Tuesday, September 29, 2009
Saturday, September 26, 2009
Week 4, Blog#8-Reflection on Blogging
Week 4,Blog #7-Second Life
ATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2009
Learning in Second Life would probably shock the socks off our students. They are so used to entering a room, opening a book, and reading as a group, that if they were asked to open a computer and go to a site called Second Life and create their own Avatar, they wouldn't know what to do!
I do agree that places like ISTE Island in Second Life could be benefitial to learning. The teacher would need to have a great deal of knowledge about the site. I can envision a teacher creating three avatars representing him or herself, and holding groups sessions with the students in this site. The ISTE site had a multitude of meeting palces, some more specific than others. But a Language Arts teacher could hold group meetings: one to discuss literature, one grammar,etc. and so on, all in second life, and all relevant to student learning. I would have liked to visit Eduisland, but for some reason I was told it no longer existed.
I think my only issue with secon life is that it is so much fun, studetns would want to be flying and battleing in the air all the time the class was there. Also, I would need to learn more about the differnt sites before I brought my students there. I believe we could trust sites like the ISTE, but maybe not so much sites that were set up by people in general.
In our second month of school, we had to explore Second Life and decide upon a section to report on to the others in the class. Our group chose Ecology as our project and I was to report on Etopia Eco Villiage. Which is agin, a nice site to explore, but the teacher could have considerable out put of funds to make this workable in the classroom. Below is a picture from Second Life Etopia Eco Villiage.
This viliage is easy to explore, they have interesting areas to visited, such as the one above that shows a peacock and horses hanging around a watering trough. There are also special events that are advertised throughout the park-like villiage. Once agin, though, the teacher would need extensive knowledge of the site and its attributes before embarking on a classroom visit to the site.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Week3, Blog #6-Communities of Practice
Wenger,E (1998) Communities of Practice: learning, meaning, identity,Cambridge University Press, New York, NY http://books.google.com/books?id=heBZpgYUKdAC&dq=communities+of+practice&printsec=frontcover&source
Retrieved September 21st, 2009
http://www.sharedwork.org/
Sunday, September 20, 2009
Week 3, Blog#5-Social Media
"Shift Happens," as relayed to us in Did You Know; Shift Happens, one of the video files Dr. Siegel included in this weeks blog assignment, is a take off of another, eerily similar saying from the 1980's. The older of these sayings, referred to the Murphy's law of life: anything that can go wrong, it will go wrong.
"Shift happens," however, refers more to a pardigm shift, and shift in our way of thinking, and interrelating. Our way of interacting with others in our global population, is the primary focus of this shift. Speculation about the change in brain structue in students, for whom technology is the "mother's milk" of their social lives, has caused this idea of brain alteration. Unfortunately, the persons in charge of teaching these technically brilliant students are not up to the challenge, mostly because the technnology they are required to teach wasn't even invented until after they had completed college.
This video also include the scariest projections of our global future that I have ever seen or heard. To think that the current development of technologly is growing at such a pace, that college students just entering school can count on the technology available to them when they enter school, being obsolete when they reach their junior year. It seems as though technology is growing exponentially.
I also enjoyed the analogy of the video, Social Media in Plain English,which discussed the ever changing landcape of technology. The idea of forming friendships and social networking buddies based on interests is fascinating. It is ineresting also, that students who learn through networking, can establish these friends without ever meeting them in person, yet establish long lasting relationships based entirely on interest.
I believe that the paradigm shift needs to occur in schools rapidly, before the shift becomes a crevase, and then a cavern.
Reference List
lamybethhale (2008, October 21) Did You Know? [Video File]. Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL9Wu2kWwSY&feature=fvste1
leelefever (2008, May) Social Media in Plain English [Video File]. Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MpIOClX1jPE
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Week 2, Blog #4-PLN's
よこそう
Welcome
I have personal experience with "Personal Learning Networks," as my daughter, Maggie, has been engaged in one for the past year, or two or three. She fell in love with Anime' and computer animations almost overnight, and asked me to buy her a Japanese dictionary. I, of course, thought it was a stage, but I bought her the dictionary anyway.
She is now involved in several internet groups, too many for me to keep up with. She has books, Japanese language sets, and she has moved beyond conversational Japanese to the more advanced levels. When we visit EPCOT, we have to go to the Japanese pavillion, and eat at the Japanese restaurants.
She is still interested in Anime' and has begun to create her own artwork, both on the computer and off. She also asked me to buy her a scanner, so she can scan her drawings onto the internet to share with her "netwrok" of friends. I never thought my daughter could be that committed to learning anything. The funny part of all this, is that her grades in the general education classes at school have also improved, along with her Japanese. She is more motivated in her school work, and would like to attend college in Japan, or thorugh Full Sail, where she can study graphic arts and animation.
I know from personal experience that this type of learning is not only good for kids who lack that type of motivation, but it is high-interest to the students who are involved with them. Who wouldn't want to succeed in creating your own artwork and animations?
As I have discussed my daughter's self-challenge with other educators, it is highly disappointing when they remark," What's she going to do with that?" Even her own grandmother asks these narrow-minded type of questions, and I have to try to explain the neccessity , in our current economic climate, of creating your own skills. Educators aren't providing kids wiht hte skills they will need for the future.
In example, my school cut out many of the reading classes this year because of budget cuts. According to the site provided by Dr. Siegel, Warlick's CoLearners, by David Warlick(2008), the skills like reading, writing and arithmetic only scrath th esurface of th eskills that will be required of the students graduating form school in the near future. He states,"the concept of literacy in the 21st century will be far richer and more comprehensive than the 3 Rs of the one room school house, a legacy that still strongly influences today's education environment."
Based on this assumption, the entire educational system would need to be revamped, starting with the tools and skills a child will need in kindergarten. But teachers will need ot play catch-up with all the rest of the grade levels.
Reference List
Blair,Maggie (2009) daughter of Bonita Blair
The Art & Technique of Personal Learning Networks http://davidwarlick.com/wiki/pmwiki.php?n=Main.TheArtAmpTechniqueOfCultivatingYourPersonalLearningNetwork
Sunday, September 13, 2009
Week 2 Blog #3- Media Literacies
SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 12, 2009
The following quote was taken from ERIC. The article was written by Jason Ohler for Academe (May-June, 2009). I think this quote, which starts his article, states the reality of the modern juxtaposition of learning.
"Being literate in a real-world sense means being able to read and write
using the media forms of the day, whatever they may be. For centuries,
consuming and producing words through reading and writing and, to a
lesser extent, listening and speaking were sufficient."
Unfortuantely, it also brings to light the essential problem with most education systems. We as educators are teaching outdated materials for a group of students who, a) will never need it, and b) see no value in it. Although I and most educators think that the teaching of Shakespeare is necessary for a good education, if we consider honestly how often a student will use that knowledge, we couldn't help but realize that it makes little sense to teach it. Only actors, all but rarely, need to study Shakespeare in depth.
Is itno longer appropriate to teach new learners old stuff? How do we, the educators, change? What is needed before we can change?
Although I don't have all the answers, I do know that the onset of online education is a start. Those of us who have ventured into thisnew type of learning are learning not only the content of our courses, but also the importance of the new-medias that are available to online learners.
Literacy used to mean that you knew how to effectively communicate, through reading, mostly, but also in the ares of writing, speaking and listening. At least that is the standard educators have been pushing for the last half-century. Initially, the only classroom use for computers was deemed the reading-and-testing of students in reading programs, like Read 180, and others. This was called Media literacy. Andrew Trotter wrote in his article in Education Week (2008) the following quote:
"I think it has been challenging for teachers and educational
institutions in the formal school space to incorporate all of these
[communities]," Ms. Ito said. "Part of what we're seeing is a
generational gap" between parents and teachers, on one hand,
who tend to perceive the online spaces as threatening, and young
people, on the other, who view them as full of positive potential.
The researchers found that young people commonly use online networks to pursue two different types of activity — one that is friendship-driven and one that is interest-driven.
We now consider Media Literacy to be the abilities a person holds for managing the computer, its programs, and all the websites of the internet. This is the power fo future learning that teachers need to harness. This is the new media literacy.
Reference List
Ohler, Jason (2009) New-Media Literacies Academe, v95 n3 p30-33 May-Jun 2009. 4 pp. (Peer Reviewed Journal) Retrieved September 12, 2009
Trotter, Andrew, ( 2008) Much of New-Media Learning Said to Occur Informally, Education Week; 12/3/2008, Vol. 28 Issue 14, p8-9, 2p, Retrieved September 12, 2009
Posted by Bonnie at 3:20 PM