Thomas The Tankengine and #pencilchat - is it ok if you don't notice change?

cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo shared by dullhunk

So I was sitting there on a Sunday morning as tired as could be.  Miss 2 hasn't quite grasped onto the concept of weekend sleep in's yet.  I was up at 5:30am and feeling pretty tired.  It was around 9:30am and Thomas The Tankengine came onto ABC4Kids.  My two kids love this channel and it is an easy way for them to be entertained and be quiet.  Mr 5 was into Thomas a little bit when he was younger but I think that I enjoyed it more.  I used to love model trains when I was a kid and think that this is the reason that I loved watching the Fat Controller order those naughty trains around.  But this morning, something blew my mind: Thomas started talking......then the Fat Controller did as well!  This was anarchy!  What the heck was going on?  I asked "How long has this been going on for? Thomas shouldn't talk!"  Mr 5 responded with "He talks now daddy sometimes."  I didn't like this answer and it actually made me feel very uncomfortable.  I liked Thomas how I liked him.  Why did the change him?  Were they changing him for change sake or was there a good reason behind it? 

On Friday evening, as I was laying in bed, my twitter stream started to get taken over by something called #pencilchat.  At first, I was very confused.  Why were all of these people who I respected and followed to help increase my digital pedagogy going on about pencils?  After about five minutes, I realsied that it was humorous and people were taking the 'micky' out of stuff.  I then searched the tag and was amazed to find the volume of tweets being contributed around the world on this topic.  Educators were going off.  It was actually trending worldwide for a long time and it was a constant source of humour for me over the weekend.

So by now you are problary wondering what the heck I am going on about.  #pencilchat started as a humours annecdote which went viral.  Whilst people were happy sharing jokes etc, after about 18 hours, I came to a realisation - educators around the world are frustrated about the speed of change that is occuring.  Then this morning after my Thomas episode, I thought to myself "Does it really matter if a change occurs and you don't notice it?"  Thomas is still on the Island of Soundur and doing great, and my personal preferences towards the old Thomas shouldn't matter.  He is happy and content with his change.  I was upset at first because I felt that I was out of the loop in regards to the change.  Nobody asked me from BBC my opinion on this change.

Then I started to think about my pedagogy and how it how changed.  Some things have been a massive change whilst others I haven't even noticed.  I am happy and hopefully doing a great job.  This should be the main thing - I shouldn't be stressing about the fact that I didn't notice change occurring   

Relationships with students in a student driven learning environment

Every year at McDowall at this time, past student come back and visit.  It is not a compulsory thing but it is a bit of a tradition that has grown over the years.  This is my third year at McDowall and in the past week, I have had 12 emails from students telling me that they are on holidays and can't come in and 10 student visits so far.  The kids think that they are pretty cool and it is always great to see them.

This morning, I had a visit from two of my girls from my class from last year.  These two girls are really good kids and generally achieve pretty good academic results.  They will not be brain surgeons when they grow up but they will be productive members of society.  In short, they are great girls who I enjoyed working with last year - the sort of kids who make it worth getting up in the morning when you feel awful.

So they organised a time with me earlier in the week and they snuck into the room this morning.  I didn't notice them and was pleased to see that they had grown into terrific young ladies.  After I got the kids started  on something, I had a really good conversation with them.  They both are going to the same high school (I won't mention the name but it is not an EQ school) and when we got talking, they had some interesting observations.  The thing that stuck with me the most was this statement "Mr Proud, you took an interest in us and tried to cater to our needs," said one of them.  When I asked them to explain what they meant by that, there response was just as fantastic "You always tell us to make the most of everyday because you will never ever have it again.  I feel that some of my teachers don't make the most of everyday.  We have to learn the way that they want to teach because it is easy for them." I then went on to explain that everybody has their strengths and weaknesses and I got cut off "You always said it was all about us and our needs.."  I didn't really have an answer for that because I agreed with her 100%

So how can we continue to foster relationships with students?  I feel that it is not hard to take an interest in your kids.  You will notice that I often refer to my students as my kids.  I do this on purpose.  I truly do believe that they are my responsibility and I try and treat them the way that I would like my own little terrors to be treated.  But why do kids feel such a disconnect with teachers?  Is it our fault or should we blame the easy target - the child? Do we have to be more aware of this in the 21st century?  I am not sure about the answer to that one.

Does technology really empower learners to journey beyond just content?

cc licensed ( BY NC SD ) flickr photo shared by Subspace

The other day, I had our parent meeting for next years year seven students who will be entering the 1-1 laptop program here at McDowall State School.  My awesome (I better suck up just in case he ever reads this!) deputy principal stood up and talked a lot about the administration side of the program.  Parents had lots of issues with insurance, bags, transport etc.  Whilst these issues are of vital importance, it isn't exactly the most riveting and stimulating thing to engage with.

I then stood up and spoke to the parents about various things and one of the statements that I made is that technology is a vehicle that allows students to explore concepts deeply and think creatively.  It goes beyond the surface of learning and enables and empowers learners to go beyond the content and explore it in detail.  But does it really or am I just living in a fantasy world?

I think that in my classroom, it certainly does.  My kids are active participants in the learning cycle and not just passive recipients of information or 'I don't know' people.  They enquire, they explore, they think and they create.  I use technology as a tool that empowers my learners.  They go beyond the content and remix and add value.  But what concerns me is when I see educators just using technology as a replacement for doing what they have always done.  If you just 'word process' something instead of writing it, how is that enriching the lives of the students under your direction?  Sure it will keep them quiet and make your life a lot easier but why have you bothered.  It will make things look pretty (something that I am awful at) and they won't get sore wrists from copying copious amounts of notes from the board but is that enough?

I really think that we are on the cusp of change here in education.  I am sick and tired about hearing about 21st century learners needing 21st century methods.  We are almost 12% of the way through the 21st century.  It is time to change our pedagogy and inspire others do so as well.  If you are not keen to change and be inspired, you should go and work in a fish and chip shop!

What does it mean to be literate in these times of abundance? #change11

In a blog post entitled A New Definition Of Literacy In An Age of Abundance  explore some interesting ideas.  One of these notions is a definition of what literacy is in the 21st century.  They state:

 “A person is literate when s/he can take part in, critique, deconstruct, interrupt and shape the dominant discourses and narratives in his or her local and in global contexts”.

Now I love it when academic folk bring in big words like dominant discourses.  It make me feel very inferior and very dumb, but I did enjoy reading the post.  I think I agree with the part of the quote about global contexts.  Having an understanding of the wider global community is an essential skill that a 21st century learner must possess in my opinion due to the connected nature of our environment in 2011.

Another reason that I enjoyed reading this post was the following statement that they made:

Are we merely content to teach students how to navigate the internet and Web 2.0 programs, or should we be teaching them to think critically about the limitations and hidden agendas?

Now we are starting to get something that I am passionate about.  There is to much focus in education put on the tool and not enough on the pedagogy that drives decisions.  As I say to my kids all of the time, It is not about the bling bling, it is about the learning sting! I think that as educators we need to have a more broad sweeping approach to 'doing techy stuff'.  But the key question that I think we need to get our students doing is asking themselves about the tools that they are using and why they are using them.  I feel that there needs to be more focus put on the decisions and thought processes behind it.  Until as a education universe we are not at this point, I feel that we will be paddling upstream quickly with no paddle.  Learners need to be empowered to makes and therefore improve their ability to make decisions.

So what does it mean to be literate in these times of abundance?  I feel that being literate in the 21st century requires students to be active participants in their learning cycle and critical analysiers of information due to the information overload that our students experience on a daily basis.  The ability to synthesis and ask questions is almost becoming a lost art form.  In my humble opinion, this is critical to students in the 21st century and the quicker that we grasp onto this concept, the better off our students will be.

 

The ability to synthesis and question information: are we on the right track? #change11

As a part of my journey in Change11, I posted a blog post entitled Learning in a time of abundance.  Obviously the theme for this week is learning in a time of abundance and it was a reflective post on my thoughts on what I hope to get out of it.  Since I am the master of self promotion, I tweeted it out to my PLN and got an interesting response from GEvangelista.  Her response (I think it is a her) was:

@ashleyproud Some good points- over-abundence is an understatement! The ability 2 synthesise & question info is almost a lost art.

That got me thinking.  Obviously the part about the over abundance of information and information overload is something that we need to help our learners with but it caused me time to pause and reflect about the second part of our tweet.  I always say to my kids that the biggest thing that I want them to get out of their year with me is the ability to think and question.  But am I doing a good enough job?  Am I fostering questioning and inquiring enough within my learning environment?  Like all educators, I am sure that I could do a better job but overall I think that I do a reasonable job encouraging the inquiry process of learning.  I do it by actively having my students participate in the learning process.  They are not passive recipients of content and I do not accept students not justifying their opinions / answers.

Interesting.....

Learning in a time of abundance #change11

cc licensed ( BY NC ) flickr photo shared by magnusfranklin

I will admit to being very slack with my learning in the MOOC that I am undertaking entitled Change11.  Everyday I check my email and sometimes I will think "Geez that is very academic and well above me" and other times I think "This is pointless to my context"  The beauty of Change11 is the ability to 'dip in' and 'dip out' as you needed.  There is no need to work through the course in a liner fashion and when I saw the title of this weeks theme, I must admit to being intrigued.

The theme for this week is titled 'Learning in a time of abudance'  After reading the initial article sent out for this week, it got me thinking about some of the things that Eric Duval introduced to the community.  One statement that Eric made really resonated with me.  It was when he talked about 'filter failure'.  My simple man definition of this would be the lack of inappropriate or non existent ways of catching information as it passes through your learning stream.  The ability to set proper filters to catch the information or find out 'stuff' is an important skill that all 21st century learners need.

My good friend Rod Lucier talked about this on a recent episode of The Edtechcrew.  I have always been a big fan of Rod's and I encourage you to go and check out some of his work on how he filters his information.

Students truly do have an abundance of information / expertise at their disposal.  I truly feel that the ability of teachers to facilitate this process is one of the most important things to educating our students on becoming digitally literate citizens.  I also worry that kids inability to filter information can lead to failure as well due to the abundance of information at their fingertips.  Teaching students the appropriate way to access / source information is extremely important.  Another important notion is getting them to understand what is a relevant source and appropriate and what is not.  Young learners find this process extremely difficult.  I eagerly look forward to learning more about this concept from the community this week.

What is a MOOC? Am I crazy? #change11

Since I have moved my blog across to blogger, I must state that I am really happy with its functionality and ease of use. I love how it has just integrated everything so easily and as we speak I am laying on my grass at 11:46am using the Blogger app for my iPhone to create this post.

I am not sure if I am crazy or not but I have signed up to undertake a MOOC in the #change11 project. From what I can gather I can make this project basically be whatever I want it to be. I have been reading my daily emails and I must attempt to spend some quality time with my laptop and not my phone. I think this will allow me to grasp onto the concepts that underpin this course easily.

Would love to hear your thoughts - who will be the first to comment on my new site.

This is the view from my lawn today!