למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

Most teenagers are taking steps to protect themselves online from the most obvious areas of risk. The new survey shows that many youth actively manage their personal information as they perform a balancing act between keeping some important pieces of information confined to their network of trusted friends and, at the same time participating in a new, exciting process of creating content for their profiles and making new friends. Most teens believe some information seems acceptable – even desirable – to share, while other information needs to be protected.

Are today’s teens less concerned about their privacy because the internet gives them so many opportunities to socialize and share information?

Our survey suggests that there are a wide range of views among teens about privacy and disclosure of personal information. Whether in an online or offline context, teenagers do not fall neatly into clear-cut groups when it comes to their willingness to disclose information or the ways they restrict access to the information that they do share. For most teens, decisions about privacy and disclosure depend on the nature of the encounter and their own personal circumstances. … Many, but not all, teens are aware of the risks of putting information online in a public and durable environment. Many, but certainly not all, teens make thoughtful choices about what to share in what context.

תוויות: גלישה בטוחה, נוער

Personal Learning Environments are systems that help learners take control of and manage their own learning. This includes providing support for learners to

set their own learning goals

manage their learning; managing both content and process

communicate with others in the process of learning

and thereby achieve learning goals.

A PLE may be composed of one or more sub-systems: As such it may be a desktop application, or composed of one or more web-based services.

A worthwhile observation by George Siemens on the nature of PLE: PLE is a concept, not a product. It’s an unfortunate tendency especially in our sector to take a concept (PLE, e-Portfolio) and attempt to reify it as a product.

The concept is right but the terminology is wrong. PLEs aren’t P, L, or E.

• Personal isn’t quite right because learning is social, and a PLEs include shared resources, folksonomies, and collaboration software

• Learning gives the impression that PLEs are limited to learning experiences. Not so. The tools you learn with become the tools you work with. Why create something that makes it easier to connect with other people and the web, only to throw it away upon graduation?

• PLEs are not an environment. The environment is the web, the workplace, home, or your playground: the Learnscape.

תוויות: בלוגים, כלים חברתיים

I showed them all how to use Wikipedia to find interesting subjects to write about. I want them to learn how to read and summarize articles, and this seemed like a good idea for those who were into it. We were doing OK until today, when several people decided to copy and paste long passages straight from the web. Seeing this, the computers were put away for a bit.

This is how I see teaching as an iterative process. We made an attempt at something, summarizing informational articles. It failed a couple of key tests. Now we have to talk, again, about plagiarism, summarizing, note-taking, research, and writing in their own voice, issues I’ve been bringing to them all year.

For now, to begin with, we need to understand basic essay writing, using the web as source material. It’s hard, though, because the reading level is difficult to control, and it isn’t always easy to find articles at a suitable level of difficulty.

I imagine that a lot of useful educational content on the internet will eventually be written by kids using social software applications, like we are doing. But they have to be shown how to do that.

תוויות: כתיבה, מידענות

This is the week that the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project begins, and as such, is a major turning point in our field - perhaps the key turning point.

Two interesting tidbits that I recall from the technical part of the movie (in case you don't watch that part). First, in real world testing, the wireless mesh network worked at a distance of two kilometers. Wow. Second, there's a "source" button on the keyboard - push it, and the kids see the source code for almost anything they're running. They want these kids to be curious and to mess around with this computer - in other words, to learn.

המערכת הזאת מסירה את מגבלות הגישה של הילדים, ובזכות שקיפות ההפעלה של המכשיר, לחיצה אחת על אייקון הדפדפן תתן להם גישה לעולם החיצוני. בלי חשש, הילדים יוכלו לקרוא חדשות בעזרת קורא RSS מובנה, לעיין בוויקיפדיה ולהוריד ספרים אלקטרונים. המכשול הבסיסי בדרך ללמידה – הגישה לידע – פשוט נעלם.

ב-MIT החליטו לא לשים שום מחסום, וצירוף מקשים פשוט מעלה את המסוף ונותן לילד גישה אל מאחורי הקלעים של מערכת ההפעלה.

לא מחשב כמו שאנחנו מכירים, עם חלונות ומעבד תמלילים שהילד צריך ללמוד כדי להיות פקיד טוב כשהוא יהיה גדול, אלא מחשב שתוכנן על ידי אנשי חינוך כדי לעזור לילד ללמוד על העולם.

All of this, of course, raises the question about teachers and their roles and reactions. Will teachers see this as an advantage or a threat? How will teachers figure out how to use these new tools and how to integrate them into their teaching methods, curriculum, and classrooms? These are not new questions. What is new is that this is all going to happen extremely quickly and without much warning or planning.

תוויות: טכנולוגיה, שימוש בבתי ספר

When I share collaborative research, learning and digital storytelling tools like Flickr, del.icio.us, Google Notebook, Google Reader and Ning with many classroom teachers, I sense I'm unintentionally inviting a "shock and awe" experience instead of one where teachers walk away empowered and confident in their ability to use new tools effectively with students. Such an outcome is counterproductive to the goal of helping teachers use digital technologies effectively for learning.

I'm seeking frameworks for "cognitive maps" that can help me as well as other teachers better understand the FUNCTIONS, respective PURPOSES, and appropriate CONTEXTS for using read/write technologies for learning.

תוויות: כלים חברתיים, שימוש בבתי ספר

תוויות: העתקה-הדבקה, כתיבה

has no significant impact on student performance

a $2 billion-a-year industry

תוויות: טכנולוגיה, שימוש בבתי ספר

the value of loosely knit networks as distinct learning resources and … the increasing value of learning networks (as opposed to tight, class or institutional bounded communities of practice) in both formal and informal learning

The notion of extracting value from networks is at the core of social software and web 2.0 applications and has very immediate value in the informal world of life-long learning. This value extends beyond the type of unconscious and unreflective Wisdom of the Crowd’s described by Surowiecki (2004). It expands the notion of networks to include those whose members are in regular interaction (as in an active mail list), to those whose accumulated opinion adds filtering value (Digg, Slashdot), to networks of bloggers who regularly read and reference work of related bloggers (EduBloggers), to those who rarely if ever interact as they collaboratively produce useful artifacts (WikiPedia).

תוויות: כלים חברתיים, שימוש בבתי ספר

One of the issues in contention there is a course called Computer Applications, where students learn to use the Microsoft Office suite (sans Access, thank goodness) and keyboarding. The question that nags at me this morning, as I get ready to catch my ride over to the school, is this, “Are computer applications something that should be taught in a class, or something that should be learned by the students, independent of a class curriculum?“ I guess what keeps tugging at my thoughts is the idea that anyone who can figure out how to play World of Warcraft or The SIMS can probably figure out how to use a word processor. They probably will not learn all of the features that they might be taught in a class, but if you can figure out the basics, then any other specific feature is only as far away as a little time at figuring it out.

רכישת מיומנויות מחשב תוך כדי עיסוק בתכנים רלוונטיים ומשמעותיים לילדים, יחד עם הוראתן הישירה בעת הצורך

How to use computer classes bore me to tears. Technology is a tool we use to acquire, process, and communicate knowledge. It can’t be taught in isolation.

תוויות: טכנולוגיה, סטנדרטים

But if they have no leader then how do they know where to go?

This is a good question because it reveals the essential difference between human teams and nature’s teams. The answer is that no single penguin knows where to go, but they know where to go as a group.

תוויות: חוכמת ההמון

המעבר שלי מחינוך לעולם העסקים המחיש לי בדיוק כמה חשוב להיות מסוגל לחבר תוכן מכמה מקורות, להקיף אותו במבנה ולערוך אותו לכדי מכלול קוהרנטי בעל קול אחיד. תלמידים שמסוגלים ליצור תערובות משכנעות רכשו להם כישור עסקי יקר-ערך. למרבה הצער, רוב בתי הספר לא מכירים בכך שהתלמידים השתמשו בכישורים כלשהם, ועבודה שלמה עלולה להיזרק בגלל כמה שורות שהועתקו ממקור אחר בלי מרכאות.

על כל פנים, מערכת החינוך צריכה להכיר במה שהעבודה הכתובה מהווה היום: יותר מוצר שבוחן כישורים מאוד מסויימים – היכולת לחבר את עבודתם של אחרים ולתת את הקרדיט הראוי – ופחות שיקוף של ידע, מקוריות ויכולת כללית.

I’ve talked about this issue with our English teachers at OES, and I was rather surprised by how unconcerned they were with copy and paste plagiarism. In effect, OES students may do as many as eight drafts of a paper, with feedback from the teachers at each stage, to the effect that the writing is so closely reviewed and revised that plagiarism would be difficult to “slip in,” simply because the students are so driven to revise their own writing. In Jason’s article, he writes mostly about term papers that are written with zero faculty involvement, which does occur, but not at all schools.

תוויות: העתקה-הדבקה, כתיבה