| Tag Archives: edtech

When Does 1971 Sound Like the Future?

by Clarence Fisher

“Why then should computers in schools be confined to computing the sum of the squares of the first twenty odd numbers and similar so called “problem – solving” uses? Why not use them to produce some action? There is no better reason than the intellectual timidity of the computers in education community, which seems remarkably reluctant to use computers for any purpose that fails to look very much like something that has been taught in schools for the past centuries.”

Seymour Papert. In 1971.

Full read here. (pdf)

You Can’t Buy Change

by Clarence Fisher 2 Comments

I’ve received a few grumpy emails from people over the last several weeks.

Tied to a few of the posts I’ve written lately, several people have accused me of being anti-innovation, anti-change and of being anti-corporate.

I can understand how people might feel that way. A few of my posts have had the distinct leaning of my having COMS (Cranky Old Man Syndrome). But actually, nothing could be further from the truth. I think the edtech industry is maturing. And I believe that is bringing us a new set of challenges. Corporations smell the enormous amounts of money that is being spent by schools and districts. They have responded by offering a new set of products for us to purchase. This is their job.

But just as the title of this session at educon that I would have loved to attend says – you can’t buy change.

Change is not a product that you can simply throw money at.

Change is not a new set of classroom ipads, or ipods, or Smart boards, or cameras.

Change is built on practice and research. Change is built on what actually takes place in classrooms. Change is a process that grows, is cyclical and needs to be supported (or squashed).

Change certainly requires us to look at the tools we use in our classrooms, but it can’t stop there. That is too simplistic. Change requires us to deeply examine our pedagogy. It requires us to reexamine our curricula and find ways to construct meaningful experiences and inquiries with our students. To change we must examine what counts as knowledge in our classrooms and think about how our assessments reach into those depths to look for evidence of achievement.

I am more than happy to promote all of the great companies and people and products that bring us into places where change is supported. Corporations that make innovative, accessible and interesting products. Corporations that provide spaces for teachers to examine what they do and how they do those things. People who support those changes. What does make me unhappy though is when any individual or corporation becomes too dominant in the debate. When people more closely associated with a product or a service than a classroom or a school begins to talk about how learning or change happens, it makes me grumpy and worried about where we are headed. I am not prepared to hand over what happens in my classroom to anyone who is not prepared to spend a lot of hours in my space learning about my kids, our goals, and our context. Teaching is a complex business so I’m always worried (and often admittedly cynical) about products that tell me they are going to make things “simple,” or “easy.” While we all appreciate things that make our classroom lives a little easier to handle, simple often comes at a price and I’m often not prepared to pay it.

So lets not let the shiny gadgets distract us from what we are really doing here – helping kids to live in a global changing world. And no, you can’t buy that.

Resources Page

by Clarence Fisher

Look up there.

Just above this post is a grey menu bar. If you come here regularly, you might notice there’s a new addition up there. Mind you, if you always come here via an RSS reader, you probably can’t see anything different and actually need to click the link and go to the actual blog.

I’ve decided to add a resources page to this blog. Over the time that I’ve been blogging, I’ve managed to create a number of different resources as pdf files and more major blog posts. Some of these are for teachers and others are meant to be used with students. Some of these things have been languishing in the back pages of this blog and occasionally people will email me and ask for something they saw on here earlier. I thought it might be easier to short circuit that process and bring a number of these things together in one place.

Take a look and see if there’s anything useful. As always, feel free to use what you need and modify it to meet your needs.

How Much Reality do you Want?

by Clarence Fisher

We always say that one part of engaging kids with learning, is to engage them with reality. Ensure that school is not a place that prepares students for some far off mythical life that they will get to only after being finished in our buildings; but instead have kids work and think and engage with real problems.

But is that true? Are we really prepared to push our kids into thinking about real problems?

I was thinking of this the other night. I’m away from home on a trip filled with mayoral meetings and spent part of an evening on twitter the other night playing name that tune (until I got banned from the game – but that’s another story) with people from all sorts of places. While we were playing and generally just letting a little time roll by, I noticed much more important events rolling by in my timeline:

The world is a strange place. One that can be filled with beauty and love and things that astonish me every day. But it can also be brutal, and violent and terrible. Most of us thinking about ed tech issues are fortunate enough to live in parts of the world where we have enough to eat and a clean, safe place to sleep every night. But of course, this is not the reality for large parts of the world’s population.

How would parents and other stakeholders in our schools feel if we really engaged the kids in our classrooms with this, other reality? Do they really want their kids to know?

I used to always have the kids in my class read the Nata Village blog, A space kept by two nurses in a village in Botswana where a large portion of the population has active HIV, I always found it a heart rending read for small town North American kids. But it was effective and never failed to get them thinking and talking. Unfortunately, the space is no longer active, but it always served as a good reminder of how fortunate we are.

This morning I ran in to another space that faithfully represents reality. Eastside Stories is a blog kept by a beat cop who works in Vancouver British Columbia’s East Side. A neighbourhood filled with drug addiction, homelessness and problems by the dozen, this blog represents the pain and despair, and at times, the beauty of a community such as this. By would parents really want the students in your class to be reading it?

One of the greatest opportunities we have with ed tech is to engage people and stories outside of the realities of our students and communities. To show them new people and new stories. To bring them the world.

But how much reality do we really want? Are we prepared for what that can look like?

I think I have COMS… (Cranky Old Man Syndrome)

by Clarence Fisher 7 Comments

I’m 41.

That’s 536 in internet years.

I’ve been involved with edtech for more than a decade and seen a lot of tools come and go.

These days it seems I’m seeing a lot of tools come; but I’m choosing not to get involved with them. This has changed for me in the past 1.5 years or so. I used to get every account that came around. If it was new, I wanted in and I wanted in early. Beta tester accounts up for grabs? Yes please.

These days though, I find I am getting much more choosy about what I sign up for and spend my time with. Maybe it has to do with limits on the time I have to spend with tools. But there are a lot of spaces I’ve chosen to stay out of.

The most recent is Google +. While I admit that I am one of only approximately ten people in the Western world who aren’t on facebook either, I just can’t see a reason for signing up for this tool. The circles and hangouts seem more like a closed network that feels (as an outsider) like a high school popularity contest, and as for sparks, the item that Google advertises as “A feed of just the stuff you’re really into;” it’s called RSS, I’ve had it for years.

So what’s new? What’s different? I’m not seeing it.

But that’s not really different for me these days. That’s why I’m wondering if I’ve got a bad case of the COMS.

I’m not a facebooker. I’ve stayed out of Diigo. I dropped ning when they wanted me to pay. I don’t plurk or use voicethread in my classroom. The list could go on.

Meanwhile, some of the main tools that I use have been around for awhile. I love wordpress and all that is possible with it. While my google reader sometimes gets very full, I use it a lot as well. I will be in delicious until they shut the doors. Twitter has turned into a main space for me to find new people, new connections and new information. I’ve been a lot more choosy about what I use professionally and with what I use in my classroom as well, but I’m wondering about the consequences of this.

How do the tools you use effect the shape, size, and vitality of your network? How do the spaces you are part of effect what kinds of information you have access to? As far as I’m concerned, my network is meeting my information needs, but am I missing out on things / people / connections by purposely limiting my network and shaping it using certain tools? I am vastly in favour of open networks and connections, but at what point am I constructing a closed information ecology for myself by choosing fewer tools?

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