Wouldn't it be neat if we could create a space for children to share recordings of themselves reading their favourite books?
Children could hear voices young and old, in accents and languages from far away, as familiar words from picture books and novels were brought to life.
Listeners might read with unseen companions...
Performers might gain an audience...
Non-readers might experience the wonders of the written word...
Parents might volunteer to record their childhood favourites...
Boys & girls might learn from both male & female voices...
Reading might become more than decoding...
Teachers might subscribe to storybook podcasts...
iPods might be recognized as learning tools...
Reading buddies could get together any day or time...
Does creativity trump work ethic in the global economy? When it comes learning in science and technology, will our young people come to realize that they are in competition with (more highly motivated?) students from around the world? Whose responsibility is it to let them know?
Although it's been around for a number of months, this is the first I've seen the trailer for the documentary 'Two Million Minutes". My first take is that this 'mirror on the wall' is unlikely to give our young people the answers they expect.
The web site encapsulates the story: "Regardless of nationality, as soon as a student completes the 8th grade, the clock starts ticking. From that very moment the child has approximately -
…Two Million Minutes until high school graduation…Two Million Minutes to build their intellectual foundation…Two Million Minutes to prepare for college and ultimately career…Two Million Minutes to go from a teenager to an adult
How a student spends their Two Million Minutes - in class, at home studying, playing sports, working, sleeping, socializing or just goofing off -- will affect their economic prospects for the rest of their lives."
The film-makers are teachers who are telling the stories of six selected students, 2 each from India, China and the United States. Is it worthy of 54 of a high schoolers 2 million minutes?
A classroom blog of 8 & 9 year olds is closed, and the blogosphere responds by the hundreds.
Mini 16 tells part of the story: "When I new that my blog got blocked I thort that all my work was gone! But al said that it was’ant gone. good because it is fun."
If you haven't heard the story yet, you can head over to Al Upton's Minilegends update page to read an overview of the story so far. The short story is that the primary school blogging project in South Australia has been taken offline, but in text, Al seems pretty upbeat suggesting that we should learn what we can from the experience and acknowledging that the story is not yet over. When you consider the 166 comments as of present, There is much to read, and Al is promising at least one more update on the blog.
Even though this story makes it easy to imagine the sad faces of primary students, there are countless thousands of students (and teachers) out there, who have yet to discover the blogosphere.
When a teacher is willing to take a risk with blogging, I guess we have to be prepared for even unimagined consequences. So how do we ensure that ventures of this sort can be safely undertaken? I'm thinking that we should harness the collective wisdom of the blogoshpere in supporting Al Upton and other teachers who are willing to take the leap into using the read/write web as learners.
To facilitate the gathering of blogging policy/guideline resources, I've created a wiki page where educators can share known resources and ideas that might be used by teachers or school boards as as scaffolding to develop and refine policy frameworks related to classroom blogging. On this page, you can share your expertise or ideas for how a teachers and students can safely explore blogging. If we can harness even a fraction of the many who responded to the 'minilegends', I'm sure we can help ensure that student voices can be safely heard. If you have suggestions for what a good policy might include, or if you know of policies that can be shared, your contributions are most welcome! Blog Sketch Credit: Frances Copozzi
I've been following a conversation that started innocently enough, but that may herald the genesis of a major shift in the way teachers and students learn. Will Richardson in Toronto queried: "So yesterday here in balmy Toronto, I got asked the question directly: even though we can’t be certain about what the future looks like in terms of preparing our kids for it, what, generally speaking, do we know? What general characteristics can we assume in terms of rethinking our curriculum and our practice?"
The 'tipping point' that many have been speaking about can only arrive with many people choosing to learn more. To facilitate this, I've also begun a list of Recommended Edu-Blogs. If you add to this list, please provide some suggestion as to the nature of the topics being discussed on each blog.
As a network we can compile lists of e-Learning resources to scaffold the continuing education of teachers. An Electronic Portfolio page is currently under construction; please add a comment to this post if you have ideas for new pages. Your contribution to the existing wiki resource lists can be a model of professional collaboration.
We can harness the power of the Read/Write web in modeling the type of 21st century learning that can engage all types of learners...
Participate in the discussion, won't you?! A late edit: I've recently posted a related Podcast: 3 Wishes and a Wiki Workshop
When PowerPoint first came on the scene, those who created slideshows for public presentations were seen as 'magicians' in some respects. Since educators first began using this tool, we've followed in the steps of corporate users, and have failed to use it effectively. When used poorly (which is most of the time!) the worst part of PowerPoint presentations is having to sit through them! The problem is that many presenters use the PowerPoint file as 'electronic chalk'. Let's fix that!
DO use high quality graphics... Use carefully chosen photos instead of clipart! DO use minimal text! No one is reading your many bullet points or 'shiver' paragraphs of text anyways! A presentation is much more memorable if you use only one keyword or one bullet point per slide! This gives you room for a quality image, and allows you to be a part of the presentation by expanding on the visual minimalist slide. Getting past the Mac/PC debate, this comparison this 2005 post on Presentation Zen is still relevant!
DO NOT read your slides to your audience! Just don't! DO tell stories! Use your slides as introductions to Real stories that demonstrate your point, or stories that can act as apt metaphors will make your presentation more memorable.
DO learn from effective presenters! Merlin Mann is a terrific 'organizational guru', who is clearly comfortable when presenting. When time allows, check out this talk he gave at Google last summer (once the awkward intro is over... you can gain some great tips for managing your email. If you like the style of this presentation, you'll be able to make effective use of Merlin's presentation tips. DO remember that YOU are the most important part of the presentation! Darren Barefoot is another presenter who has great suggestions on making presentations in this post "Everything I Know about Presentations, I Learned in Theatre School". The presentation should be much more than the electronic chalk notes you provide...
DO engage other tools along with or in place of PowerPoint. The best presenters in using communications technology are very comfortable jumping from application to application, or from site to site within a presentation. If you have live access to the Internet during a presentation, you might want to hyperlink to a wiki, a blog post, or any of a number of relevant websites or online tools.
DO preload content and websites you plan to use in your presentation. Use of a tabbed browsing tool (just about anything but MS Explorer) will allow you to pre-load sites that you'd like to visit. DO become familiar with the presenter's layout. Both PowerPoint and Keynote allow you to project your presentation while having your notes appear on your local computer/notebook screen. (You might also want to employ a teleprompter.) You'll have to practice this with a data projector as most tools will not make use of this option unless a projector is attached.
DO become very familiar with your slide arrangement. The best presenters can adapt their presentations on the fly depending on audience response and interaction. If you race to show all of your wonderful slides, you may be missing opportunities to make deeper, more meaningful connections with your audience. Being prepared to skip forward/backwards in your presentation.
The slideshow is not the presentation. If it was, you could just hand it out and be done with it. If you are wondering why so many attendees are checking email, or doodling, or talking during your presentations, you'll have to do your part: Engage the audience by making effective use of your favourite presentation tool!
A few weeks later, I've added a few white space exemplars:
The phenomenon that is 'social networking', is not what forward thinking educators are doing. Most young people using My Space, Twitter, and Facebook are doing so only to continue conversations held in the real world. Many of the wall-postings and text messages that form the backbone of social networks, are simply attempts to see what people are up to 'socially' rather than to engage in conversations that lead to knowledge creation.
Teacher 2.0 on the other hand, is beginning to create networks of like-minded educators intent upon learning from one another. These 'learning networks' consist similarly of information exchanges, with at least one major exception: these networks are sharing information on a range of topics of definable topics of interest to the collective.
If indeed the issue of our use of social tools is as important as Will Richardson suggests , then we need to do a better job of describing what we do! It's possible that an appropriate moniker might address some of the issues highlighted by Danah Boyd in 'The Economist' debate.
What shall we call it?
There are a number of related terms that would be more appropriate than 'social networks' to describe this type of collaborative learning: 'social learning’; or ‘learning networks’; or even ’social learning networks’, would be more appropriate terms. Any which way you slice it, the term 'learning', is conspicuous by its absence when one is describing the phenomenonal sharing taking place via blogs, wikis, tweets and other read/write tools.
Is it even new?
Building social learning networks is something many educators have done for years via email/webpal programs. (I remember doing such a program working with ten classrooms scattered across North America via a 1200 baud modem via AT&T around 1990.) The difference is that we now have access to tools that give us instant access not only to text, but to video and audio as well.
It’s too easy in using the term ’social networking’, to focus on the everyday social communication that young people participate in via Web 2.0 tools. Absent a true learning purpose, such communications are simply social dialogue. Learning networks are different, let's begin highlighting the uniqueness of our dialogue by including, even highlighting, the word learning.
The Google Blog has just posted a radical idea for bringing the world together in a compelling way over the next week or so. My Maps are Our Maps invites people to post stories, traditions and more in the form of photographs embedded into a Google Map. (Photos, or YouTube videos can be embedded; but content must be present on the World Wide Web prior to adding it to a Google map.)
The entry includes a link to a Google Map user guide. It will be very interesting to see how this map develops as the personal stories of global celebrations of Christmas, Chanukah and the New Year are added. This is one terrific example of Digital Storytelling!
If only educators had known about this before the end of school for the holiday break...? Certainly there are other classroom and community applications for such a project. It is an engaging idea that can be scaled from classroom, to school, to community, to city, to state/province, to country, to the global community. I'm guessing we'll soon see more than few educational adaptations of this idea... A few of my own ideas are on today's Teacher 2.0 Podcast.
I'd like to share with you a metaphor for Web 2.0 and other e-Learning tools:
The story begins in my hometown of Windsor, Ontario, where late in the summer of 2007, city workers saw the need to remove the lone hill in Memorial Park. Those unfamiliar with the geography of southern Ontario, might be interested to know that the extreme southern leg of the province is FLAT. Thanks to the same glaciation that fed the great lakes thousands of years ago, the land is flat, but fertile.
So flat is the area, that the city council had more calls in sadness and frustration at the loss of the hill, than had been experienced by elected officials in recent memory... Which is why, in the fall of 2007, the hill was rebuilt!
To me, the interesting thing about this hill, is that it drew people to the area. It is no coincidence that this photo taken shortly after the hill was rebuilt, has been christened with a picnic table (no doubt by energetic teens in the neighbourhood).
FACT #1: E-learning tools, Social Networking sites and Web 2.0 products draw people to use the World Wide Web. Whether out of curiousity, or as a meeting place, these 'virtual hills' serve important purposes, and as soon as they are built, people find them, and begin using them! It's a fact that the first reaction of 'supervisors' to new technologies is to block access; but eventually, (too often after a number of years!) the value of the tool seems to win out.
Hills seem to draw attention and people no matter how large or small. in August of 2007, the pile of dirt pictured below was added to the park across the street from my home. Within hours, young people from the neighbourhood had built a motocross challenge area. Taking the picnic table and spare planks from garages nearby, the park had a new, 'most popular spot'. Even though this park boasts a soccer field, a baseball diamond, a soccer pitch, a child's playground and tennis courts, the final weeks of summer saw young people gravitate to the small pile of dirt in far greater numbers than any of the other attractions.
FACT #2: No matter how insignificant technological learning tools appear to adult educators, young people will enthusiastically join in using these tools... Often to the point of ignoring all types of traditional learning resources.
Now that winter has come to Canada in the form of great amounts of snow, the community toboggan hill has become the recreation centre for the community. Now that the patches of dirt can no longer accommodate bicycles, the 'X-games' fans decided that hills could benefit from the addition of some creative accents.
Fact #3: The use of the Read/Write Web can be hazardous! One should not dive into using evolving e-learning tools until he/she has taken the time to use the tools... and perhaps the more basic tools that might lead one to consider newer tools. Beyond the risks teachers need to take in trying new 'tricks', these new Web tools pose perils of which we need to be aware. These hazards are often the ones that grab the most headlines, even though the rich learning opportunities afforded by these tools are worthy of their own attention. Hills and e-Hills were both meant to be climbed. When new hills or e-hills pop up on the horizon, they will draw the attention of young people in particular. Educators need to be prepared to meet the students who attempt to scale these hills. Now that I think of it, maybe it was a teacher who chose to put that picnic table on top of the hill in Memorial Park...
The Podcast version of this story is now available in iTunes! You can also click here to access the Teacher 2.0... the audio version!
No, the focus of this entry is not the 'Kindle', Yahoo's recently launched e-book reader. I firmly believe that if people have to bring something along for the ride, an actual book is a lot more convenient! No batteries, no worries about theft, no need to download anything... just bring it along.
I believe the skill of reading is changing none-the-less. I know in my personal life, much of my reading is done reading text from my computer screen (PDFs, Web content, blogs...). My children also spend much of their time reading online text (albeit much of that written by their friends and classmates). With the sheer volume of text to be reviewed in a given day, it is proving to be necessary to be a different type of reader, than we were taught to be in school. With the explosion in content sure to continue, we need to prepare young people to be learners who are able to scan for keywords and topic sentences; to be researchers who are efficient at extracting key ideas; to be documentarians who can track their hyper-learning; to be judges, able to critically consider the validity and relevance of content.
While tools like 'Google Notebook' are available to help develop these skills, I'm not convinced that a wide cross-section of today's teachers is currently able to demonstrate these skills... Let alone, qualified to teach them. Although it's a number of years old already, Alan November's story "Teaching Zach to Think" is still very relevant, as is the November Learning "Websites to Validate" activity.
As a teacher; learner; consultant; speaker; and collaborator, I'm on the lookout for opportunities to engage in meaningful conversations with others who see themselves as learners. Professional development; project based learning; and Creative Commons are topics that are always on my radar.
Wouldn't it be neat if we could create a space for children to share recordings of themselves reading their favourite books?
