| Tag Archives: schools

Series on Creativity

by Clarence Fisher

Any newspaper article that begins like this:

”Imagine, for a moment, that you’re a student. You’ve been plucked out of your classroom and dropped into a new classroom, in an unknown country. Are you able to tell, from the way you are being taught, whether you’re in a democratic or totalitarian state?”

is in my mind, worthy of reading.

This quote is actually pulled from an article about creativity in education that the Globe and Mail is featuring. Its part of an entire series about creativity.

Worth your time to check out.

Tablets have taken the world by storm. This isn’t a secret. I’ve probably seen as many ipads in the past year in people’s bags as I have laptops. People that would never carry a laptop have no problem being seen with a tablet. While there are certainly a lot of tablets out there, you can probably argue that there is an ipad market, and then a bunch of others.

In October, Wired released stats saying that 97% of all tablet internet traffic is produced by people using ipads and another site stated that over 80% of all tablets sold are made by Apple. That may be changing slightly this Christmas season, but these stats are probably basically still true.

I’ve spent my time with two different tablets this fall and neither of them are ipads. I’ve got an Asus eee transformer and now my son has a new Blackberry Playbook that he received for Christmas. Both of these machines have performed well. The eee pad hooks to the Android Market, is responsive, has a great display and flips between applications easily. The new Playbook has only been around for a few days, but I have to admit – I like it. It is a bit smaller (a 7 inch screen compared to the standard 10), but it is well designed and feels nice in your hands. It doesn’t feel like a cheap piece of plastic. It has a great screen and runs RIM’s own operating system which is proving easy to learn and allows for full multi tasking. It handles flash content easily and renders the web quickly. It’s downfall comes in the size of its applications market. RIM is obviously a 3rd player in the tablet wars and it shows in what is available. Big news last week when Angry Birds hit Blackberry’s App world, months after the Android Market and the App store. No movies to rent. I can’t find a decent WordPress app. While there are certainly thousands to look through, some of the standard ones are simply not there. Plenty of rumours about RIM allowing access to the Android Market (which would solve all of their problems), and about people jailbreaking their Playbooks, but nothing official from RIM yet.

Both of these devices have been great to have around to pick up when you need to get online quickly to find a piece of information or to post to twitter, etc. but I’m still having trouble seeing them as machines to do anything other than read and surf from. I can’t see them as creative platforms.

I know districts have spent millions on tablets, I know people will disagree with me, telling me stories of all of the wonderful things they have done (or had their kids do), but I’m still not convinced. Don’t get me wrong, I like the ones I’ve lived with for the past few months. I think they are great devices and are getting to be powerful multimedia platforms. But what place should they have in our classrooms? Are we aiming only at an education based on the consumption of media and information? If every student (or classroom) could have tablets and laptops, then I think we are getting somewhere. But we all know that with budgets like they are, that isn’t happening in most schools any time soon. I am interested instead to see where schools are going to go with devices like the new Raspberry Pi initiative. That interests me. What can we do with low price (or no price) software like WordPress, Gimp and Scratch? How can we help kids use platforms like Youtube and Figment to share what they make? We’ve only scratched (no pun intended) the surface of possibilities. Do we want students to be consumers of information or creators and community builders? I know which I’d rather see and I’m worried about the priorities that I have been seeing.

Laptop Rollback

by Clarence Fisher 8 Comments

“When Jefferson Parish school officials rolled out a laptop computer program in two middle schools three years ago and five other schools a year later, they had high hopes that it would help boost standardized test scores.”

I picked up a link to this article on twitter, put out there by my friend Jeff Utecht.

Stuff like this makes my blood boil.

I continue to have trouble understanding the obsession in the US with test scores. When millions of kids, teachers and parents are boiled down to a set of numbers, education has lost it’s way and its purpose. The people are left behind and the numbers replace them. Numbers are a poor substitute for people.

Now it is definitely possible that the laptop program in this place was doing little to help their students. Poor implementation schemes and teachers who don’t understand the reason behind a program such as this are both possible. Placing laptops in the hands of kids without helping all of the people involved in education to see and be change is a pit waiting for money to be thrown in to it. It will change very little.

But putting laptops in to the hands of people and asking standardized test scores to increase is an even worse idea. It comes down to what is being measured. Measure things that matter for our time. Measure connections and growth. Measure cultural understanding and a full host of changing, complex literacy skills. Measure interest and motivation. Look into what has been published by learners and shared with the world. Measure interactions and conversations and curiosity. These are the skills that improve lives and move nations, not the micro managed set of outcomes standardized tests are interested in.

Can laptop programs be poorly managed? You bet. But they can’t be more of a waste of money then the billions spent on standardized testing programs that measure few things that are important and instead suck the life out of learning and classroom life.

Networks and Rising Beyond Geography

by Clarence Fisher 3 Comments

Looking for another reason why students need to learn how to harness social media?

How about in order to promote themselves to get a job.

We have been hearing for some time about controlling your digital footprint so that if recruiters are looking you up on Facebook or on your blog you will be able to make a positive impression. But now we are moving one step further on.

According to the story from the BBC:

“Fede Alvarez’s short film “Ataque de Panico!” (Panic Attack!) featured giant robots invading and destroying Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay.

It is 4 mins 48 seconds long and has had more than 1.5 million views so far.

“I uploaded (Panic Attack!) on a Thursday and on Monday my inbox was totally full of e-mails from Hollywood studios,” he told the BBC’s Latin American service BBC Mundo.

“It was amazing, we were all shocked.”

I have heard similar stories about authors and photographers emerging from the chaff pile that other sites such as fanfiction.net and flickr can be.

Amazing people, rising to the top of globally connected creative industries.

Professions such as this no longer care where you ar emerging from. This producer did not have to travel and live in Hollywood or Bollywood to get his films made. Instead he stayed where he was and perfected his craft. This had nothing to do with geography or chance, it had to do with talent.

There are lessons here for schools and students. Allow students to be creative and put their work out to the world for open public critique. Allow them to make connections with real people. Help them to build networks in areas that they want to become more creative and technically proficient in. Even if it is not an area of expertise for us or for our school, we can help students be connected to others who can critique their work, who can help them to improve their craft – whatever that may be. We do not need to be experts in the topic or the industry, we need to be experts in helping our students to be connected.

Another example of the web allowing us to rise beyond geography.

Here’s the short film that began this story

Subject Matter Networks

by Clarence Fisher 1 Comment

The other day, I picked up a tweet from Mark Oehlert. He was at a conference and a speaker mentioned moving from “subject matter experts” to “subject matter networks.”

I was stuned for a moment thinking about the power that this idea has. This is, of course, in the simplest terms is exactly what we have been pushing towards for several years. We believe that learning is networked and has more legitimacy, power and capability when it occurs this way. As subject matter (read: content, the life blood of schools) changes at an increasingly fast rate, we need to redefine what our mission is. It cannot be to educate students in “the facts,” whatever those may be.

Subject matter networks strikes to the heart of our idea of “experts” and how knowledge is created and where it is contained. In this model, knowledge is a living thing that is constructed, created and often contained in the network. For several years, I hoped that knowledge networks would spontaneously be constructed by students around the globe as they found peers to connect with. While in my classroom I have yet to see this occur beyond any small scale, instead I have seen these networks grow as teachers and other adults intervene, model growth, and support students in their quest to find others who think like they do.

In the past few years we have seen tremendous growth in the number of students who are working online in connected ways. From only being able to find a few classrooms online five years ago to now being able to locate dozens with farily simple ease, it is obvious that many more students are having these experiences and are learning in new ways. Don’t misunderstand what I am saying, there is tremendous room for growth.

This also makes me wonder about educating students to be part of a network and not to become an expert. How does the educational experience differe between these two goals? What would be emphasized? What would a classroom day be like? Many things here to consider.

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