למידה, אינטרנט ... ומה שביניהם

תוויות: דיווחים, כנסים

הדרכתם של תלמידים כיום, שכל כך מתמצאים במחשבים, באמצעות עזרי לימוד קונבנציונליים היא אתגר גדול. לוחות ומקרנים פשוט לא מתאימים לנושאים בהם חוויה אישית היא האפשרות הטובה ביותר. הכיתה הממוחשבת הופכת יותר ויותר לסביבה הטבעית ללימוד יומיומי.

בסביבה הפתוחה של ימינו, הגישה הנוחה לאינטרנט היא אתגר הן לביטחון והן לריכוז. ריכוזם של תלמידים נוטה לסטות מהנושא כשהם מחפשים מידע. בנוסף, הם עלולים להיות פחות קשובים להוראות כאשר הם חשופים לאינטרנט, שירותי הודעות מידיות או דואר אלקטרוני.

אז איך מוודאים שהתלמידים דבקים במטרה? איך אפשר לתפוס את תשומת ליבם בקלות במצבים כאלה? ואיך אפשר לוודא שהושבת התלמיד מול מחשב באמת מייעלת את איכות הלימוד והלמידה?

תוויות: דיווחים, כנסים

I was envisioning a future in which all the edtech evangelists got what they wanted: schools full of teachers in every classroom using blogging with their students. But rather than seeing a utopia to celebrate, I saw a bleak dystopia: Blogging as “just another way to turn in homework.” Blogging, like thinking, creativity, and other joys, turned into an aversive horror by the forces of schooliness.

תוויות: דיווחים, כנסים

The transformation from rural to urban life was so sudden, and so wrenching, that the only thing society could do to manage was to drink itself into a stupor for a generation. The stories from that era are amazing-- there were gin pushcarts working their way through the streets of London.

And it wasn't until society woke up from that collective bender that we actually started to get the institutional structures that we associate with the industrial revolution today. Things like public libraries and museums, increasingly broad education for children, elected leaders--a lot of things we like--didn't happen until having all of those people together stopped seeming like a crisis and started seeming like an asset.

It wasn't until people started thinking of this as a vast civic surplus, one they could design for rather than just dissipate, that we started to get what we think of now as an industrial society.

For the first time, society forced onto an enormous number of its citizens the requirement to manage something they had never had to manage before--free time.

And what did we do with that free time? Well, mostly we spent it watching TV. ....

And it's only now, as we're waking up from that collective bender, that we're starting to see the cognitive surplus as an asset rather than as a crisis. We're seeing things being designed to take advantage of that surplus, to deploy it in ways more engaging than just having a TV in everybody's basement.

תוויות: הרהורים, חוכמת ההמון

תוויות: הרהורים, רשתות חברתיות

Jukes is sharing some very interesting information about reading, that we (oldsters) typically read in a “Z” pattern. Our youngsters read in an “F” pattern.

The key question is, "How does this information affect how and what we teach?"

תוויות: אוריינויות

to make the mistake that many have made when they offer specious mantras such as:
"Education First, Technology Second."
or
"Pedagogy must lead the technology."

The reality, I believe, is that, throughout human history, that very essence we speak of has shifted and metamorphised considerably, and often, in response to changing economic and technological possibilities. It is an absolute truth that the technological basis of the society we inhabit will have a profound effect on the nature and form of education that can take place in that society. Indeed, new technologies can change what we mean by education because they change what it means to be educated. It is no more useful, in this context, to place 'education before technology' than it is to put 'technology before education'.

And while teachers meander into the future with their faces to the past, the very nature of what it means to be literate, to be educated, is shifting around them.

תוויות: הרהורים, טכנולוגיה, כלי ווב 2.0

I am in a funk. I know I have done a lot this year with implementing constructivist philosophy in my classrooms, trying to more seamlessly integrate technology into my students’ learning, and growing as a learner myself. However, with that all said, I am in a funk.

How did I get here? I guess, sadly, I am depressed about my students’ achievement and focus in class … I just am feeling like a failure with these kids. No matter the assignment or what I feel like is an engaging activity, if the work isn’t done in class and only in class, they won’t do it.

How do I get all of my students to see the value in doing a good job, the value of learning? Am I too hard on them? Do I expect too much from them? Should I quit trying to change the world? ....

תוויות: דוגמאות, הוראה, הרהורים

תוויות: דיווחים, מידענות

יש טעם לציין שבנושא של המלאכה של צדיקים נעזרתי ברשת הלמידה האישית שלי. רציתי לבדוק אם אותה אמירה מופיעה במקורות באותן מילים, וקצת הסתבכתי. שני ידידים עזרו לי למצוא את המקור (שהוא דומה, אם כי לא זהה – מדובר ב-תלמוד בבלי, מסכת ברכות, דף לה, עמוד ב).

The book is a rallying cry for more creativity and arts, especially in K-12 education. It's hard to argue with that. Stories of schools canceling recess, arts, music, even history and science to focus on boosting math and reading test scores makes your heart hurt. It's beyond tragic to know in your bones that we are boring kids, wasting their time prepping for tests that don't matter, and ultimately losing them.

What if it's a misleading accumulation of misinterpreted anecdotes, pseudoscience, made up "exercises" and a profound misunderstanding of math, engineering, and science. Does this help or hurt educators who are trying to improve schools?

Pink describes so called left-brain characteristics as "sequential, literal, functional, textual, and analytic" and assigns them to programmers, accountants, and people who got good grades in school. According to Pink, these attributes are "...prized by hardheaded organizations, and emphasized in schools." This is in contrast to right-brain people who are "creators and caregivers, shortchanged by organizations, and neglected in schools."

To draw a hard line between the sciences and creativity shows a profound misunderstanding of both. I can tell you that programming is as close to composing music as anything else. It's something that you feel, that you can lose yourself in, that comes from a place inside that is sometimes unexplainable.

It's a shame that this beauty is often lost in the K-12 curriculum. But that's a problem with curriculum, not a problem with people's brains.

Building his case on such an impoverished view of creativity in the sciences weakens everything Pink says. It shows a profound misunderstanding of people who aren't like him and sloppy thinking about the cause and effect relationships he claims exist.

תוויות: הרהורים, למידה, פני החינוך

The thing is, there has always been too much information. That is to say, there has always been a great deal of bad information, or badly presented information, along with the good and the well done. So there has always been a role for the person who had the ability to separate the wheat from the chaff and the temerity to consign the chaff to oblivion....

My point is that there is no need, nor has there ever been one, for “gatekeepers.” The information has been there, for anyone with the time and resolution to dig for it and learn to make sense of it.

I find myself agreeing with what the author is saying at stages - i.e. the importance of people (networks) to help make sense of the world.

My point is that there is no need, nor has there ever been one, for "gatekeepers." The information has been there, for anyone with the time and resolution to dig for it and learn to make sense of it.

But finding, aggregating, and making sense of information is a useful set of tasks, and it is no surprise that in a decently open economy there arose businesses and other institutions to do so on behalf of persons who would value the service. It's hard to see what is sinister in this....

Online, like it or not, access trumps authority. Educators need to understand that key distinction.

I think the problem with instant information is that it allows people to avoid the hard work of forming their own opinions, gathering information and sifting through it and really reasoning about it. But this isn't a problem just about Wikipedia. It's a problem about the internet. And it's not a problem about the internet actually by itself at all. The internet is great. The absolutely huge amount of information that's available on the internet is a wonderful thing. The problem actually is in us.

We have met the enemy, and he is us.

תוויות: מידענות

Just came from my first period English 10 class, and in the spirit of the instantaneous pouring forth of thoughts favored by the modern world, I thought I’d share something. On many Fridays, for our warm up, I give the class what I call a poetry song. Today the song was Vertical Horizon’s “Everything You Want,” which I like to use because its ambiguity usually sparks some discussion. Today the class stared at the lyrics mystified for a long time. Nothing. I finally asked, what sort of song is this – is it about politics? Relationships? Sports? A couple of brave souls ventured guesses: yes, it’s about a relationship. Maybe it’s about God. A brief discussion, then more silence. I asked, How could we figure this out? Their answer: Google. Meanwhile, I had a Macbeth assignment for them to work on, so I said, Maybe we can google this later in the class.

And then, from the back of the room came the voice of Steve saying, “I already have.”

Steve had fired up his iPhone or equivalent and searched for the song. He said he only found a couple of comments, and they just seemed to be someone’s opinion, not a definitive answer (such as, say, the band itself revealing what they really meant).

On the way back to the English office, several thoughts populated my mind:

Good thing I didn’t see Steve fiddling with his phone and take it away before he could contribute to class.

תוויות: בלוגים, חיפוש, סלולארי, שימוש בבתי ספר

One of the many distinctions that I frequently make in my presentations is a comparison between how my generation views information and my children's generation. For us (oldsters), information is a product to be consumed. We purchase a book so that we can read it, a CD so that we can listen to it, a DVD so that we can watch it. As I watch my son and daughter in their information experiences, I see that at least part of the value of the content that they use is in what they can do with it - text, video, audio, images, that can be mixed and remixed together to make something new, valuable, or interesting. For them, information is a raw material.

Think about taking Roosevelt’s Day in Infamy speech and running it through a tagcloud generator, and then laying that next to Churchill’s Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat speech.

תוויות: אוריינויות, למידה

We've known for a long time that one form of dyslexia (the most classic form) is about the linkage between speech and reading functions which, in character-based languages, are disaggregated. It is the impartial mapping of speech onto writing, sound and visual processing of semi-phonetic processes, that causes confusion. This is also one reason why English-speakers have the highest dyslexia rates.

In the US, we expect a functional literacy at around 10-11. And we don't devote nearly as much time to reading/writing and we almost never acknowledge to kids that phonetics is problematic. So you have kids learning the authority of school at exactly the same time they're being told rules for pronunciation and reading that don't make sense. Maybe it's hard to explain to a kid that the rules are inconsistent because of the history of linguistics and mass printing in English. But you can emphasize that the rules are contradictory and point to places where memorization is pretty much the only way to get them right.

That fidgety first-grader who "doesn't get" the phonetics rules? He's right! He should not have to be told to suppress his alert, critical instincts. He or she should be applauded for good observational skills, praised for not accepting rules blindly when they don't make sense, and helped with other methods.

תוויות: הקנייה, שימוש בבתי ספר

As I watched the information and communication landscapes shift over the past few years, I secretly viewed fair use as a doctrine that guided what we couldn't do. Fear and guilt seemed regularly in the way of innovative teaching and creative expression.

Recently my Temple University colleague, Renee Hobbs shared, what was for me, a relatively foreign (but perhaps obvious) idea: copyright is designed not only to protect the rights of owners, but also to preserve the ability of users to promote creativity and innovation.

Change the focus of copyright instruction from what is forbidden to what is permitted.

When there is doubt, err on the side of the user.

תוויות: זכויות יוצרים

Millions of adults are unable to spell basic everyday words, a study suggests.

Of 2,500 surveyed, 40 per cent could not spell "questionnaire", 38 per cent were stumped by "accommodate" and 37 per cent were defeated by "definitely".

Two-thirds blamed their inability to get words right on the predictive text function on their mobile phones.

The 20 simple words Brits are unable to spell because we are all text mad

תוויות: אוריינויות, הרהורים, סלולארי

במפגש השתלמות אחרון של המורים, שוב עולה השאלה מה הלאה? מה קורה לתלמיד המסיים את החטיבה ובכיתה י' נכנס לביה"ס התיכון, בו אין תקשוב , אין ניידים ואין מורים המשלבים תקשוב בשיעורים.

בתי הספר החדשניים רצים קדימה, בזמן שמערכת החינוך לא מספיקה להדביק את הפער, ונשארת מאחור, או במוכר ובידוע.

תוויות: ניידים, שימוש בבתי ספר

אני מקווה כי השמועות על מותו מוקדמות מדי.
וחשוב לטעמי, להעצים את המקום שלו בחינוך.

תוויות: חוכמת ההמון, כלי ווב 2.0, שימוש בבתי ספר

The first thing any connected person should be is receptive. Whether on a discussion forum, mailing list, or in a blogging community or gaming site, it is important to spend some time listening and getting the lay of the land.

Then, your forays into creating content should be as reactions to other people’s points of view. This will ensure, first of all, that they read your comment, and second, that your post is relevant to the discussion at hand.

The way to function in a connected world is to share without thinking about what you will get in return. It is to share without worrying about so-called “free-riders” or people taking advantage of your work.

In a connected world, you want to be needed and wanted. This will, over time, cause resources to be sent to you, not as a reward for some piece of work, but because people will want to send you stuff to help you to be even more valuable to them.

תוויות: בלוגים, המלצות

I too have been thinking about how one goes about starting a PLN, how do you monitor it, and how do you learn to shut it off. We all continue to push teachers to start PLNs if they haven’t already.