EdTechTrek

It is so nice when things come together. It is even nicer when your students can witness and even participate in that synergistic event. This semester, I have been talking with my students about virtual learning advantages and opportunities. We have been looking at, reading about, and playing with various tools that allow us to participate, connect, and create well beyond the boundaries of our typical physical reach. The term PLN (Personal/Professional Learning Network) or PLC (Personal/Professional Learning Community) or VCoP (Virtual Community of Practice) or GOEWCAY (Great Online Educators Who Care About You) – I just made that up… Whatever the term one espouses, there is no better way to understand the implications of it than to dive right in and experience it. I have long had the belief that if teachers/my students are to ever truly understand the potential of technology-facilitated learning opportunities, they need to experience potential benefits for themselves first. For example, if one does not really understand blogs or blogging, skipping the step of using them for personal/professional benefit and hoping to implement them with students in meaningful ways is unlikely. Too often our professional development models are just like this. We “tell” teachers why _____ or _____ is so great, and then expect them to jump on board.

Well, last week both of my graduate classes enrolled in Introduction to Computers in Education experienced an “aha” moment that I feel compelled to share. For a while now I have shown my students a video of Kathy Cassidy that I found on YouTube, recorded by Dean Shareski. I liked it because it portrayed a teacher who began a lifelong quest of making learning exciting and meaningful for her students. Kathy began small and slowly, but continually progressed, challenging both herself and her students. That is what I am continually suggesting that my students do when the feel overwhelmed by so many new possibilities that technologies afford. They are overwhelmed. Where does one begin? Kathy’s story is one that helps paint a doable picture.

So, after talking about developing one’s personal learning network, I thought that it would be important to find an experience that pulled many things that we had read about, discussed, and tinkered with. Since my own virtual network has grown so much over the past few years, and since Kathy Cassidy and I were mutual followers on Twitter and members of some of the same professional learning networks, I thought that I would “tweet” her and see if she would be willing to talk to my classes about her experiences. Kathy was quite willing and

made herself available to my classes in spite of the 2 hour time difference between Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan and Rochester, NY. Via email and Twitter, we arranged everything, including the logistics of using Skype for this purpose.

Kathy sent on ahead a list of Internet links representing online learning opportunities that she and her students had embarked on so that my students could pull them up as she was talking about them. Although there were other possible technology setups that we could have used, we kept it simple. Surprisingly, many of my students had never used Skype before and some had never even heard of it. So it was also a great way to demonstrate this free and powerful tool.

The time came and the conversation began. Kathy spoke for a while and then opened it up to some questions. My students seemed particularly concerned with issues of equity, access, time, and safety. Kathy was able to offer her perspective on all of those. Below are some questions that were asked that include Kathy’s response.

But the final question seemed to pull everything together. It was a question seeking advice on how to enhance one’s knowledge about all of this beyond the classroom. This led to a follow-up question about one’s learning network and the importance of a virtual learning network… many of the ideas that we had been discussing and students had been wrestling with.

It was fun to watch the gears turn and the eyes light up in the students as they heard Kathy share her perspective on the importance of her own personal learning community in her own professional life. I think at that point many students became suddenly more responsive to the ideas that had been tossed around in class. Some students blogged about finally giving Twitter a try and being energized at how teachers were using these tools in real ways with their students. Others blogged about the “aha” moment of seeing how technology does not have to be an “extra”, but an integral part of curriculum and learning.

But for me, it was powerful for the students to see how this entire discussion with Kathy was facilitated because of our personal learning networks and virtual communication tools. It opened up the door to vast possibilities for my students that they had not even considered. Their perceptions of the purpose and use of these tools is so tainted by the mainstream media in how it represents their purpose and function in society… for trivial, silly, and sometimes dark purposes. They need many positive models of how new cultural tools can be used in powerful ways, both personally/professionally, and with students in the classroom.

I am thankful that my own professional learning networks have opened up the doors for such opportunities and relationships. My hope and goal is that my students find and experience doors that they never knew existed and begin to go through them and experience those opportunities they never knew they could.

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Technical Notes: an external DV camera was used so that I could zoom in on students who had questions and so that Kathy could see them well. an external omni-directional microphone (Blue Snowball) on a boom mic stand was used so that Kathy could hear my students when they asked questions. Kathy used Call Recorder to record the Skype chat. Kathy Cassidy’s first grade blog Read the blogs of my students Follow Kathy Cassidy on Twitter @kathycassidy Follow me on Twitter

- Special Thanks to Kathy Cassidy for sharing her time and experience with us!

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I love how the following statement along with one of the conclusions of Higher Education in a Web2.0 World is worded:

…

Are you seeing your students as an impetus for change? I’m not seeing it all that much yet with my students, but I am salivating for the day when it happens on a grand scale! Bring it [them] on!

I simply love it when my students inspire me to write. This semester, my students have dived right in to blogging and are really beginning to understand the reflective and connective power of the medium. This is not always apparent for many first being exposed to blogging, so I take my hat off to them.

One student in particular shared a high school science blog that she discovered that resonated with her, as she is preparing to be a HS science teacher herself. But, after visiting that blog, both she and I discovered a quotation that I think really embodies the big idea behind Web 2.0 – a concept that is really not that easy to define. So, I’ll share it with you:

“HE WHO LEARNS FROM ONE WHO IS LEARNING,

DRINKS FROM A FLOWING RIVER.”

-NATIVE AMERICAN PROVERB

I don’t know about you, but for me this has been what Web 2.0 has been all about… finding and connecting with folks who are themselves learning, and being inspired and informed by the river that they are part of. I think that the Web 2.0 community is this “river” of information and ideas. Those who choose to swim in it are greatly empowered as learners. Those who cannot swim can learn, as my students are learning. Those who refuse to swim will continue to drink from more stagnant waters.

So, to those who can’t swim: You can learn,… drink, share, participate, contribute, collaborate, be inspired, inspire others, grow,…

To those who won’t swim: Best of luck to you.

I have been thinking lately of the onslaught of new tools and related learning potential that they hold. Over the past few years there has just been an onslaught of new tools and services out there. Some are still around, some have fallen by the wayside. Many of these tools fall in the Web 2.0 category. (here and here, to list a “few”). The discussions and implementations with EdTech folks have been just as numerous. I totally understand the desire to find those “perfect” tools and tools to transform “same-old” learning into learning that is culturally relevant and personally meaningful. I get that. I think about these things all the time. However, there is something innate in the tech “geek” that drives us on to try every new thing coming down the pike and to abandon tools that worked just fine for newer, shinier, cooler tools that have that one (or 100) extra feature that just makes it superior. Yet, often they are not advantages that the average teacher would take advantage of – or would even care about. Sometimes I think we are doing the typical teacher a disservice with our insatiable appetite for new tools. And, I do get the need in this time to be able to quickly adapt to new tools as old ones become extinct. However, many teachers need simple tools tied to powerful learning opportunities. I think that they feel the same inundation of innovation and simply shut down. We need to sell them on the pedagogical, not the technical. On the true learning innovation, not the innovative tools. On the passion and excitement of being in control of learning, not on controlling learning. On the power of creative production of meaningful learning artifacts, not on glitzy but empty products.

Here is a iPhone product called FriendBook that caught my eye and drove me on to write this post. I used this example in one of my comments on Will Richardson’s latest blog posts titled, “What I Hate About Twitter“. It is an interesting conversation on the value of a tool like Twitter. It is interesting to the the diversity of responses to Will’s initial thoughts. But back to my point – Friendbook allows iPhone users to “beam” to each other their contact information/address book cards.
The headline of the promo states “Business cards are so last year.” There will always be new (communication) tools out there that have advantages and disadvantages. However, we all need to get past those and seek after what is important – not simply cast aside old tools in search of the latest greatest ones. It’s not the business card per se, but the message it conveys and the audience it reaches. I think it is the same with Twitter. It is not the tool per se, but the messages that get conveyed and the audiences who choose to listen and participate.

No tool will do it all FOR us. There is no “Holy Grail” of tools that will make good teaching easy. It takes sweat, tears, devotion, passion, dedication, intelligence, skill, professionalism, continued learning and growth, collaboration, risk-taking, networking, wide reading, deep reading,… and you could add many attributes to this list as well. It does not require a trendy approach to computer applications. There is nothing wrong with the traditional business card if it gets desired results. I fear we are communicating too much that “traditional” = bad and that “cutting edge” = good. This is so wrong, so distorted, so deceptive. My previous post on Good Vs. Effective relates to this a great deal here.

So, let’s get more passionate about learning and less passionate about needing to be “up” on every new tool that gets churned out. Let’s help reading teachers become more effective and passionate about teaching the language arts in powerful and relevant ways. Let’s help math and science teachers become more effective and passionate about teaching and reaching kids in effective ways – in realistic ways. Yes – these ways should include relevant technologies. Don’t abandon digital microscopes or data probes just because they don’t carry a Web 2.0 label. Don’t ignore programming just because it is not your thing. And, don’t get so hung up on tools like Twitter. Get hung up on powerful learning.

To quote Mariana Umaschi Bers who cites Seymour Papert:

“The power of computers for education lies in their potential to assist children in encountering powerful ideas and to engage them in experimenting with and testing these ideas”.