These are concepts that we need to instill in students as I have a feeling that future technologies will be about rapid fire change, the workplace more global in scope, and the same of both for our daily social realities. 

It seems that educational institutions are looking to keep pace by installing  something or using a new tool, and then dusting off their hands and saying, “we’re there”.  

 I just read an article today in our local paper titled “High-tech teaching tool” Kane County Chronicle, November 16,2008  about hand held Student Response units implemented at several of the district schools.  This is all well and good to invest in  technologies, but it is key to think of technologies as fluid, and not permanent fixtuers in education.  We cannot be tied to equipment simply because everyone has been trained how to use it.  I feel that the future of education will rely on continually moving to the next big thing, because that is how it will be in our lives socially, and at the workplace.  

Rather than purchasing large chunks of technology, it would be interesting to see a system where districts pay a fee to a technology provider and equipment can be changed more freely and without huge approvals and constant referendums.  I think that it is easy for those of us that work outside of education to see how changeable our technology is, and how frequently we are upgrading our various systems for new applications and communications. 

At school, in the Art and Music room we are allowed to experiment with new a medium or instruments.  Our computer labs should also have the same type of capability where classes can experiment with the latest technologies.   If these items were perpetually on-loan and being upgraded, we all, teachers, too, would be exposed to change and experience adaptability regarding technologies and global opportunities in learning and communication.  It would allow certain class projects to be accomplished with a student’s choice of technology that is available in the lab.  The onus would be on the student to figure out how to use it for his purpose and a constructivist type of learning would take place.  In student presentations, the pupil could also explain his choice of technology and how it served or did not serve the purpose.  This would benefit everyone’s knowledge about the various technologies and applications.

I think it also critical to tie in our technology learning with real world applications.  Sure, the hand-held student responses are great for teacher/student feedback, however, how do these fit in the real world?  Will your boss moniter you in this way?  I think visiting “real people” coming into the school explaining how they utilize technologies on a daily basis could be extremely valuable to establish a relevance to these tools in our lives. 

So, the journey continues with technology.  There is no end point in sight.  One can never say, “Ok, I get it, I’m now up to snuff on technology.”  I can say that I am more aware and I believe this goes for Digital Natives, too.  Our students not only need to be exposed to adaptability and flexibilty but to accept variablility as life itself!

I used jing video and still images  to capture my tutorial.  I ‘borrowed’ my son’s ULead Video Movie Maker software to export the jing files to avi so that they could be imported to Movie Maker.  Here I made my script using Audacity.  I find Audacity files easier to manipulate and blend with music.  I was so excited to be able to use music from www.freeplay.com, so that I would know that it was legal to use.

The biggest obstacle to the project was a severe case of laryngitis that I contracted last week and it has lasted near to 7 days already.  My narration had to be completed several times!.

I am totally over the moon about jing.  It is just so easy to use, cancel out and start over. I can think of a million uses for it, in emails, teacher communications, and just for fun! There is nothing like being able to “show” someone what you are talking about.

I had so many stories that I wanted to tell about my life including my High School experience and favorite teacher.  I also pondered telling the story of my big move West and my start in the trave industry when I couldnt find a permanent teaching job.  I finally settled on my Elementary story because that is where I find myself teaching now.  It was interesting to me to reflect that students may not even remember me when they grow up!  I realized through my own student experience that what stood out was not the most positive, until one year when everything changed for the better.  My goal as a teacher then, is make a positive impact on student’s quest for learning.  I do remember one teacher I had simply because she was kind and gentle to everyone and gave us bubble gum with report cards. As in life, it is our daily demeanor and care that can make a huge difference. 

I found the process of making the story very therapeutic.  It really made me crystalize my feelings and what had impacted me the most. I cut alot of information away.  I would love to do this with a class and really enjoyed reading (and learning from) Digital Storytelling Finds its Place in the Classroom by Banaszewski
Found at http://www.infotoday.com/MMSchools/jan02/banaszewski.htm  I certainly appreciate her tips at making the project more efficient.  This is such valuable information for teachers, and I think I will suggest that all teachers contribute a “tips” or best practices page for all new computer projects .  It certainly makes it less scary to try if you have a guide such as this.  I will definitely recommend this to teachers to apply to their current lessons and for me to guide in the Computer Lab.

 I would like to make more stories for my own use: for my family and memories.  Hope you enjoy!

In teaching to a class of ‘Digital Natives’ there are a few things that I believe are of extreme importance that one must aim to achieve. It is great to have so many answers and search engines at our finger tips, but how do we avoid turning our students into “factoids” of information? How do we arm them with critical thinking skills? How do we have them evaluate what they are viewing and actually digest its content?

The downside of the digital world is that we tend to be attracted by the colors, design, the sophistication of the visual image, the snappiness of the text, the emotion of the sound. We know from advertising methods that these very things; design, text bites, and sound can affect our emotions and interpretations, and blur the substance or lack of in the information.

A recent experience of mine highlighted the difference between myself, a “digital immigrant” and “Digital Natives.” I was included in an email discussion with a group of about ten family members. Five of them can be considered Digital Natives and the rest were various levels of immigrant status.

In the conversation, I was a bit taken aback by the discourse of the Dig Natives. I was not appalled at their viewpoints, which were opposed to some of mine, and I really wanted to learn more about what their thinking was. I was dismayed, because rather than express opinions, their emails were filled with links to facts and other’s writings and bullet points of opinions. One shared a video he found that expressed his viewpoint. I was literally bombarded with information that left me at a standstill in the “conversation?”. Actually, it was no longer a conversation, but a list of things I would have to sift through and read in order to understand the point of view. I find this kind of disturbing, that individuals would treat a family discussion as a I would write a term paper! Why couldn’t the DN’s simply synthesize all of their findings into a succinct point of view?

This brings me back to the classroom and how to use my immigrant status as a positive factor in the learning process. I do think it is important to embrace the digital possibilities that exist and use games, and creative ways to teach. (I think this has always been important, not just in the digital realm).

My grandparents were Italian immigrants, and the stories that they told me about their way of growing up, coming to this country and building their lives were lessons to me that meant more as I grew older. They loved this country so much that they never “groused” about the old days. They told their stories to demonstrate how different their lives became because of their choices. I think that this kind of “story” is important to me (the Native in this case), because it gives me perspectives that I can apply to my own life.

I would hope to achieve this same kind of reference point in the digital native classroom.
I will require that my students ask questions about what they see, about what they read, and synthesize information by recreating its meaning in some other medium. THat medium could certainly be digital, or oral, or two-dimensional. I will allow creation, digital referencing, and digital research and follow up with personal discussion and group collaboration where possible.

Yes, I agree that Digital Natives think differently, but I also value knowledge experience and I think that we Digital Immigrants have much to offer as long as we deliver our treasures in ways relevant to the students.

 After reviewing the Ken Robinson Schools Kill Creativity, video, I was in total agreement with Ken’s comments made about how we currently teach.  I loved his comments that stated that we currently “teach students to be professors”, and that we teach that “failing” is a bad thing.  How true it is that our current curriculum discourages wrong answers, multiple tries at solutions, and an atmosphere of exploration!  I was equally enthralled with some of his comments regarding Web 2.0 tools and allowing students to collaborate and investigate with passion.

After I watched this video, I was interested to see some of the other TED videos.  I came across this one about a Scientist turned 8^th grade teacher, Clifford Stoll, 18 minutes with an Agile Mind, and I found myself thinking in a different way about technology, education, learning and especially, teaching.  A bit about this video:  Clifford Stoll is your quintessential “Mad Scientist” type.  He is whacky, has Einstien like hair and jumps around the stage with passion over science.  He can barely contain himself.  I can just imagine a class of 8^th graders watching his every move and listening to his every word.  He is dynamic!

I was blown away when this “genius’ (I really think he is) responded absolutely against computers in the classroom at this stage in a child’s education.  I had assumed that he was the type that would have promoted technology, he is a scientist after all.  Rather, his actions and words indicated that computers would actually shut down the hands-on, scrappy inquisitive learning from the bottom up; a learning style that is so natural to questioning children.

I realized after this presentation that he could be right.  Maybe what needs to be reformed is the way we teach.  It was obvious that this man is not a conventional teacher.  It would be completely unauthentic for most of us to present and act in this same way.  What we can do, however, is rethink the way we do present materials to students, get passionate about the message and allow students to do some of things presented by Robinson, such as collaborate, explore, and make attempts at  various solutions.   Computers may assist in achieving some of these things, but they are only one way to do that, and perhaps, as Stoll indicates, not the best.

In this vein, I was interested to read what was said about children and learning in:

 Changing How and What Children Learn in School with Computer-Based Technologies, Rochelle, J., R. Pea, C. Hoadley, D. Gordin, B. Means. I was impressed at the list of studies completed that showed how technology met the four fundamental characteristics of learning and how results showed that students learned more with computer activities in comparison with traditional education.  The keyword here is “traditional education” and herein lies the problem. 

It is non-traditional to lead a class with passion and enthusiasm in a non-traditional setting. We talked a bit in Nick Burbule’s  class about constructing new designs for classrooms as we would create a stage play.   Our curriculum would also be reset and our actions/response as teacher would build on learning moments, sometimes the cause of digression and spontaneity.  Teachers might cringe at the idea of losing control and spending too much time on learning where there is no set assessment or standardization. 

My point, it would be interesting to measure learning with computers against non-traditional “hands-on” styles of learning.  Would Clifford Stoll’s (our mad scientist) class learning outperform a class that utilizes computers? Would a class that employs field trips, experts, community tasks in their curriculum frequently do just as well? 

Granted, computers can give immediate feedback, real time data, and a global intelligence as the article points out.  What I did not entirely agree with is the point made about students not having to be bogged down with making graphs and charts of certain work because the computer can automatically do this for them.  I think this is the exact point that the Scientist, Clifford Stoll was making.  I, for one, think that children may just learn more by graphing and charting their results manually (I consider making these in Excel as manual, too).  These type processes teach us and embeds the procedure and lesson into our brain.  I feel that automatic information, even if we do understand the process, leads us to lazy thinking in some cases.  I think it is those exercises that require us to use multi-layers of brainwork that helps us thoroughly comprehend and retain what we have learned.

The article points out that we have a way to go before technology is uniformly used in education.  I do believe it is inevitable, But until, then, a little passion and theatrics can go a long way. 

My view of the future of learning is a mesh of things I’ve read, learned and contemplated during CTER classes and my own observations of schools, students, teachers, the workplace and my own ponderings!   It’s such a huge topic that I hope I achieve some degree of clarity. The more I think about it, the more new questions are raised:

What is the purpose of learning?

In my opinion, the point of one’s education is not to provide job security for the future, but rather, to endow the individual with the tools for critical thinking and collaborative problem solving that will allow for adaptability and relevance in an ever changing future global society.  Education should provide a framework that relates to the past, experiences the present, and prepares for the future.

What needs to change in education to achieve this?

Future Teachers

• A teacher of the future needs to be somewhat of a facilitator, but so much more than that. A teacher needs to challenge students, ask questions, expose thought patterns and ideas and challenge solutions and methods.
• A teacher needs technology in the classroom in order to have data that is current and accurate, but learning is so much more than the accumulation of data.  It is the synthesizing of material, the critical analysis of what is read or heard and what it means.  The technology’s purpose will be to enable interaction with information
• Teacher education and training for the future will prepare the educator with web 2.0 tools in addition to a rethinking of the “top-down” teaching platform that is most prevalent today.  Teachers will need to completely redesign their purpose and their teaching settings in order to achieve this.

 Future Schools and Classrooms 

• Educational content will have a broader context that will include information, problems, and solutions that have a worldwide basis.   For example, literature requirements will encompass writings from multiple origins.  Learning will be relevant to the world stage and the opportunity to connect and interact globally will be important.  
• The process of synthesizing learning material will be to recreate it via expressive methods that encompass a wide variety of venues.  Currently, students are mostly required to write essays or reports.  Students will interact with what they are learning by recreating it with web 2.0 and whatever technical tools become available in addition to other modes of expression such as artistically, musically, visually or whatever multiple intelligence best suits the learner.   
• Technology in future schools will be ubiquitous, just an integral part of the school day as are pencil and paper now.  The current thinking of going to a computer lab to use technology, strong filtering, and the idea of computer learning as a separate activity will become passé.

 All of these thoughts are what I think the future of learning must encompass, but there is so much more that needs to change for the future such as the emphasis on testing and methods of accountability for students and teachers.   A personal fear that I have is that the there will be an over emphasis on technology in learning to the exclusion of things natural.  A combination of the human experience and exposure to the world is needed.  http://cyokelley.wordpress.com/wp-admin/link.php?link_id=3&action=edit