and Google Docs to do this.)

For example, classroom rules and routines are normally an individual teacher’s domain. However, they could also think about how their individual biases (personal pedagogies) and how school or cultural norms (collaboration and support) shape what they how they do this.

Facilitating this process is not easy. Learning this way is not easy either. But I think this approach will promote both creative and critical thinking. I also think that my trainees will be better teachers as they will think and act more collaboratively and systemically rather than individually.

But that is only what I think. The next few weeks are about putting these principles into play. Let the fun begin!