EdTechTrek

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”.

Know anyone like this?

Stumbled across an article in the NY Times titled, “If You Can’t Let Go, Twitter“. It it, the writer describes her attempt to connect with her 3 daughters (digital natives, right) via Twitter. Let’s just say, it didn’t work. After trying a number of tactics, including giving away money, she consults with a Walter J. Carl, an assistant professor of communications studies at Northeastern University, who said he wasn’t surprised. He is quoted as explaining the problem in the following way:

“You want to use these tools to keep up on others, in a good way, of course, and to let them keep up on you,” said Professor Carl, whose research focuses on social media. “But their perception is it’s surveillance.” One of the main reasons people embrace social media — Facebook, for instance — is to create identities for themselves and control other people’s perceptions of them.”

And then…

“Maybe Twitter isn’t the right tool for that job,” he said. “The people who I see using it are an older demographic, people in marketing or P.R. or advertising, who use it for work, to present themselves as particular types of people. They’ll twitter, ‘I’m traveling,’ or ‘I’m going to interesting restaurants.’ They’re using it to do identity work.”

Isn’t it interesting how this new communication tool that so many adults are using is not considered all that useful with kids… that they are more concerned with “creating identities for themselves and control other people’s perceptions of them”, as happens on Facebook and MySpace. But here’s my question: kids to love to IM and text. They thrive on social networking. One would think, in combination with social networking services, that a tool like Twitter would be “phat“. Huh!

In this new age of information glut/data smog, the importance of being information literate has grown exponentially. How do we reconcile this generation’s desire to “control other people’s perception of them”? Seem’s natural, for sure. But is the digital realm blurring the line between fact and fiction in a way that we must better address in education? Are students more accepting of blurred realities? And, if so, how does this impact one’s ability to value the truth and seek it out?

Okay, I don’t know if you have already played with Twittervision or not. It has been around for a while, but , I just discovered it the other day and sat there staring at the screen for quite a while, pretty amazed. It allows you to see twitter posts as they are happening, but within a globe or map view. You also have the option to allow it to track your own tweets. Here are a few clips of what it does. First, the 3-D version:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x90Y0VKyXV4&rel=1]

And there is also this 2-D view of the same thing:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAP0IlpHAwo]

I am not sure what the educational value of it is - or if there is one. If you have any thoughts, please share!