Wheelchair Dreams

My colleague Jim Pedrech may not realize it, but his sharing of a recent TED Talk has reminded me that the technology at our fingertips needs to be leveraged for tasks yet unimagined.  Just as Sue Austin has experienced something extraordinary thanks to a blend of assistive technologies, we need to encourage our students to use modern tools to invent, rather than to re-create.



After viewing my take, be sure to to take a few minutes to reward yourself by dreaming with:
Sue Austin: Deep Sea Diving... in a Wheelchair

The Machine is Indeed Using Us

Does this title sound familiar? It's very similar to Michael Wesch's viral video from a few years ago: The Machine is Us/ing Us. When I first saw this video in 2008, it inspired me to write a series of posts about how users of the World Wide Web, were Teaching the Machine. Now, just three years later, it seems as if the machine has become smart enough to customize the information it provides to each of us.

Yesterday, after hearing Wesch describe how his video went viral, participants at Canada 3.0 were called by Sonija Monga, to reflect on how we derive meaning and insights from our networks.


By virtue of my membership in a network that is already functioning as a bit of a like-minded hive, I discovered an answer to my question thanks to a tweet from Alec Couros, Take nine minutes to consider Eli Pariser's warning: Beware online "filter bubbles"



I don't know if the machine can yet answer these questions, but there are many things we need to think about:

Is there a problem with each user being the recipient of customized service from a news provider; an online store; a search engine?
Does the machine know enough to provide us not only with relevant results, but also with an unbiased determination of the most important content?
How good are our personal learning network at discovering content from varying points of view?
How might a young person's unseen profile and early online habits, affect their future online experiences?

The Rise of 'Interest-based' Learning

It's been two years since I first wrote about 'Learning Without Teachers', and now Sugata Mitra is sharing compelling stories involving peer instruction, that should lead educators at all levels to re-think what it means to teach.

Mitra's most recent research seems to validate an approach that forgoes 1:1 computing, in favour of a strategy that limits access to learning tools. In a wide range of settings, with diverse populations of learners, Mitra has married the use of communications technology to 'interest-based' learning, and the early results have been stunning, even if counterintuitive.



Do you believe that this 'peer to peer' approach affirms recent developments in professional learning? Does it validate project-based approaches to learning? Might it support equipping a classroom with an On Demand Ecosystem?

Sugata Mitra speculates that "Education is a self organising system, where learning is an emergent phenomenon..." and he is committed to researching this contention. Whether or not we agree, Mitra's work provides an unspoken challenge: How do you assess the effectiveness of the tools and learning strategies that you employ?

TEDxOntarioEd: What Motivates You?

To say things have been busy, would be an understatement. Between preparing students for the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test; putting the wraps on my Special Education full-distance teaching responsibilities; and preparing for TEDxOntarioEd, something had to give.

Each of these projects wraps up this week, so I should be able to get back into publishing my personal and professional discoveries via blog posts and podcasts. Until then, I'm happy to invite you to join us on Friday, April 9th, when, live from London, Ontario, my colleagues and a wide range of motivated presenters, will breathe life into TEDxOntarioEd.


We're encouraging remote participants to connect to our TEDx event by watching with other lifelong learners. Together we can make connections that dissolve the limits of time and space.

I'd encourage you to check out the biographies of our diverse line-up:

6:55 TEDx Intro Video
7:00 Welcome: Rodd Lucier
7:05 Dan Misner
7:10 Paul Finkelstein
7:20 Ray Zahab
7:35 Lee LeFever
7:45 Joey Savoy
7:55 Zoe Branigan-Pipe
8:05 Tim Long
8:15 TEDx Video
8:20 BREAK
8:40 TEDx Video
8:45 Robert Martellacci- MindShare Learning
8:55 Danika Barker
9:05 Nathan Toft & Jane Smith
9:15 Jesse Brown
9:30 Alec Couros
9:40 Kathy Hibbert
9:50 Tim – Student

Are you a novice teacher? An expert? Someone considering entering the field of education? As long as you are open to learning, this event can serve as 'welcome (back) to the profession'. We hope you'll consider joining us via Livestream to consider 'ideas worth spreading'.

Climate Change: Reflections from the Bus

As promised, I really am blogging from the bus. We're on the way to a volleyball tournament in Belleville, Ontario, and the team is resting after filling up on pizza. So why write now? And why further stress a computer with a cracked screen?

Sure, blogging from a bus is one way to demonstrate how technology can now be leveraged anytime, anyplace. And while I'm accessing the web through a tethered mobile phone, players are listening to ipods, watching DVD's, and playing games on portable devices.

But no one on this bus is thinking about arguably the most important issue facing the citizens of planet Earth.

Although the players and coaches on board do not realize that it is Blog Action Day, I'm compelled to reflect on the topic chosen for the day: Climate Change. With the Global Climate Summit slated for Copenhagen in a few short weeks, a more suitable topic would be difficult to find.

Even though I know of the power of words and images, I was still stunned in viewing the time lapse photography embedded in James Balog's Extreme Ice Loss presentation at TED. Witnessing the fracturing of glaciers during his extreme ice survey, the viewer can't help but conclude that "Climate Change is Real".



I'm not sure what you or your students have discovered about climate change, but it seems to me that there are few topics of greater importance for the future citizens of the world. Maybe you and your students will plan your own lesson for your community during next week's International Day of Climate Action?

Unanticipated Uses of Twitter

Evan Williams' recent presentation at TED, highlights how Twitter (once a side project at ODEO) is being engaged in ways unforeseen, by the Twitterati.


One more thing: In case you're nervous about everyone being able to access your tweets, you can limit access to your tweets by using https.

Kinesthetic Learning Tools

After learning about Siftables by way David Merrill's recent presentation at TED, I find myself wondering why educators and others have created so few kinesthetic learning tools.



Once students get beyond the primary grades, the learning tools we employ most predominantly, are pen, paper and keyboard. Maybe Siftables will lead us to rethink the tools we use to reach learners that prefer modalities beyond reading and writing?

Post-Modern Digital Story-Telling

Although ASCII characters and emoticons are 'old school', using them to tell a story adds an entertaining, and challenging new twist.

Design and the Plastic Mind

I wish I'd been able to see Design and the Plastic Mind at the Museum of Modern Art. At least now I can now have my brain stretched thanks to TED.

Minimally Invasive Education

If we get out of the way, even crows can learn!

It's been over 8 years since Sugata Mitra first made a computer available to the people of the slums of New Delhi, in what has become known as "The Hole in the Wall" project. Did we learn anything? The children did. With no formal training, they learned about computing and taught one another numerous technology skills that are reviewed in this Interview from the year 2000. The catch, the technology was compelling!

And now comes an example from TED, where Joshua Klein has demonstrated that even crows can learn and teach one another... especially when the results of the learning are nourishing!



Far be it for me to suggest that we abandon teaching and leave students to their own devices. Rather, let's be minimally invasive in allowing the learning to happen, but maximally invasive in ensuring that the problems we present to learners are relevant, compelling and appetizing.

Smart Mobs and a More Cooperative Future

Thanks to Robin Good's nudge, I've taken some time to explore Howard Rheingold's inquiry about cooperation. Understanding that the most effective evolving web 2.0 tools relies on cooperative participation, "A New Story About the Way Humans Get Things Done" has many ramifications for education.

I agree with Howard Rheingold's contention that the dynamics of social/collective action can be multiplied by the use of communications technologies... like cell phones. His 2002 book: Smart Mobs, set the stage for the recently released TED Talk he gave three years ago. It's 18 minutes of information that is of great importance to those actively creating the future of education.



In a more complete screencast, Howard uses images and voice to teach about cooperative strategies. If you have the time, see how the work of "smart mobs" are creating the potential for a more collaborative and less competitive future. The Cooperation Commons seeks to model this work in sharing research and resources on this topic. Key quote: "The most important new technologies will not be hardware or software, but social practices."

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