I asked the 25 kids in my grade seven and eight classroom last week about the term web 2.0.
How many of them has heard of it?
One or two tentative hands went up. Out of 25.
For them, it’s just the web. It’s the way its always been.
Tag Archives: 2.0
Do New Tools = New Learning?
The tools I’ve been using in my classroom have been mostly static for several years now. While this might seem like an eternity in internet time, we’ve been successful with our model.
Blogs, wikis, google docs and open internet service as cornerstones. Many others on the periphery such as audacity, igoogle, flickr, youtube and delicious. While my teaching has changed in this time (and I hope improved) using these tools, the tools themselves haven’t. I’ve learned to use them in new ways, digging deeper with my students, watching for patterns of use and learning how to help them to use these tools to see new issues.
While not resistant to using new things, I’ve been careful to not chase after every new online service or website that has emerged. I’ve thought of this as the “shiny object syndrome.”
This year however I am hoping to add a few tools to my cornerstones. I plan on working with both diigo and the online community I’ve set up using buddypress at Hive Thinking. I think that these tools will add capabilities that we currently don’t have in the classroom.
And this has got me thinking. Does using new tools allow for new learning? Are there new tools that change the landscape of information that is available? Are there tools that are so significant that they allow students to learn things in new ways that would not have access to without them?
A few different examples. Open internet service allows students access to information they simply could not have with out it. But does access to this information equal new learning? I would argue that it doesn’t. Simply having access does not guarantee anything. It is the same trouble that schools get in to when they go to 1:1 laptop programs. They believe that putting laptops into classrooms will improve test scores and lead to deeper learning and then are disappointed, blaming the laptops when things fail to change. In the same vein, blogging will not develop your classroom into a community and giving students access to Skype will not connect them with the globe.
They need models to guide them, a curriculum that makes use of the tools and an assessment program that honours the learning they have accomplished.
These things being said, I believe that the capabilities of our tools add dimensions to our pedagogy. We need to choose our tools carefully to ensure we have a full battery of abilities to share with our students.
More examples.
Email might be the most basic one. If our students have an email address and we allow them to access it during the school day and show them how to make contact with others to gain new information, their learning can be changed. They have access to people and information they do not have without it. Diigo can function the same way. Using diigo, students can highlight online text and leave their thoughts and notes behind for others. This concept of marking up and sharing online text is a new literacy skill that has only emerged from this tool and others like it.
If the literacies, skills and information we can access depends on the tools we use, does this make tools that much more important? Are our students missing out on possible learnings if they are not using certain tools?
While many edtech companies would like for you to believe that, I don’t.
First of all, most tools (if not all) are redundant; there are multiple services out there that allow for the same capabilities. For example, many video sharing sites allow users to embed their content. Free blogging and wiki sites abound. Image editing sites like picnik can be used in place of aviary or even free offline equivalents like gimp.
Second of all, the tools simply cannot come first. We cannot choose tools and then find ways to use them. We must consider the skills and abilities that we want our students to have and then choose the paths to help them get there. Our students do not need to know everything. They do not need to know how to do everything either. However, they do need to know how to access knowledge and skills when they need them. It’s the whole “teach a man how to fish” thing once again. Making choices about vital skills and knowledge is well… vital. We need to ensure our students have skills that will stand the test of time, that will be transferrable between pieces of software and that will help them to deepen their knowledge.
Ability to share resources they have found? Important. How to get there? Not as important. They might blog. Post on a wiki. Save to delicious. Share on a diigo network. Post on twitter.
Share their thoughts with a global audience? Important. Write a blog post. Make a video. Record a podcast.
What is not important is the individual software dependent skill. Click here. Then do this. Then that. Etc.
New tools are important. New tools give us access to information we wouldn’t have without them. New tools give our students the ability to share, to network and learn in ways they wouldn’t have without them. Choose your classroom cornerstones carefully. Expand on them. But don’t get caught up by the SOS (shiny object syndrome).
Helping to Grow a Community
Helping a new classroom community to grow and take shape in a classroom is different each and every year. Much depends on the variables: the age of your students, their technology skills, your community context and need among others. There are many things to consider. Each community needs to be handled differently, but the goal is the same: allowing the voices to grow in depth and confidence, reaching out for understanding from wherever in the world you may be.
A month into the school year and with most of my students having had their blogs for about two weeks, we are still in the every beginnings of our online work. There are a few key, critical factors which I think are important to consider as a teacher who wants to engage their students using online connections (notice that this is not solely about blogs)
1.) Take the time – Early conversations, halting and difficult as they sometimes can be – matter. Students need to be encouraged and allowed the time they need to explore. Getting a new online space is like moving in to new house. Everything needs to be properly set up and organized. Themes set, widgets organized, blogrolls filled. It is important that students have the time they need to create a space they are happy with.
2.) Be present – As the leader, mentor and educator, you MUST be present in the community. Notice I said IN the community. Be a part of it. Blog yourself. Set a good example. Leave good comments. Write challenging posts for your students. Ask them tough questions. Push their thinking, but do not be above the community of your classroom; be a co – creator of content.
3.) Brag – Show off the blogs of your students to others. I always send a note home to parents with their child’s blog URL on it, explain how they will be used in class and tell the parents to check in often to see what their child is doing in class and the work they are concentrating on. They may want to be tough junior high kids, but they are still thrilled to get comments from relatives.
4.) Show off the good stuff – Often I set up a projector in my class and show off some of the best material that has been posted in our classroom over recent days. I want kids to see good models of writing, of creating multi media content and of leaving good comments. I send students to read the blogs of others and ask them to think of what they have learned from seeing others in action.
5.) Realize that not everyone is a blogger – But everyone is talented at creating some type of content. I want the students in my class to try it all – blogging, podcasting, making videos, taking pictures, making animations and on and on. But I don’t expect that they will all enjoy or be talented in all areas. I want students to realize their talents and over time, to begin to focus in some areas more than others. I want them to be experts in a few areas, but be willing to take chances in them all.
6.) Teach them to be safe online – I emphasise this right from day one. The content that you place online will most likely always be there. Think before you post. We talk about not sharing phone numbers, email addresses and IM accounts with those people they meet online. We also talk about their own accounts on Facebook and other social sites. I want them to learn good habits not only for the classroom, but for their own stuff as well.
7.) Network your classroom – Find a partner classroom in another part of the world and hook your students together. Blogging is exciting and empowering for students, but a classroom is a closed space and eventually, students will not be as interested blogging if they are only talking to the same people online as in the classroom. Networking your classroom with another country also provides for a lot of opportunity for cultural exchanges and opens students to a more global perspective.
8.) Show the connections – Students like to see how their learning is connected and using different widgets and plugins can help them to see the pieces of their learning go global. My students usually put things like clustr maps so they can see where their audicence is coming from. They also like to post plugins that allow them to follow our flickr photos or Youtube channels.
9.) What’s New? – One of the best things I’ve done on my own classroom blog is to take clips from my Google Reader and place them on our Idea Hive site. Having subscribed to the RSS feeds for all of their posts and placed these feeds in one folder, I also subscribe to the RSS feeds for the comments for each of their blogs and place these in another folder. I then take the code that Google gives me and paste it into a text widget on my blog. This allows the students who come to our classroom blog to see the latest 10 blog posts and the latest 10 comments posted by anyone in the class.
10.) The more channels, the better – Students need a lot of time and experience working online. Using technology in your classroom cannot be a sideline. It cannot be something you have to do as an add on. To be most effective, you need to deeply examine your teaching and think about the pieces you can give up so that you have the time available in your classroom to help your students become effective global communicators.