These are some of my postings on this topic.
Posted Date: November 1, 2012 10:27 PM
Subject: Concluding Activity
Hi,
In my current situation, I see the politics of and the politicization of Educational Technology as forces holding it back. Having all the facts before you begin gives the illusion of control. Please….no more committees, fact finding missions, and navel-gazing statements. Let’s get to doing and learning. I do think discussion and reflection are necessary but not when they become confused with real action to address the real issues facing technology and education.
Hope you enjoy my movie.
Don
Posted Date: November 1, 2012 7:22 PM
Subject: Kahn and Kellner ~ Vision of schools in the future…
Marie-Astrid,
My quick response is we play. We play and practice until we become proficient. We copy the adult process. We play dress-up when we read and write. I guide and mentor. I assess process and development. Skills removed from process are irrelevant. My kindergarteners know this. Our standards are high, they let me know when I fall short of the mark. Today we started our salmon project. We talked about becoming ichthyologists. After our intro lesson many of them sat to draw and write about fish. They told me they were ichthyologists preparing notes. I told them to go ahead and they told me that I had to stay because they couldn’t spell salmon. Challenge and humour are important. Most of my boys love to prove my opinion wrong by reading to me when I have told them I don’t think they know how. Self-direction and higher level thinking are not issues in Kindergarten.
Don
Posted Date: October 30, 2012 9:26 PM
Subject: Kahn and Kellner ~ Voices excluded…
In the next few months the very political issue of WIFI will be raised at my school. The development of our iPad project is pushing the discussion along as teachers and students work to use the creative power of iPads and find they need the connectivity of the internet. I understand that many people are concerned about the risk to our children’s health but I don’t want to debate the veracity of this concern in this forum. I would like to point out that the need for committees, policies, rules, and control is very much a political response to the real-life phenomenon of eLearning. It exists outside of schools and it is growing. People are immersed in it. Control does not promote understanding. Ignoring and blocking further distance schools from the growing population whose primary sorce for learning is online! The question is not why we need it? Ask that and you get all kinds of statements about the quality of life that have nothing to do reality and the decision made by most of the poeple most of the time. So…who do I think will be excluded if we fail to incorporate technology in education? Just the teachers – the kids are already starting to move on!
Don
Posted Date: October 30, 2012 8:52 PM
Subject: Kahn and Kellner ~ Vision of schools in the future…
Marie-Astrid,
I agree with you. I believe that in order for educational institutions to remain, their purpose, function, and processes require redesign. The challenge is to shift the balance away from teaching to learning. I attended a school very much like the one you described. I agree there was flexibility but mainly in the timing and sequencing of packages of conventional learning. Competency in English still required the reading of Shakespeare.
I think now, more than ever before, this kind of assumption needs to be challenged. I have been doing some research on mPortfolios as a vehicle for learning. Through her work in the field, Dr. Helen Barrett has observed that “Mobile Web is becoming the Personal Learning Environment of the ‘Net Generation'” because the learning is social, participatory, lifelong, life wide, self-directed, motivating, engaging, and available all the time. I find myself agreeing with this as I complete my research in the comfort my den! I am working at the university’s library. I am not sure how we embrace the reality of this approach to learning and bring it into schools. I do see it as force in education (the total package of learning). I feel challenged, stretched, and stimulated as a student and a teacher. Papert’s idea that we can change our paradigm and elminate the need for children to stop learning and to accept teaching is absolutely true! A bit hard to accept as a Kindergarten teacher but absolutely worth considering as we attempt to prepare children for an unpredictable future!
Don
Posted Date: October 30, 2012 8:10 PM
Subject: Haraway ~ Avatar Activity
Hi All,
I worked to make an avatar of me but ended with an avatar of my Dad! How is this possible? Do we all become our parents? We had a lot of fun in our house last night; everyone made one! We made Don, Lucy, and Chip. It seemed easier to agree that someone’s else’s avatar was a good likeness than to admit it about your own. I wonder what that means about our perception of self and our identity. The more I look at my clay face, the more I like it. It is a fun representation of a part of me but does not begin to reflect all of who I am. Is this political? Only if Clay Me suddenly develops mass appeal and uses his developing power to attempt world domination – perhaps a more serious hat?
Don