I wanted to get my first version of my inquiry project up, as I’m past the point of impartiality and have no clue if it is thought provoking, or dull. I’m trying to express some of what we explored in this MindMeister.
As you can see, we gathered rather a lot of information that needed to be pared down. Here’s my attempt in doing so…
Please leave me a comment with some feedback if you can. Thank you.
It’s not new to think that education should be relevant to students. The difficulty in doing this can be bringing together vastly varying paradigms. Some may suffer from implicit association bias in that they are inherently biased against various forms of technology. We may feel a level of disconnect from decision making, feel frustrated, want to remove ourselves from being part of the change, part of the process. Even within our class, I have clearly seen signs of blindspots. There’s a certain level of defensiveness, over possibly feeling less valued than technology. I can’t quite put my finger on if it could be separated by generations, or if it simply went to experience. Perhaps it all comes down to experience. We are the sum of our experiences.
It can be difficult to move beyond ourselves and our experiences. We do have the ability to change our minds. Neuroplasticity. Rather an impressive word, I think. There IS the ability to change our minds, to change how we think, to change our functioning.
I think this speaks at the heart of what I’m trying to do with my inquiry project. When looking at social media, it truly is nothing new. A human beings, we’ve communicated for thousands of years. We’ve sought new ways of connecting to each other.
I remember a project I did as a student back in high school. We all wrote letters off to someone famous, and then waited to see if anyone actually got a response. I don’t remember any responses during the school year, although I did eventually get a form letter back. I won’t say who I wrote to, it would be far too revealing of my age and bad taste in music. Through this project, we sought to form a connection, through communication. We can still do this, at a much faster rate. We are able to make connections that would never have been possible. I’ve made someone working at The Globe theatre in London laugh. I’ve inspired a former Dragon for a potential shirt choice. I’ve been moved to tears by the reflections of a Canadian looking down on our country from orbit.
As a child, I never would have had these opportunities. Is it not part of being human, always wishing for more for our children?
Through the process, I’ve found my methods of thinking shifting and changing. I want to actively change my functioning for the benefit of my students. I want others to understand that I’m doing so, and why I’m doing it.
I’m finding my project to be a source of intense focus. I’m trying to communicate more complicated sentiments, but very plainly, and more visually, something I’m finding difficult. I want the sentiments and ideas to be very simple. I believe this is important in order to appeal to a broader audience. My presentation is aimed not only at colleagues, but also parents, administrators, and the general public. The program I’m using, Haiku Deck, is forcing me to be minimal and brief. This is excruciatingly difficult for me. I have a tendency to ramble on and like to give long responses. Haiku deck is forcing me to be concise, be brief.
As I’ve created it, I’ve found that there’s a separate presentation that I would like to complete, something specific on Twitter and how it has changed lives, including my own. My main presentation has turned into something more general, something that expresses how social media is relevant to lives and why we need to teach it.
The ecology of the field of education is changing and must change. It must change, or it will become irrelevant. I actually typed I must change at first, perhaps that is very relevant as I must also change or become obsolete.
There is active work by others outside of the system to change the system, reward talents and skills in varying areas, such as chess. This is done through the use of the badge system, a system for which I have a personal fondness as a former Brownie with an impressive selection of badges. However, it does seem like we already do this in some ways. Yes, there are core subjects that must be completed. Outside of that, students choose what they want to do, be it metalwork, ceramics, learn German, play soccer, learn to play piano, ballet, and much more. Perhaps it wouldn’t be as big of a step as we think to move into some form of a badge system.
Education has long history of individualism. Who are the participants, who are the learners? What are their developmental needs? I want to get those who don’t understand why one would use social media, to get an emotional connection, to feel and understand why the connections it corrects are important.
I’m left with a personal drive for connectivity… How can we do it more easily, more efficiently? Social media? That’s what I’m trying to argue. But in this situation, argue isn’t quite the word I want to use. Provoke? Still seems too hostile.
In working on my project today I struggled a bit with the form I chose, while conversely also felt quite comfortable and attached to it. I’m using Haiku Deck for the iPad, which is a simple slide type presentation, yet is very restrictive in the amount of text one can use. I love text. I love to write. I love to write really long things that perhaps people don’t read (ha, leave a comment if you made it this far!). Using Haiku Deck is forcing brevity upon me, forcing me to rely more on visuals. Considering that I’m talking about social media, Twitter in particular, it’s somewhat fitting that I’m forced to be brief.
I want to provoke, and I think I can best do this through limited text. I’ll be posting the first attempt tomorrow, wanting more time on it tonight. I really want to shape it into something that I can set free onto the world.
Today in class a discussion led to yet another shift in thought that made things harder, not easier, but for the better. As mentioned previously, I’ve been grappling mentally with the closure of all middle schools in our district. The funny part is that when I was first sent to do my practicum in a middle school, I was upset. I was secondary educated, and didn’t understand why I was being sent to a middle school. Middle might have been replaced with a few strategic symbols at that point.
I survived my practicum and went on to have three contracts in a row at that same middle school. Much of that school shaped who I am as a teacher today, some for the better, some for the worse. I left the school for a year to return to the high school that we fed, the high school from which I’d graduated. Heading back to the middle school this year felt different after having been in high school, but it felt good to be back in with that age group.
Throughout the year, the district held consultations regarding the upcoming budget and potential changes. We lacked a school board, having been fired by the provincial government upon refusal to submit a balanced budget. Recent years have been rough in our district, faced with declining numbers and a huge physical area to cover. Some areas of the district lack courses needed for graduation and entry into university, leading to students spending long periods of time on buses.
I made a sarcastic crack one day that the secret plan was to turn our school into a French immersion elementary. Little did I know that I was correct. Public outcry forced the withdrawal of the French immersion plan, but in the end my middle school became an elementary school. While we still taught our kids, dump trucks tore up our field, workmen measured to put in new bathrooms, remove lockers, and change the doorknobs. I helped our librarian sort and pack the library to be shipped off to different locations in order to make room for less shelves, and younger books.
I loved that library. I once had it for a few months while our teacher-librarian was on leave. We remained close, and I would almost daily visit on my prep and talk books and resources. I harboured a not so secret dream of having the library again. That was not meant to be.
Where did all of this get me today? When starting to create my presentation, it was entirely lacking in emotion or connection. It’s rather funny to think about. I’m trying to write about why students should be connected, in an entirely disconnected manner.
I learned that my school was gone through Twitter. I’d like to weave this into my narrative, bring the personal and emotional side into my advocacy. Hopefully it will make it stronger.
Being that I’m no longer presenting on Twitter, I wanted to share some of the resources/ideas that I’d organized. Nothing major, just some brief thoughts.
When you wonder what a student can do, please take a look at this student from Kitsilano. He’s 11 years old, and uses Twitter to post and connect with chefs. He’s cooked on television with chef Vikram Vij, and has connected deeply into the local food scene. Liam goes by the handle of @LittleLocovore on Twitter and is well worth the follow.
I love Chris Hadfield. Even upon his return to Earth I find myself enjoying his exploits. He has a book coming out in a few months, and I’m looking forward to reading it. If you don’t follow him, you should. You won’t regret it. This picture is what I try to be as a teacher – that focused on giving a child my attention. Love.
This will be mentioned in my presentation, but it’s worth repeating. If you’re going to use Twitter, buy a client of some kind to manage it. I love Tweetbot – I use it on my iPad to organize and keep me sorted. I’ve created lists for education, food trucks, and more. You can create lists for your classes, and have the students do the curation. I find the timeline overwhelming, and the lists sort it for me. As well, it does previews of all pictures and videos so that you can see them before you open them. The regular Twitter program for the iPad had issues with instagram and other picture storage locations. Yay for Tweetbot!
Twitter can be used to make connections that you may never have thought possible. During the London Olympics, I had several conversations with a BBC sports reporter on topics ranging from Justin Bieber to Olympic torches blowing out during relays (my mom’s went out!). I recently inspired entrepreneur and former Dragon W. Brett Wilson with an idea to make pants into a shirt (don’t ask!). A comment of mine on a picture made someone working at The Globe (yes, THE Globe in London!!) chortle “with such alarming heartiness the office startled in fright.” When attending a concert and wondering why opera singer Measha Bruggergosman wasn’t in attendance (had been scheduled to do so), I posted that question on Twitter. She replied. Talk about access to a primary source!
You can also gain access to an audience far greater than you can within the classroom. During the London Olympics, the main British tourism organization sent a picture of mine out to all of their followers. All 125,000+ of them. That was a bit more than my usual audience of around 15.
I held off on Twitter, assuming it was another fad, but am now very glad I joined the conversation.
@BrianneMelnyk
Great interview with 16 year old Patrick Mott, active blogger and tweeter. He’s a great example of using social media to create a positive identity.
http://globalnews.ca/video/693521/children-on-social-media
Today I tried to place into words what has merely been running through my head. I don’t think I’m alone in thinking that things aren’t quite real until you’ve expressed them to others. I may think in my head that I’d like to run off and join the circus, but until I put voice to that thought, share this idea with others, engage in discussion and debate, it remains a whisper, floating around.
In saying this, I can’t help but apply it to my students. Far too often, their only form of publishing is within the classroom. In some ways, this may not be much better than in their heads. Try as I can to value their work, I am only one voice. They may eventually share the work with their parents, a few friends, although I do wonder at the statistics on doing so.
For my inquiry, I would like to look at using social media as a way to connect students to the world. The world has changed so much since I was a student, with many more avenues for connections, yet many classrooms remain unchanged. Social media being a rather large environment, I think I may end up focusing on Twitter, as previously mentioned.
What I’d really like to do is explore the whys of doing so. Why should I use Twitter with my students. With every how that I encounter or conjure, I’d like to look at a reason for why. Some of these reasons will hopefully be backed by research stating why it is important to engage a student in a particular task. Some of the reasons may be based on BC curriculum. And perhaps there may be a study out there that actually looked at the benefits of social media use for students.
I plan to look at my inquiry through the mindset of creating a presentation for
my peers. Consistently when I attend tech Pro-D within my district, they speak of all the wonderful things that we can do… and how it engages students, and how much they enjoy it. I’d like to create a better WHY. Why are we doing this? What is the benefit? How does it improve the minds of our students? How is it different than traditional methods?
Why do I get the feeling this could be a large research study, not a week and a half project? Eek!
For this post, I chose to focus on two of the six questions that I found most intriguing, along with some personal reflection.
As the week began, I felt overwhelmed. I consider myself quite technologically literate, yet it felt like so much was coming at me from different angles. The communication prism shared in class today illustrated this – so much, everywhere around me, leaving me unsure of where to turn.
As we moved through the week, a level of awareness began to engage. I realized that while I was a happy consumer of many of these technologies, I didn’t necessarily use them in the classroom or teach my students how to use them. I did model the use of applications such as Twitter, show and discuss TED talks, access and share news stories from newspapers around the world, yet I didn’t fully engage my students in this process. Moving forward, I want to focus on ways to bring my students in, while keeping at the forefront why I am doing so.
How were your ideas about ICT in school settings influenced by Will Richardson’s book, “Why School”?
I found the book somewhat problematic. Many of the concerns we’ve addressed in class and on Twitter, namely increasing the number of students for whom a teacher is responsible, lacking a proper infrastructure to support increased technology centred learning, lack of teacher time and training, and concern over not losing many of what we find valuable in the current education system. I’m hoping perhaps that his book was meant more to shock and intrigue as opposed to form a basis for a new educational system. There were many ideas that could be brought in, such as student centred learning and teaching students more independence and focus on what they want to learn.
What issues, interest, or opportunity have you identified as a key topic for your inquiry work next week?
For next week, I believe I would like to start looking at connecting students with the world, and alternative ways of publishing work. I’d like to do so focusing on the use of Twitter. I need to learn more about potential pitfalls, merits, different ways of doing so, thinking about different ways to target audiences, how it can be used curricularly, and more. When looking at my personal Twitter account as a potential topic for 10 Minutes of Fame, I had never realized some of the amazing connections I’ve made. Twitter is part of the reality for our students, and could be an amazing way to bring more of the world in, send them out into the world, rather than just following their friends and a few celebrities.
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