The end and a new start

Well, that was quite the class!

First, here is the URL for the website that I presented in class.

http://villatop10.pbworks.com/

When I read the description 4 months ago I thought that this class would be about using technology tools in the class. I had to get permission to join (I am a lowly post-bac student, not a masters student) from Denis (thank you again Denis for allowing me to join). Denis called me before we started and, almost warningly, said that this was not a "hands on" class. We would be looking into the history and theory of educational technology, and that there would be a lot of heavy reading. For a guy that was really just looking to get that silly piece of paper that gives me a raise, I was not so sure. I am really happy that I stayed. Not only did I find our class very enjoyable, but I feel that I got something very valuable from it as well.

I want to return to one of the first items we visited. The Cave. Entering the class, my reality was that technology was a tool. I was confident in my belief (personal reality) that individuals could use this in a variety of ways, or not at all, and still be great teachers. But it was still just a tool. I could put it in my lesson and wow my students and co-workers, or I could leave it out and do something else. I could use the overhead, or the white board, or any other tool at my disposal and make a lesson. Technology was just something that I used. It is something that anyone could try and use. Good teachers integrated it well, and for bad teachers it really didn't matter.

At my school there is the push for teachers to "use" this tool. "We have so much technology, why are you not using it?" lament our administration. The tech committee plans days for our staff to learn how to use and integrate the technology into their classrooms. I joined because I felt that, even though a person could be a great teacher without using it, technology was such a valuable tool that I should be promoting it.

After taking this class a part of me still feels that a part of technology is a tool. This reality of mine is so ingrained I don't know if anything will change that. It also is the comfortable starting point for so many teachers that offering the alternative will just be too much to process. However, another part of me, the part that has been pulled up to the light, sees that technology is so much more. It is a process, a way of life, freeing and binding at the same time. It makes us more efficient, but steals our time. It is fun and frustrating and scary and intriguing. It lets us be creative by making us like everyone else. It connects us and puts up electronic walls between us. My head is spinning with all the wonderful and terrifying possibilities. I want to try a dozen different things, but I am also questioning more closely why I want to use them and what the benefit for all players involved is.

When Julye presented the Cuban book and there were the stats on how very little has changed, I posed the question "What were they looking for?" We seemed to agree that the goal was to get the content online or digital. This would supposedly allow students to go at their own pace and learn the content. Fine, but how is this any different then a textbook and VHS tapes? Or just a textbook? Even now, with all of the Web 2.0 possibilities, what would be the huge, amazing shift in teaching style that couldn't be accomplished in another format without technology? Many of the common ones that I think of have an old low tech alternative. Again, the new reality seeps in, and I look at my own practice with a more critical eye.

I am not anti-tech now, despite the tone of my last couple of posts. I am just looking at it more critically. My new reality has to incorporate this experience. I like that we have looked at the history, developments, and reasons for technology. I feel more confident in the decisions that I make with regard to technology now that I have looked beyond the surface, at the rest of the iceberg.

Thank you all, it has been a blast. Please keep in touch, I know whom I will be turning to if I have any tech questions.

James

Insert title here

I had the best blog that I had ever written ready to go on the 26th. It was insightful, funny, and was an absolute pleasure to read. It even had a snappy title. I neglected to save or post it, went to Disneyland for a week, and have completely forgotten the entire thing. Sorry.

At 31 it seems odd that I am already starting to look wistfully into the past. I feel like I am already turning into one of those old cliches. I caught myself not too long ago talking to my students about how it was in my day. I did not have internet at home when I was in high school. When we were writing a paper, it actually meant writing a paper. I never plagiarized because it was more work to go and find a decent piece of writing and copy it all out then to just sit and actually write my own work. (And I had to walk to school, in knee deep snow, 5 miles, uphill, both ways, in June). I talk about recent events like 9/11 and have to remind myself that most of my students were 5 when that happened. It has no meaning for them the way that it does for us. The breakneck speed with which technology is changing and growing is not a marvel for them like it is for most of us because they have known nothing else. Their formative years have been spent in this technological boom, so for them it is the norm. I am just a little outside of this experience as far as my age, so I find that I still get a little amazed when I pause and look at what has changed, and the speed with which it has changed.

Mike and Paul gave us a look back into the past. I had never used a slide rule before, but I did have a couple of math teachers that felt that the calculator should not be used in math class. And Mike's look back into the past just shows how much has recently.

With so much changing around us it seems odd that some things are not changing. Lewis Black, an American comedian did a show about a year ago. Known for his scathing rants, he got very serious for a second and started talking about the environment and how some people/scientists say that the problem is too big, that there is nothing that can be done, that it will take too long. He then pulled out his iPhone on stage, held it up and said "this is a computer, that I can use to call anyone in the world, surf the internet... all without wires, in my pocket. Don't (expletive) tell me that we can't do it, that we can't fix it. 10 years ago this was impossible." (paraphrased somewhat). This stuck with me because it does seem odd that with so much innovation in some areas, some other things really seem to be stuck. Environmental problems still abound, there are 3.5 billion people that do not have secure access to safe reliable drinking water, there is still war, political corruption, and Paris Hilton is still famous for some reason. These problems have been around for years. But we can now read the paper and books on an iPad (300,000 sold in the first weekend in the USA, $500 each). I suppose that I am just a little disappointed that despite how much has changed, so much has not. And it's the things that we have not changed that really matter. I guess there just isn't enough fun and money in solving the worlds problems.

Control Freak

First off I want to say that everyone's presentations were great. The bar keeps getting set higher and higher, it makes me happy I went in the second week.

One theme that keeps coming up again and again with me is control. Usually it is about who is blocking content at school, preventing us from doing something interesting in class. I have had my own battles in the first few years of teaching. I though that it was quite restrictive at our school, until I started to talk to other teachers at other schools. I quickly realized that as far as access we have it pretty good. Then there were other issues with control in the classroom. The director of the school decided we could not position the computers where we wanted, and that we would have our backs to the classroom if we were going to use the computer. This prompted me to get my own laptop, which gives me my own sense of control.

The battle didn't end there. Our IT guy would not permit me to plug my laptop into the projector in the room or the Smartboard (claimed that it would wear out the connectors and cables), so I had to purchase my own cables. Then I wasn't allowed to plug it in to the projector because it was not a school computer, and only school computers were permitted to be plugged in (this went back and forth for a couple of months, I guess that what happens when you get a couple of control freaks battling it out) After much debate, I finally have it set up in a reasonable way.

Lana brought up the question of parental control. As a parent of a 2 1/2 year old, I thought that I had a little while before I had to worry about this. Yesterday I found my little guy with my iPod touch, which he can navigate through and play games on. He has recently discovered YouTube, and likes to watch Toy Story 3 trailers (the past searches are saved, so when he opens it up it is there). This time however he had clicked on the recently posted and was watching some random video. I now have to figure out a way to let him watch some videos, but not everything that is out there.

I have heard a number of parental tips on how to handle controls. Some have said to monitor everything, and make sure that your kids are not seeing anything bad. Others have told me that this will not foster a sense of trust with your child, and that it is better to talk to your children about acceptable use. I am not sure how I will deal with it when Liam is old enough to understand, but for now I am going to do my best to block the bad stuff.

Only 52% of parents have rules in place governing media use in 8-18 year old students. In class I suggested that a large part of this may be that parents just don't understand the media. They are unaware of what these devices can do, what content is available on the internet, and just how much time kids are spending on digital media. I still think that this is the situation for many parents, but perhaps there is another reason. A parent like me may feel that regardless of any rules that I set, children are going to find a way. It might be better to teach them responsible use and instill that trust.

Government control. Roland gave us a great overview of what is going on in the USA. Anytime I feel like our government is useless and crazy, I turn my gaze to the south and feel a little better. I find working where I am I often wonder what it is like to teach in a public school; what is done differently, what is the same, would I be happier somewhere else? I imagine many of us ask similar questions about the schools in the USA, but also asking how do they cope with all of that control. It is a little funny seeing the debate about their health care system and how people are afraid of all that government control, but their education system seems much more regulated and controlled then ours.

p.s. If you haven't seen it yet, Sicko by Micheal Moore is a good film if you are at all interested in this whole health care debate and government control. I am not a big fan of his, but I really enjoyed this movie.

Go go Gadget

Great presentations Mike and Ben. There were several points that I wanted to talk about in class, but wanted to save something for my blog entry. First, there was something really small that Denis mentioned from the You Are Not a Gadget book. Video mash-ups, blogs, youtube, and other so called personal means of communication have demeaned personal interaction (I believe this was the essence of the quote from the book).

In the past I have not been real big on reading the comments left by people on sites, but with the Olympics I would click on links to news stories and often there was a running commentary beside the article where people would comment on the story. Watching how these progressed would often see them degenerate into a stream of patriotic bashing of others. There were racist, sexist, nationalistic, homophobic, comments made that bordered on hate crimes, yet the people posting them did not seem to have any issues putting them on the net. I have tried some experiments with students and blogs or discussion posts and have always had someone start making some mildly inappropriate comments. We do seem to lose a sense that there is a real person on the other end of an entry that we make, and that our words, while anonymous, can still be hurtful. I think that the quote from the book encapsulates this idea nicely. I will be making an effort to find a copy.

Below is a link to a youtube video on digital practices that I have let my students see. Being all girls the rating aspect of the video hits home for more of them.

Hot or Not video

When the subject of cheating came up in Mike`s presentation I really liked how the author suggested that this requires teachers to come up with higher level questions for assessments that are more difficult to copy or cheat on. With the general trend towards more meaningful assessment, moving beyond simple recall, there seems to be a natural push towards deeper questioning that many teachers (at least in my experience) are trying to fight against. I myself prefer the easy questions; they are easier to mark, explain, and justify the grading of. But this is not what is best for the students, so I have to make an effort to be less lazy. Teachers that may be less inclined to change their assessment style are getting a further push from technology.

I remember when corporate sponsorship came to my school. I was in grade 10 in 1995, and we got a new school sign board at the front of the school. 25% of the sign was the Coke logo. We also had several drink machines placed in the school at that time in the hallways. I remember it because it seemed so odd to me to have a big corporation invading my school. It felt weird, very out of place. I had never really considered school as a place of business (the quality of the cafeteria food certainly led you to believe that they were not out to make us happy as customers!), but $600 billion a year is no small chunk of change. I wonder if this move towards big business education is such a recent phenomenon, or if it was just not as blatant in the past.

To filter or not to filter, and yet another question.

Feb 18th class

Thank you Mike for getting us started with such a thought provoking presentation. Two of your points really screamed at me given my recent experiences. First, the idea of filtering and the challenges that comes with it. Secondly, we started talking about assessment, what are we assessing, the trouble with setting criteria and separating artistic expression and content.

The dreaded filter. Where do we draw the line and who decides? Most of us, being the technology savvy educators that we are, have a multitude of online resources that we have sourced, researched, and apply to our teachings. Nothing is more frustrating then planning a lesson at home only to have the whole thing fall apart because the website that you want is blocked. In class Ben mentioned that we need to protect our students from the extremes, like pornography. Many parents would argue that schools need to protect further, but how far? Due to the unfamiliarity and constantly changing nature of sites like Youtube, Facebook, and other personal content sites, control is impossible unless you just block it completely. There are, as Roman stated, ways to go around the filters and access blocked content, so the students that want to use it inappropriately will do so regardless.

The odd thing about technology and the internet is that the onus is put on the school to protect (filter) students from misuse. If a student were to use gym equipment to injure another student, or used art supplies to create inappropriate imagery, the fault would be with the student. If a student were to bring in pornographic magazines into the school, the student would be at fault, but if the student actively sought these images online at school and was able to access them, the school would be questioned. With technology for some reason the fault seems to be placed on the school. Since the school is the provider of the means, in this case they are also responsible for controlling the content. I don’t feel that this is a fair distribution of responsibility to put on schools alone.

We also can not have completely unblocked content either. Where and how the line gets drawn though is definitely beyond my narrow scope. The line does need to be constantly examined and free to be moved. It should be negotiated by parents, students, teachers, administrators, divisions, province, and lastly the IT person that flips the switch.

The second idea of how and what do we assess is something that I have really struggled with as a teacher. Is it our job to only assess content? To answer it quickly, no. We need to go beyond content. I can not think of any job in which I will get hired based on my knowledge of grade 11 physics, history, or pre-calculus math. There are not too many everyday life situations that are going to call on that content either. We have to teach it though, but I would argue that the content can and should be the means by which we teach life skills. Aspects of education include teaching the whole person. To make a student a valued member of society through life skills and citizenship. This is where the artistic (and many other skills) would come into our assessments. If the expectations are made clear that your classroom, and the school community at large, is more about the content mastery, then it is valid to assess these other skills.

We dug Heidegger

Feb 4th class

We seemed to be on the verge of a lively debate on technology and control in class and seemed to run out of time. The idea of technology no longer within our power or control summons to the mind Hollywood images of the Terminator or some other post apocalyptic nightmare in which “the machines” have taken over. Einstein said in response to the dropping of nuclear bombs on Japan “It has become appallingly obvious that our technology has exceeded our humanity.” An understandably bleak assessment given the situation at the time. 65 years later there have been no additional nuclear bombs offensively detonated suggests that there is some hope, at least a little, that we are capable of escaping the fate that Einstein had in mind. But has day to day technology use condemned us to a worse fate? Are we all just mindless drones, sitting in front of the idiot box for the purpose of entertainment? Depending on how far back you want to go, take your pick of the computer, television, radio (War of the Worlds anyone?).

My opinion is yes and no. Humankind has developed many technologies that have added many hours of leisure time to our lives, there is no arguing that. Society has certainly found many ways to fill those hours of leisure with technology. Radio and Television were one way media, in that the audience was a passive viewer of the material. There were certainly educational aspects to these media, as we saw with Grierson and the documentary, but entertainment became the focus and the audience had very little say in what programming was produced for them. Control was regulated to a few powerful people that made decisions that were probably in their best interest. The masses had no power, and were controlled by the technology.

Internet technology, as it grows and expands, is taking that passive element out of our leisure time entertainment. As we saw with the Kaiser Report, we are devoting even more time then ever (at least our young people) to technology use. While this would imply that there is only greater levels of control by technology, I would argue that the interactivity that these developing technologies adds is starting to turn the controls back into the hands of the users. Creative outlets are being formed that allow people to explore in many new ways. It has a long way to go, and its full potential may never be realized, but I am excited about the possibilities. I am sorry that I forget who said it in class, but someone mentioned the two guys that created Facebook. A perfect example of how someone small can alter the world (sources put Facebook number of active uses between 100-350 million worldwide). With the recent proroguing of parliament here in Canada there were several rallies planned and organized on Facebook to demonstrate against the governments actions. The speed with which these actions are organized is phenomenal, and would not have been possible with technology even 10 years ago.

Technology is inescapable, more so now then in Heidegger’s time. Does the creative potential that new technologies promise allow for humans to escape the enframing model of thought that Heidegger speaks of? I think that it is a push in the right direction. Thoughts?

Third Class Jan 21st

Two topics from class really stuck with me over the weekend and I have been chewing on both of them for a while. First, the Kaiser Report on Media Use. The numbers that we looked at in class were a little surprising. I suspected that media use was certainly up, but for kids to pack over 10 hours of media use into everyday seems staggering. Reading a little bit of the report reveals that this number does not include time spent texting on their cells phones (1.5 hours) or talking on their cell phones (33 minutes). Given that many students are involved in other activities (sports, clubs, etc) I wonder where these kids are finding time for anything else. Sleep seems to be the area where most kids cut back, but studies and homework also takes a hit. We saw in the video profile of the 3 kids that homework was either not a priority (xbox boy), or something that must be done in order to avoid punishment (losing media privileges). There is little or no intrinsic value associated with getting the homework done, just that it needs to be done so that I can play. While this attitude with students is nothing new (I often would have preferred playing, I still do sometimes), the opportunities for and level of distraction seem to be greater. The world is merely a click away, friends are sending constant messages. How are we, as teachers, to compete? I try to make grade 11 physics as interesting as I can, but there is only so much that I can do. Should we even be trying to compete? That is a whole other argument for another day.

I had a rather long draft saved where I talked about Grierson. I found his comment about picking the teachers of teachers being the job that he would most want. My original comment was rather long and meandering, so I will attempt to revise. Grierson obviously felt that having this position would afford him great influence over teacher training and in the long run some influence over students in general. Shaping their attitudes and skills, much like that of his film proteges. Alas, Grierson either was wrong or again just thinking a little differently. (The many different styles, beliefs, and methodologies that I have witnessed from professors over my many years of university training lead me to believe that there is no grand plot to have us all under one influence, so no one has caught on to this idea....yet). I do wonder what someone with his vision would have done in this day, with all of the technologies out there to allow people to get their message out to everyone else. I imagine that he would, much like talking to the film crew at the party, ask us if we don't find it incredibly boring having to sift through so much junk, the boring stuff, the random musings of millions.