Enrichment and co-Teaching

The year 2020 is twelve years in the future. Think back to twelve years in the past. In the year 1996, few people had computers in their homes. Now almost everyone has a computer, and many homes have multiple computers. No one was doing web banking in 1996, now many people manage their accounts, trade stocks and commodities, make purchases, pay their taxes, and keep their finances organized online. In those days we used telephones to keep in contact with friends and colleagues; now we use Internet applications such as Skype to talk for free online. In 1996, most schools were just getting one computer per classroom. Teachers did not yet have school email accounts. Broadband was just being developed, so there was no video streaming as of yet. Many images had not yet been published online. We were just getting used to Windows 98; many of us were just glad to be free of DOS. We have come far in the last twelve years. Where will we be twelve years from now?

Who knows?  What can we imagine? How will schools meet the many needs of education? What benefits and detriments will technology bring to our students and their educational growth? Will the promise of individualized education through technology come true? Will there even be a teacher in the classroom?

Over the past few years, according to Thomas Frey of the DaVinci Institute, we have had a huge growth in the volume of information available to us. He offers several statistics – we have gone from zero to 3.5 million songs available on iTunes. There are currently about 60 million blogs online, up from none about five years ago. A new one is added at the rate of one every two seconds. There are now 6.1 million videos available on YouTube. This explosion of information is in marked contrast to the days of Frederick Douglas. He was born in 1818. When he was about eight years old, he lived in Baltimore, as a slave with the Auld family. Contrary to the laws of the day, Sylvia Ault taught him the basics of reading. Frederick would grab scraps of newspaper blowing on the street and raid trash piles to find material to read. In two hundred years, we have gone from books being a rarity to 6.1 million volumes available on Amazon with one day delivery. What would Douglass have to say about that? Perhaps he would comment that education would have a difficult time keeping pace with the amount of information that is available!

In looking forward to the future, students will need to be able to access and process information. They will need skills in critical thinking to help them analyze and synthesize the information. These skills cannot be developed using yesterday’s methods. Today’s students must begin to integrate technology at an early age. From the basics of word processing, to manipulating various types of media such as sound clips, videos, music, the world is becoming smaller, and the American student of today will be competing not just with the people of other cities or states, but with the students of the world. The country that accepts and integrates technology first will have a huge advantage in the market place of the future. Check out this Teacher Tube video for statistics comparing the US to many other countries, and offering statistics on the explosion of information. Download Video: Posted by ben.thompson at TeacherTube.com.

What will our reaction to the changes in society, culture, information, and collaboration be? Will we try to make our current curriculum fit the new world, or will the new world force a huge change in our curriculum? Where will standardized testing fit into all this, or will that fall to the wayside when the public realizes that huge amounts of time are used to prepare for the test, and demand a change. One commercial site, https://www.Futurekids.com, has a program to jumpstart schools in the right direction. In addition to training, their website offers a list of hard-and software that the students of today need use on a daily basis. One laptop per child is at the basis of their program. They want schools to have and use an information processing suite of programs, Inspiration Software, Adobe Creative Suite, interactive white boards, D-Link access points, a printer and digital camera, digital video cameras, mobile laptop carts, projectors, and webcams. This wish list would bring the schools of today up to 2007 standards.

So back to our question, what about the year 2020? A few things we have established in the preceding paragraphs. There will be a huge amount of information available. The marketplace will be global in scope. Many general skills of higher level thinking will be needed in order to understand and respond to challenges. In an article from Western Illinois University’s Patricia L. Hutinger, one of the main points is that technology will not control education, but rather will provide tools for learning that we must control and manage to the benefit of our students. She states, “The critical gear we carry on the research trail into the future is our mindset, one of exploration, of investigation, of accepting new ways of doing new things. Those who become entrenched in the past, those who say, “This is the way we’ve always done it,” will find that their gear is too heavy.” This reinforces our understanding that we must be moving with the changes, rather than standing in the way.

All the signs post to a coming age of flexibility, of individualized education, of the use of technology as a tool for learning and connecting. We cannot determine what schools will look like in the year 2020, but we do know that the schools of today with ether change with the times or become extinct, put out of business by others who are determined to ride the wave in preparing confident life time learners, ready to meet the challenges that are rushing toward us.

Resources

http://www.davinciinstitute.com/page.php?ID=170

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Douglass

http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=4020e7ad8f6cd9d39fa9

http://www.flixxy.com/technology-and-education.htm

http://www.futurekids.com

http://www.wiu.edu/thecenter/articles/teched.html

Every Big Shift that Will Richardson details in his book, “Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts” will be meaningful to my work as an educator. Connecting with other teachers and students, using the web as collaborative space, the disappearing textbook, 24/7 learning – all of these are important concepts and each will direct the future path of education. Perhaps most meaningful to me personally is that “mastery will be about the product, not the test.” In the old days, I would spend a few days before the big test devouring details. After dumping that knowledge onto a test paper or into a blue book, some of it might stick, but the majority of the information was tucked away into a corner of my brain. Today we have a different focus. Students are expected to reach the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy by demonstrating their knowledge through a variety of medium, often making the information available to a wide and deep audience through web publication. Richardson gives the example of driver’s taking their test. Would the roads be safe if drivers passed just the written exam, rather than demonstrating mastery on the roads?

This shift has affected my teaching practice in small ways. My students now do research and publish their information by slide show, rather than in writing or on a poster. One of my groups created a web site that was accepted by thinkquest. The group did a wide-ranging investigation into the blue crab and the social affect that it has on the Maryland Culture in their “Blue Crab Crazy” project. Another group demonstrated their knowledge of the estuaries of the Chesapeake Bay with their project, “Follow the Water.” Probably there will be many more such projects in the future.

The course has served to enlighten me to the move towards demonstrating mastery though project by showing me many tools that can be used to demonstrate that mastery. I will be using all available technologies to encourage my students towards mastery in the future. They will be working with wikis, blogs, web notebooks, primary sources, global collaborative efforts and many other technologies that have not been yet created. My personal goal is to be ready for each change when it arrives.

In the world of photo editing for the web, you can run the gamut from too simple (Picassa, possibly) to too complicated (Adobe Photoshop CS3) . Piknik offeres a free, easy to use service that is available without downloading a program or plug in, that is available from any web-connected computer anywhere. A five question form gets you started. It is not necessary to give your name, address, phone number or mug shot to get started. The interface is cute but functional, carrying on the picnic theme.

For my students, this would be a wonderful way to get them editing their own photos that correspond to their classroom activities. Photos are a great way to get students to write. Being able to add special effects, frames, and easily edit photos is a great asset to a photo program. With the accessibility of this program, students would be up and working in a few minutes. For example, click on rotate, a very necessary task for a photo program. Not only can you rotate the photo easily, but you can also straighten it either to add an effect or correct one. The program has a simple undo button that can take away the last action, making it foolproof. See the photo below for an example of one that has been manipulated in many ways.

Picnik will offer your students a great way to get started with online photography editing.

I know one person who would be very happy to have paperless classes, and that would be my principal!  Every year, we are thousands of dollars over our paper budget.  It is the one budget area that exceeds our control.   Teachers need books, paper, or unlimited access to the internet.  Without the latter, they need the first two!  Conversely, with the latter, the first two become unnecessary.

As a teacher, my role would change to become even more computer oriented.  Students still need to know the basics, but they need to learn them in different ways.  Schools, teachers and education systems need to leave no technology stone unturned in the quest to make learning more meaningful to their students.  Web 2.0 tools need to be utilized to help students learn and, more importantly, learn how to learn.  We need to be teaching children critical thinking as it applies to finding fraud and deceit online, in order to protect them. In the long run, this will serve them much better than being blocked from technologies that appear to have possible threats. 

Learning would change as students’ habits moved them toward their laptop and notebook computers.  Handwriting would become digitalized in seconds, making sharing with the teacher much easier.  Teachers would stop lugging heavy bags back and forth, and have online readers gathering the work that required evaluation with them from anywhere at a moment’s notice.  Learning would be measured by rubric, by checklist, by continuum, and would continue to be graded by teacher know how, as it is today.  The difference would be in how the grades were distributed to stakeholders.  Building a learning network would become more intentional, as teachers become accustomed to assisting their students in finding interested students in all corners of the world with whom to collaborate.  At the same time, teachers would collaborate and grow culturally and educationally through the power of the Internet.

My one question would be – would we still have art class?

Skype is a great tool for many reasons. It can be used as both a text messenger and a voice protocol, allowing people to keep in touch for a very low cost (free if you don’t count your Internet access) over long distances. At my district, and probably at most schools, Skype would be blocked. Part of the issue is that districts don’t want their teachers spending their time chatting with friends and family during the school day. Another issue is that technology departments don’t allow individuals to download unapproved programs to their individual computers. With rising numbers of computers in schools, it becomes necessary to have a single “image” as the set up on each computer. This also helps districts avoid illegal programs and copy write issues. Another part of the issue is that students will Skype at the drop of a hat if they get near a computer. What student could resist talking to his or her friend across town or across the classroom? It becomes the ultimate “note passing”. One click of the mouse and it is gone.

Having said that, there are many ways that Skype could enhance learning. How about Skyping to Alaska on a daily basis to share weather information from the classroom weather station? Sharing stream quality all across the country? Two students working on a paper together, each writing about the other’s country. Teacher-parent communication could be enhanced. Teachers could hold brief office hours each evening as a homework question time. In schools with several classes on the same age level, the days could be rotated, making it less of a burden on each teacher. A 2005 post by Will Richardson lists several ideas for using Skype in the classroom. One of the best is Skyping lessons to students who are home sick. . This would be a great advantage to both the child at home, his or her parents, and the students that send the information to them. Alan November has also posted about using Skype in the classroom. One of his suggestions is to have parents have access to live classroom presentations from their own work places.

In summary, Skype has many valid uses in the classroom. The issue remains if school administrations are going to lead, follow, or get out of the way.

In opposition to the opinion I was assigned on the 7 A 1 Wiki activity, I do believe that connectivism, along with constructivism, do represent a new and powerful learning theory. I believe that the online forum changes the way that our minds work. We are now learning to access information at every point throughout the day that it is needed. We are becoming researchers, not just in school work, but in everyday life, too. There are so many more choices today through which we can access information. Specifically, I believe it is a new learning theory because it is not just limited to the pedagogy of our educational system, but rather is endemic throughout the human race. It is not just Americans but every country on earth has a web presence. All ages are using computers and finding new and reliable information is becoming a habit, rather than a choice.

This has to cause a huge shift in our educational system. Students are using social tools on the Internet. That is a fact. Students are willing and ready to shift from paper to digital tools in their education. Teachers and administrators must be in the forefront of using this powerful medium. We must be teaching students to use the tools rather than forcing them to use tools that are no longer relevant. No keyboarding teacher would ever consider using a typewriter in this day and age. The word “typewriter” won’t even exist in the 22^nd century. By the same token, schools need to be using cutting edge technology to teach students how to teach themselves. Only that way can we effectively prepare them for the technologies of tomorrow.

As I spend some time perusing the available pod casts, I’m pretty amazed. There seems to be one for every subject and topic. I happened upon MathGrad.com, which is a weekly program designed to help all people understand many topics in math. The episodes are tied together, more like a news magazine that individual math lessons. The speaker features a specific subject each week, such as probability. He mentions resources that can be accessed to help in the understanding. He then goes into the vocabulary and how to figure probability out, using common examples. Another large site is run by “Grammar Girl”, who is focusing on individual topics in writing, such as how to write numbers in a sentence, and which form of a specific verb you should use. Her information is featured on “Quick and Dirty Tips”.

In my teaching situation, the elementary students are a little young to be accessing pod casts on their own time. I may use them as part of a lesson, but that seems a little redundant as I am already there to deliver the content. It would be a great idea for a time when students are working in small groups and a pod cast could be one station. As students get older, and mp3 delivery devices become more present in their lives, podcasts could be used to deliver content, developed by me or another education content producer.

They are certainly a great idea and another way to access the auditory learner.

To paraphrase an old saying, a picture is can encourage a thousand words. Coincidentally, teachers need children to write a thousand words. Using pictures is a great way to get children to write. From first grade on, I use photos with my students. They learn at an early age to snag photos from Google Images and place those photos in a Word document, a slide show, or on a web site. Children have very definite ideas about the photos they favor, and are willing to write to explain their choices. From sumo wrestlers to the Great Pyramid, pictures bring a child’s work to life.

Current events, history, cultural matters, the natural world, literature, art, science, math – all of these academic areas and their outcomes can be enhanced through the use of fine photography.

(2008; April 9). Retrieved April 9, 2008, from http://www.flickr.com/photos/toiouvrant/2401374683/

The Flat Classroom project is very large and has a huge number of collaborators from around the world.  It is an important topic. They are just starting a horizons project that is an extension of the flat classroom.  This promises to be a wide-ranging wiki, too.

The activity 5 C 1 is a lot to get completed in one week.  This would make a great two week project as it takes time to get set up on the wiki site, then time to write and compile resources.  Challenging to get this finished in a week!  Once again, time is the resource that cannot be manufactured!

I knew that it would be challenging for me to go in and change another teacher’s work.  I have not done this yet, but will be building up to it!

I love Wikipedia and have it as one of the sites on my home tabs.  Any article on there is interesting to me. . .check out their prosumer article.  One place on the course talked about a prosumer being a producer and consumer.  I had always known the term to be a professional consumer, or a consumer that is between professional and regular consumer.  After checking out the Wikipedia article, I found that both definitions are acceptable.  The term including “professional” relates to the field of photography, which is where I have heard it used.  Wikipedia was able to define and explain the term, connect it to my life, and allow me to learn its meaning.  That is a valuable site.

As I have mentioned, I am blocked from using any web 2.0 tools from the school network.  I am thinking that the force of numbers will make a change occur in my district.  Eventually, the teachers, staff and students will demand wider access to the web.  Constraint will move into partial then full access.  I will continue to press, but it will be the numbers that tip the balance in the end. 

Social bookmarking is a great way to find resources and share them with others. As an enrichment teacher in a district with 51 schools, I am part of a loose network of teachers. We are able to get together four times a year for a half day session. The time goes so fast, and we usually have formal topics to discuss such as a new handbook or other pressing matters. There is little time for collaboration or sharing of resources. We have recently used a SharePoint site as a common place to post documents. Setting up Delicious pages, and using a tag such as our class tag would be a huge step forward for the group. This would allow us to gather and share our resources, thereby saving everyone time. A valuable part of the Delicious set-up is the notes area, and the fact that you can organize your links into folders. This allows the sharing to be much more efficient. The annotation in the notes section gives others the opportunity to use your information to know what is available on that web site, thereby saving even more time. This is certainly a tool that will be used by the enrichment teachers in the near future.

Sarah