:emergent learning

In preparation for this I created a mindmap over at mindmeister.  Mindmapping has helped me since before I enrolled in my M.S. Ed.  As a holistic thinker it helps me visually see the connections my brain makes and move those connections from in my brain to a sequence I can work with.  I would recommend it to anyone having problems moving thru a problem.

The question of what will education look like in 2020 is an interesting one.  My youngest child is the class of 2019 so I have a personal interest in this answer also.  I will attempt to project some of my hopes instead of actually trying to be a futurist and predict where many trends will lead I would like to write about where I would like them to go, with some amateur predictions thrown in!  I had four ideas.

1.) Technology will continue at a rate of accelerated change.

I enjoy teaching this concept.  I illustrate this with students by letting them know that Laura Ingalls lived until months before the launch of Sputnik.  We then do some timeline work to see this rate of acceleration.  100 years ago our world was very different and students will need to learn how to manage technology or it will manage them.  General predictions about the future of technology are interesting and sometimes funny.  My prediction for education based on accelerating rate of change is that learning will increasingly follow the tenets of connectivism.  Students will become increasingly reliant on each other and other sources than teachers.  Teachers will increasingly move into the role of facilitator or move out of the role of teaching.  Technology that enables connectivism will also increasingly move away from sitting at a PC.  Siftables is a great example of this.

2.) Integration of Mobile Computing purchased by students and co-opted by schools.

At some point some school corporation is going to have an ‘A-Ha’ moment.  They will stop fighting the cell phone and start using it.  I foresee a future where a majority of students, even ones in poverty, will be using phones that do more than the iPhone using websites that load faster and do more (this is a very interesting podcast).  Schools will begin using technology to push out assignments, collaborative projects, etc. to student’s and parent’s cell phones.  This can be done now.  Content will have much more depth and connection with students. The trend is also that more teachers will be familiar with texting, social networks, wikis, blogs, etc. so they are more likely to use it without being trained and without being a the front of the curve.  They will just naturally do it.  Teachers become administrators and they will be increasingly interested in the idea of going green and not purchasing millions of pages of textbooks for the system every year.  Schools will be more interested in allowing teachers build wikis around standards that include collaboration, research, and rich multimedia.  With increasing curriculum and time freedom teachers will be empowered to take students places and organize experiences.

• Students creating their own podcast tour of historical places.
• Students creating their own movies to demonstrate mastery of several subjects.
• Students collaborating together to interview Iraq war vets.
• Students using GPS for a variety of things.

So how could this time freedom become possible?

3.) Secondary schools become more like college eliminating all day schedules.

Secondary schools will start this with the safest group first: upperclassmen honor students.  Honor students will be moved out of the building, cutting cost by allowing them to take more undergrad college classes and doing their remaining high school work with online tools.  These tools are what this course is about: wikis, blogs, and RSS being the backbone of this paradigm.  These secondary students will be successful and promote this idea.  Administrators will make presentations at conferences and the idea will spread.  It will be a win/win because it lowers cost, increases student’s motivation to be part of the honor’s program and reinvigorates teachers.  So where does this leave the least fortunate in this country? I spent several years teaching students who had fractured educational experiences and were part of the juvenile justice system.  I am by no means an expert so my idea here may be a vision with rose colored glasses but here goes.

4.) Urban education will undergo a renaissance driven by marrying mobile technology, online applications and entrepreneurship.

I found that kids in ‘the system’  were fascinated by capitalism and I believe this was partly due to many of them being from poverty.  Why not marry two things together that can fuel real learning?  Why not raise students financial I.Q. while teaching and using mobile technology and online applications learned in this course to do it?  This is a crazy idea, I know.  This is my vision though.  It seems like the grant money out there isn’t for textbooks but instead is for wireless labs.  Open up the buildings, make them learning centers with wireless labs and students working on projects that actually make money.  The money could go to fundraising and scholarships  Students could collaborate with wikis using the mac lab at the wireless campus on projects that incorporate cross curricular standards and a slightly competitive atmosphere.  I know this is a very secondary oriented idea but the same concepts can be taken down into Kindergarten.  Why not have kids creating fun games together using online tools that reinforce standards?    The school could become an “Innovation Campus”.  These students would become increasingly attractive to the majority of companies that hire: small businesses that need people who solve problems and can wear many hats.

So what will I look like as a teacher in 2020?

Hopefully much thinner and better looking than I do now!  Not likely though.  Things will be different and hopefully by then I will have become a master teacher.  Teachers like myself will move more and more from being the center of attention all the time to a facilitator of long and short term learning experiences that connect our students to concepts and content that matters to us, not just me.  Collaborating with wikis, checking homework in my RSS reader and driving learning with questions instead of statements is where I want to go as a teacher.  This is a tough transition but capitalizing on trends like increasing bandwidth, computer proliferation, brain research, and faster access to better research will certainly help.  The teacher of 20/20 can not be static.  Dynamic teaching based in reflection, innovation and collaboration will be required to be successful at this craft in the future.  The professor that had a large impact on me once said “Teaching is part art and part science”.  I agree with this.  People are complicated so we need open systems of learning that stress collaboration, reflection, critical thinking and learning how to learn.  I hope to be a leader in that future!

Thanks!

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In the past I have used Google Notebook as an online personal productivity system.  It has worked really well, especially sharing my inbox with my wife!  I can’t recommend this application anymore because development on it has ended. I really like the online notebook idea.  A student could use a wiki of course but a true online notebook works in a way that is a bit different than a wiki, especially the use of tags and headers.  I am currently recommending evernote as an alternative.  I began recommending it due to the fact that I allow students to use their cameraphones to take pictures of our whiteboard/smartboard mindmapping, planning, and research sessions and they needed a place to park these pictures online other than our class wiki.  Evernote has many uses.  It has an iPhone app and can work with smartphones.  I now have students who use evernote to keep track of notes, images, videos, and interview mp3s.  We began talking about it just today in terms of it being a useful tool as they go to college.  Being able to have an online notebook free from a computer is very useful if you are going around campus to different computer labs doing work.  I am currently moving information over to Evernote.  I believe an application like this is very helpful to a student who may be a strong holistic thinker who makes connections easily but organizes poorly.  Evernote can help that student see visually all the research and notes, manipulate those notes and then make decisions.  Combining this with a touch screen could be very helpful to a kinesthetic learner or a visual learner.  Because of this I believe Evernote has the potential to be a very powerful learning tool.

Technorati Tags: evernote, google notebook

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The idea of a Paperless Space for a class is one that involves students both accessing course materials online and submitting their learning objects online.  This process can also involve online collaboration now with wikis.

Early pioneers in this idea include Marc Meyers and David Grey who began using an intranet wiki called the CU Analyzer at Columbia University.  The idea was for students to have a way to include internet articles, music, videos and pictures in an online education portfolio.  Students were required to submit papers online also.  This did not mean the class was a strictly online experience however.  Students met to have “lively discussions” about course material.

How would a paperless class change your role as a teacher?

It would change my role as sole distributor of information to facilitator of the gathering and processing of information.  I am currently in this flux state of being both a traditional teacher and a facilitator.  What I haven’t added is the idea of online learning portfolios (wikis) for students to keep all of their learning objects.  This is especially relevant since we are moving to a block schedule next year with cross-curricular learning being a focus.  I am currently creating a plan to include traditional learning techniques inside a paperless class model inspired by Will Richardson’s learning theory of connectivism.

How would paperless classes change learning?

Paperless classes change learning in a couple of immediate ways.  The first is that it gets the teacher out of the lecture, quiz, test mode.  Enough has been written about the issues involved in traditional learning methods like this so I don’t need to add anything.  The second immediate way is that it engages students.  They are required to make the learning their own and they make decisions regarding the value of their research and collaboration.  When students make learning their own this is a victory for both teacher and student.

How would you measure learning in a paperless class?

I am passionate about two things that seem at odds but are not.  I believe a student learns more in a collaborative environment instead of being on their own.  I also believe that students must know that their contributions are important and they will only be evaluated on their own contributions.  No group grades should ever be given because it punishes the productive for the sake of the non-productive.  I want to honor and celebrate student’s contributions without punishing them for other’s lack of effort.  I would measure learning in two ways.  The first is thru traditional assessment methods tied to my objectives.  The second is measuring participation and engagement with the use of rubrics.  Rubrics allow me to be objective and let the students know what I expect before hand.  Rubistar is a great place to create rubrics.

Would a paperless space make it easier or harder to build a learning network? Why?

A paperless space would make it easier to build a learning network.  The number of learning nodes and connections increases dramatically when a student or teacher connects with others online.  When a teacher or student is using and RSS reader, a blog, a wiki and IM they have powerful tools for professional growth, research, feedback and peer review.

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Will Richardson’s big shifts contain big ideas.  The idea that I would like to focus on is the shift to ‘web as notebook’.  This is the easiest of the shifts for a person to learn.  I am not a naturally organized person.  I am a holistic thinker so it is easy for me to make connections, find information, and make more connections.  What I have a hard time with is organizing it all.  As a devotee of David Allen’s GTD system of personal productivity I have often looked for a single place to organize the calendar, lists, etc.  I use a paper and web system currently.  Before settling on the productivity system I currently use I tried many different web apps like iScrybe, 30boxes, Google Apps, or the whatever was popular on the blogs.  This is my personal shift to ‘web as notebook’.   I mindmap with mindmeister and organize with evernote.  So what does this all mean for my students?  It means that if I am going to have my students using online tools I better plan for a time climbing the learning curve.  I had to do it, they will need to do it also.  When I taught students just today about the idea of a wiki they were giving me feedback from their experience on myspace and facebook.  I had to start from their experience online to explain where I wanted them to go and how I wanted them to collaborate.  So the big shift to ‘web as notebook’ for teachers is a shift from using the file cabinet in the classroom to file cabinet online.  the shift for students is online apps for social connections to online apps for disciplined academic use.  When I say disciplined I mean the mindset that student needs to gain while working online.  A student who is collaborating on a wiki has to develop the attitude that he or she is their to contribute, collaborate and complete assignments.  Teaching students tools should be well thought out so that students are working on interacting with content instead of continually learning how to use the technology.

Some technologies for students or teachers who want to move to the web as a notebook

Google Docs in Plain English

Evernote

Wikis in Plain English

Google Reader in Plain English

Some questions:

How has this shift affected your teaching practice so far?

I am finding and using more research and real world experience of other teachers thru blogs and podcasts.  I store this information on the web so I can access it and sort it out whenever I want.

How do you expect it might affect you in the future?

It will effect me by creating more variety in my teaching with more effectiveness.  If an assessment or instructional method is working for a teacher with similar students I can read about it that day and store it in my web notebook for retrieval as I plan.  This would have been a much slower process earlier involving going to a conference and only hearing about the good side of something, not the day to day observations.

Have your views changed since you started this course?

Yes, I am more likely to collaborate with other teachers instead of just lurking around blogs and reading.

How can you use technology to facilitate this shift in your own classroom?

I would like to use Skype more at school.   I installed the U3 version on my thumbdrive so I can use it in my classrooms at school.  Theoretically, i could collaborate long distance with Skype during my free period or lunch at school to get some real time feedback and advice.

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