Information Literacy

The following is part of a reflection I did on a lesson last year. I played the video to some year 1's as part of a motivation for a cooking lesson - 'where does pasta come from?', most of them had an idea but there was a range of answers.  After viewing the video, all but one child (and he wasn't too sure) agreed that pasta grew on trees - even the ones who had actually made pasta previously using flour and eggs! I actually found this a very powerful lesson for me that we need to be extremely careful about what information we present to students - that they trust us a sources of information and that students need to learn to be critical very early on.  The lesson did have a happy ending - we used it as an example of how students need to trust their own knowledge, to be critical of information and to check other sources for verification. It was also very motivating - it generated lots of questions and inquiry - I've never seen year 1's so interested in cooking pasta!

Instant Messaging

I thought I'd have a little experimentation with this before I blogged about it. So, I'm on Facebook and I saw that my friend who lives in the USA was online.  I quickly flicked her an instant message and this is how the conversation goes:

Me: Hey, Adda, How's it going?
Adda: Are you at home?
Me: Yep, just got in from a girls night out
Adda: Get the phone ready, I'm going to call you
Me: ready
End of IM conversation
Start of 'phone conversation.

So, how do I judge the success of my IM? I suppose it shows me a couple of things; first of all, the purpose of my IM and the medium I chose to access the IM through is primarily social, and I got in touch with my friend - so yes successful. Secondly, communication needs - there is a lot of information gained by facial cues, tone of voice, pacing of speech, incidental speech noises etc that get lost through IM so straightforward IM seems to be at a disadvantage for social conversations - therefore not so successful.

I also had a quick check with some young people I know (and I know that makes me sound absolutely ancient, but I wanted to check whether IM use was a generational thing). A few years ago msn was the bane of my life, particularly with teenage daughters in the house, however I suddenly realised I never hear about msn any more. Asking them about it, the answer was 'Nah, it's more of a younger persons thing, I use Facebook chat', so I asked an even younger person and that answer was 'Nah, prefer to skype or facetime'. So, msn was out, but other forms of IM were very much in use. Further questioning revealed some interesting things about the way IM is used between my family and their friends (some of those things are synthesised below).

Now, I know my sample size isn't exactly massive but IM seems to be evolving into something a bit richer, with the advent of technology to allow visual interaction as well. How do I then apply some of my findings to it's use in education settings? I've had some initial thoughts:
1.  It's useful for quick questions and information between students and teachers (but only if you have the technology to back it up). It needs planning, the teacher has to inform students when they'll be online, and students have to take that into account, particularly if doing homework.
1b. Therefore, it's useful for teachers to assess the effectiveness of their instructions/teaching - if everyone needs the same help/clarification then that could be an area for change or further teaching.
2. It also needs a specific purpose, so probably good for remote learning with the teacher in the background to assist and clarify with online units (again planning and co-ordination considerations apply).
Looking at the post Rom made about technology for teachers, I suspect that is a place where IM could evolve in education, particularly in relation to remote teaching and learning.
3. Between students for questions, clarification and co-operative learning.
I think I may have overlooked this third application of IM in education before speaking to people who are using it, it seems to be more common than I realised.

So, sadly my age was showing in my use (or lack of) and my assumptions about IM. My family use it extensively for educational purposes between themselves and their peers - and value it's use.

Weird

I've signed up for the twitter thing and that's been going ok, just learning how to use it, navigate through the system, trying to filter (information overload at the moment) etc. BUT - I've gained a follower! Now, I think that's a little odd - I've only been on a few days, I've not tweeted at all, I don't even live in the same continent as my follower - there's nothing to follow - I feel stalked.

Microblogging

This could be the answer for everyone who doesn't have time for macroblogging (is that the right term - spell check doesn't like it, pah, it makes sense to me so I'm using it).  Most of my 'prior conceptions' about microblogging (oh, spell check doesn't like microblogging either - I feel vindicated) has been formed by various media reports of which celebrity is saying what. So I've had the impression it's a bit pointless and inane - this has been backed up (in a very social constructivist manner) by the opinions of my family and peers. However, I've signed up to twitter (and this really went against the grain) and I've followed some of the links - wow! Lo and behold I found some stuff I really liked and was interested in (conceptual change in action). I particularly liked an article in the Huffington Post about 'Innovation' in schools, it reminded me of Trudy's capstone talk about the importance of creativity in education and all the stuff we did last year about 'teaching to the test'.
Now, it's taken me a whole paragraph and I'm not telling you how long, but more than half an hour, to say all that and Sir Ken Robinson did it in 2 (rather short) sentences on twitter  - he's obviously a lot busier than I am (and more techno-savvy)....

P.S. I had lots of fun learning how to add hyperlinks

Back to Blogs

I'm enjoying reading other people's blogs and learning their ideas. An extension of Madison and Lexie's comments about big brother (don't want to scare you any more girls, but..).  These blogs are a useful way to monitor people's thinking and thought processes, so for teachers in a classroom situation you can use them for assessment.

Most of us seem to be leaning towards social constructivism as an effective teaching and learning theory. If I connect that with the video by Sir Ken Robinson we saw in Aboriginal Education about changing the paradigm of education - the old system was set up several hundred years ago to prepare people to work in an industrialised society and was based on transmitting knowledge that people needed to know to function in that society.  Since then, the nature of society has changed and the collective knowledge of the world has increased exponentially.  The primary school curriculum is looking pretty crowded to me these days and the focus in teaching seems to be shifting towards stimulating and getting students to reach their potential - teaching students how to think and not in a big brother way, more how to process, connect and use information - to develop critical literacy in all the subjects.

(I know you can get the video from webct but I really liked it and I wanted to try embedding so here it is:)




Therefore, I can see how blogs can be a useful tool for assessing how our students are thinking, processing, connecting and using our lessons (and whether we are stimulating them to reach their full potential).

Blogs are also an example of collaborative learning, I've learnt tons from other people's blogs. I can see an application of this in the classroom - by students following each other's blogs they can learn  from each other. This doesn't have to be just from the student's in your own class either, you can collaborate with another class anywhere in the world to get a different perspective.

Collective intelligence

I'm having a little trouble accepting the term "Collective Intelligence" as applied to wiki's being examples of them. It's not altogether clear to me whether the term is being applied to the process or the product.    Groups and teams working together may have a collective intelligence and what they produce is a result of that collective intelligence. Therefore, wiki's such as wikipedia are examples of products of collective intelligence, not intelligences in themselves.

Similarly with the 'voting' system used by Google, it seems to me that the resulting ranks are products not processes and as such are examples of 'the wisdom of crowds' but are not actually wisdom itself.  One could argue that the construct of the voting system negates the collective intelligence of it's users as it's structure is rigid - one vote from a popular website inflates the importance of a secondary site and there is no evaluation process to determine whether the 'vote' was worthwhile or not.

So, thinking about all this in relation to collective intelligences in education.....as collaborative tools they have enormous potential and fit in beautifully with social constructivist theories of learning.  The example Mark showed us in class where the students essentially built up a textbook was amazing.  On a small scale, the collective intelligence of a group of students to build a class wiki has many of the same social constructivist advantages as a group of students doing any group piece of work, plus the advantages associated with using ICT in the classroom - for example, students always seem very motivated and engaged by computer work.  It also has some of the same disadvantages - domination by the strongest member, access to computers, both at school and in the home. One of the biggest advantages and disadvantages is the skill of the teacher using it as a tool, the type of task set up, the time allocated, the way the groups are organised etc.

On a larger scale, it allows for global participation - a massive extension of 'pen pals' and of course the use of collective intelligence products such as wikipedia are already widely used as a starting point for many education projects.