A techie’s view

My Thanks …

My thanks go to Chad Sansing (web site: http://classroots.org, twitter: @chadsansing ) for prompting this post.

His tweet was “what would make school relevant? what would happen school divs were portflios? what if we standardized authenticity?”

For people less acquainted with school divisions (like me!) he went on to explain “what if schl systems purposefully ran schools w/ unique missions/specialties instead of trying to make each the same“.

Hence this post.

The comments are below are cast in the light of my understand of typical Western countries, as I imagine was the background to Chad’s original questions.

Learners are all Different

It strikes me that there is a dichotomy between serving the needs of the individual leaner and society’s expectations of equality of opportunity, and that while this dichotomy has been stated for over two decades, there has been pitifully little progress during that time in resolving it.

An Historical Perspective

The 1944 Butler Education Act in the United Kingdom (Education Act 1944 http://www.experiencefestival.com/a/Tripartite_System_-_History/id/5544953) resulted in education becoming fragmented along social lines (http://www.jstor.org/pss/2264397). I have yet to see any evidence that such fragmentation has been eliminated or even reduced.

Schools of Excellence

I am aware of a number of schools in the UK that specialise in certain academic areas. By way of example, Kettering Grammar School was for a while internationally famous for its work in tracking satellites (http://www.svengrahn.pp.se/trackind/getstart/oldcyts.htm).

A Tricky Path

In an ideal world with unlimited resources, each person’s education would be provided in a way exactly tailored to that person. (I nearly wrote “… each child’s …”, as that where perhaps the bulk of education happened in my own childhood, but this is nothing like so true today.) However, the best that we can achieve in a practical sense is to deliver the best learning possible with the resources that we have available.

The matter is complicated by the existence of state schools and private schools. The tensions that are created by this split in schooling are perhaps inevitable; any further comment on that point is beyond the scope of this post.

I believe that there is merit in schools offering different balances of subjects to their students, this catering for different needs and ambitions. Having said that, there needs to be a minimum levels of skills (often confused with qualifications) possessed by every school leaver. The manner of how to achieve that is a hot debate both in the USA and the UK. (I would classify those skills as literacy, numeracy, and e-knowhow.)

The UK has a set of national standards that apply to all school leavers. There is some movement there to the International Baccalaureat as an alternative standard. These standards include a moderation process to ensure uniformity and consistency of marking. When I came to Western Australia, I was astonished to find that such moderation processes were not used even at the state level, let alone the national level. I commend such processes to everywhere that lacks them.

My Thanks …

My thanks go to Tomaz Lasic (blog: http://human.edublogs.org , twitter: http://twitter.com/lasic) for prompting this post.

“I Have Had Kids Tell Me …”

Tomaz’s original tweet was “I’ve had kids tell me I suck as teacher because ‘I don’t teach them anything’ (i.e. tell them the ‘right’ answer). Think sunshine!” which set me to thinking very hard about my own style of teaching.

My Own Teaching Experience

I was perhaps extremely fortunate in my early teaching experiences (both voluntary and professional) in that the students were always motivated, and I unconsciously expected them to think about whatever it was they were learning about. I was also extremely comfortable with those students challenging my own thinking processes, and saying to me, in effect, “Justify your statement!”. It came as something of a shock some years later to start working with youth-at-risk and those not as blessed with cognitive powers as their peers.

I found that if even there is the smallest desire to learn, I can harness that spark, and help the student to achieve. (I regard myself as a resource to be utilised to help students achieve. If the student repeatedly and consistently refuses to work, then I cannot bring myself to waste myself as a resource on them while there are others in the class who I know will benefit from my efforts.)

“Think, Sunshine!”

Do I encourage my students to think? You bet I do! Having said that, my expectations of the level of thinking is predicated my assessment of their cognitive powers. (As an aside, I have not observed any correlation between cognitive powers and a desire to learn.) So for somebody who is working at Certificate IV level, I expect them to be able to think at a high level of abstraction; after all, they need to be able to do that for any Certificate IV qualification. At the other end of the cognitive spectrum, I still expect them to think in response to very simple questions, such as “What would you feel about [going there to have a holiday]?”

Your Thoughts

Is encouraging students to think good, bad or irrelevant? Do you have any other thoughts on this issue? I invite to share your thoughts in the comments below.

OR: Memories of being a Computer Numbskull

The title of this post was chosen as a reminder to myself of the impact of information technology on my own reality in perhaps much the same way as it may have just had upon you, dear reader. It was this: “What on earth is going on?”

Having been in this game for over 3 decades, now seems like a good time to dust off those memories and see how thay might apply to today’s educators who feel less than comfortable with today’s available (information) technologies.

Da Capo

As an undergraduate, I felt swamped by the amount of information that I came across. Even a decade later, I came across DOS file extensions (.doc, .ppt, .exe for example) and wondered what thay all meant. (Fast forward to the present day: I now take all these things as “small change, or common currency”, and I keep having to remind myself that this familiarity is perhaps nothing like as common as I might like to believe. But more of this later.)

An Analysis

Refecting on my own journey of learning, one of the things that strikes me is how I have been able to reduce the cacophony of information into a small, and hence intellectually manageable, number of concepts. But even learning about those concepts in the absence of a suitable guide was quite a struggle. The aim of this post is to suggest to fellow trainers those ideas and concepts which they may think it is most beneficial for their students to use as stepping stones their own IT Nirvana.

Assumptions About Context

In the remainder of this post, I assume that people are comfortable with using “hardware”: screen, keyboard, mouse, CD/DVD, and possibly a USB storage device, and that your target audience is fellow educators. As such, I do not go any further into this area.

Basic Concepts

For me, (and excluding hardware) there are four basic concepts that underlie everything:

1. People
2. Data (e.g. MS-Word documents)
3. Applications (a.k.a. “software”)
4. Communications (e.g. connection to an ISP)

Everything else amounts to detail: the four concepts above provide some sort of context, and hence opportunity to understand, what is going on. To give an example by using an analogy, the difference between Windows and Linux could be likened to the difference between a petrol engine and a diesel engine in a car: they both move the car, they just use different fuel. (The technological differences on both sides of the analogy also hold true when you go into the details of these four technologies.)

Motivation

My own motivation for what I learned was a drive to understand the technology so that I could use it in the workplace. Leaving aside teachers who simply refuse to learn about Web 2.0 technologies, the question is how to present the concepts of Web 2.0 in the most digestible fashion.

What and How to Teach?

I can only offer what I would teach and how I would teach it in this context. I offer this “solution” as a starting point for formulating your own ideas.

To start with, I describe the basic concepts listed above in terms that the learners can understand – I contextualise those concepts into the students’ own lives. For example, people still write letters (”data”, stored in “files”) using pen and ink (”hardware”). Corrections to electronic letters are much easier: “software” deletion is easier mechanically than using a physical eraser. Sending the letter can be physical (ask your local post office) or electronic (”communications” using e.g. wires).

Eating an elephant is best done one mouthful at a time. Introducing little bits of technology that are relevant to the learner’s needs at the time is a successful approach. Being wholly selfish, if I was now to learn what I now know, I would want to know how each of those mouthfuls fitted into the four basic concepts above.

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to Tom Whitby (Twitter: @tomwhitby) and Shelly Terrell (http://teacherbootcamp.edublogs.org/ , Twitter: @ShellTerrell) for prompting me to write this post, and to Di Bédard (http://learning-commons.blogspot.com/ , Twitter: @windsordi) for providing the French translation.

Introduction

The twittersphere is buzzing with how to use Web 2.0 in places of learning. I nearly wrote “in the classroom”, and that is perhaps symptomatic of this issue in educational institutions today. “A place of learning” was once synonymous with an educational institution, but this is manifestly untrue today. I justify this assertion later in this post.

About the Author

I started my career as an  information technologist, and I am still very active in that area today. Since 1997, I have also been an educator. I am perhaps extremely lucky in being totally at ease with information technology, and its use in places of learning (in its widest possible interpretation) are manifestly obvious to me. What has also become obvious to me is that many educational institutions are finding harnessing that technology a truly daunting task.

Lexis

Astute readers will by now have noticed that I am using the phrases “places of learning” and “educational institutions” to mean very different things. For the purposes of this post, an educational institution is a school, college or university, typified by having a campus or two. A place of learning needs a more careful definition: it is wherever the learner (note: not necessarily a student) happens to engage in learning. By way of example of a place of learning, it can be a street junction where a learner has received an answer the question “Which street should I go into?”. This is an example “micro-learning”. And what do we get when we have lots of micro-learning? Answer: A curriculum-full of knowledge.

“Dinosaur” is a cipher for educational institutions that will not survive today’s earthquake in learning. “Moth” is a reference to Biston betularia, also known as the peppered moth, which is perhaps the best known example of an organism adapting to its changing surroundings.

The Landscape from Here

There are many educational institutions which have embraced Web 2.0 with a vengeance. These are the moths: they demonstrate the ability to adapt to changes in the way in which learning is happening.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, there are the dinosaurs. Such places may pay lip service to adapting to today’s ways of learning, but they will not survive as future mainstream educational institutions.

In between there are the institutions that are wavering. This post has been written with them in mind.

What NOT to Do

There are institutions that see their way into today’s ways of learning as merely a transcription exercise: take already existing paper-based materials, and copy them into some sort of Learning Management System (LMS). At the risk of preaching to the converted, I will mention just two of reasons why this is a disastrous approach. Firstly, it fails to capitalise on the advantages of Web 2.0 technology. Secondly, there is no vision of how learners might be learning in ten years’ time.

How to Encourage Change

For any institution to adapt successfully, it needs to embrace everybody in that institution. Just coming “from the top” is not enough if all the people at the “chalkface” (we need a better word for that, but until the English language catches up with today’s technology, it will have to serve) refuse to adapt, then the institution will not survive. Equally, if there is a groundswell of opinion that is ignored by the management team, then the instution will also die. What is needed is co-operation of leadership from all levels within the institution. If you are one of these people, then post is addressed to YOU!

Resources

I believe that the best way to help any organisation to change is to “communicate, communicate, communicate”. This perhaps leaves open the question of “What to communicate?”, and I hope that you will find at least some of the resources below useful in your labours.

Please Contribute!

I know that the list of resources in the table above is extremely limited. Please do your own bit for helping fellow teachers/trainers/tutors/facilitators by adding your own resources in the comments below – others will thank you for them!

Thanks To …

My thanks go to Andrew Forgrave (@aforgrave on twitter) for his thoughtful post on the Obama Speech controversy. His post has prompted my post, which offers my own thoughts on some of the issues that he offers.

Background

Andrew’s has the advantage of coming from the USA’s next door neighbour. He is far more in tune with the feelings of the general populace than I can ever be, writing as I do from a distance of several thousand miles. I have also needed to do some research into recent publications in the USA, so I have probably missed some important strands in the current debate. My own slant is to look at that debate from the wider educational context, and this from an AussiePom background.

Some Parts of the Debate

As you might expect, the debate ranges from the thoughtful to the confused to the name-calling. Rather than trying to summarise each of those strands, I will leave you follow each of those links yourself; this avoids me imposing my own bias on those articles.

A Reason to Listen

For me, education is not just about delivering curriculum into students’ skulls. It is about developing every individual in a way that they feel is appropriate for their future adult lives. Adult life does not come neatly packaged in the manner of “curriculum, learning and assessment”. It is full of opportunities and setbacks, and I feel that as an educator I must model the behaviour of capitalising on every opportunity and overcoming every setback: I owe this to all of my students.

When I was young, my teachers sometimes grasped those extra-curricular opportunities and gave unique experiences. I did not appreciate their value at the time (after all, when you are a child, the assumption is “that is just the way the world is”) but as an adult I have benefitted from those experiences. The rest of this post is cast in that light.

The Responsibility to Educate

The heading “The Responsibility to Educate” is deliberately chosen. It is not ” … to Teach”, nor is it ” … to Deliver Learning”. It is its etymological association, “to draw out from within”, hence to empower to live a full life, which is the primary focus here.

I hold it as a self-evident statement that to deny a child an extra-curricular activity, such as listening to the leader of a country (even if it is the leader of the country in which you happen to be living), is to deny it that child the possibility of growing in that direction. We may feel that the speaker’s agenda is thoroughly odious, in which case we have need to have already given the child as much critical thinking skills as is appropriate to his/her age, even something as simple as “Do you think that what this person is saying is good or bad?”

The Tough One

There are some parents who will always reject the message contained in the previous paragraph. What then, should we as educators say to those who are open to persuasion? This is a question that you will ultimately have to answer for yourself. I offer the previous paragraph as a springboard for your own cogitations.

Postscript

Since I wrote this post, Obama has delivered his speech, with predictably mixed reactions. The BBC’s Mark Mardell puts in beautifully.

If you want to read Obama’s speech, you can get it here.

Background

I have been vaguely aware for decades of people being proud of their innumeracy. A recent experience brought this awareness into sharp relief, and this post explores my thoughts on the subject of innumeracy.

What is Innumeracy?

It can be slightly difficult to define innumeracy in terms of mathematical content (”Can you add up two numbers in your head?”), but it is rather easier to define it in terms of how it impacts on people’s lives.

For example, the ability to reckon with money is crucial for tradesmen, but it ability to “count out the change to the amount tendered” is not usually important to people in a supermarket checkout. However, there are other walks of life, such as traffic flow management in a city, which require being fully skilled in some specialised areas of mathematics, and anybody with out those skills could not function.

Innumeracy and Literacy

There is agreement in most societies that literacy is an important skill which everybody should have. It would be pointless to reiterate the reasons behind that feeling.

But as with numeracy, there are different levels of literacy. Journalists, by the very nature of their work, are highly literate creatures. People who write blog posts also need a certain level of literacy, though nothing like to the same degree. Anybody who has been involved in a serious car accident will have needed to write an accident report. Having some anonymised accident reports on the Internet, it soon becomes apparent that some people are functionally illiterate.

In the light of this, I would argue that while the levels of illiteracy and innumeracy may be different in society as a whole, they are different manifestions of the same underlying problem: the lessened ability to function in today’s world.

Why is Innumeracy Tolerated?

The heading for this section of this post is deliberately provocative, and is a consequence of my own annoyance at those who appear to be proud of their own innumeracy.

I would guess that a lower level of numeracy than level of literacy is required to operate successfully in today’s world. You may wish express your own opinions on this matter in the comments section at the bottom of this post.

If people are happy with their lives with their current levels of numeracy and literacy, that is a life choice that they make, and I feel that they should be allowed to get on with their lives without anybody else saying “You really ought to learn about …” – that for me would amount to intolerable interference. For myself, I am driven by a need to learn about a particular area of mathematics. (If you really want to know what that area is, then follow this link.)

However, I draw the line at people who are proud of their innumeracy. It seems to me like a form of inverted snobbery. That would be okay with me if that was as far as it went (I could simply ignore them), but such people are inevitably rôle models for others, particularly children. In doing so, these people are handicapping their next generation, and is to my mind no more acceptable than the practice of binding children’s feet as they are growing up.

In short, I wish such people would keep their innumeracy to themselves.

When Your Audience Disagrees

With Thanks To …

I would like to thank everybody who attended my presentation on CSS through edublogs on 19 June 2009, for without them this post would not have been written.

Setting the Scene

I was running an online session using Elluminate when one of the participants expressed a view that was the complete opposite of something that I had just said. This post explores my own reaction to that event, and looks at alternative ways of dealing with it.

Ways of Reacting

My Immediate Reaction

My immediate reaction was one of surprise, as I had read an article from the relevant authority on the point expressed only a few days earlier. However, as a presenter, I know that I can get things wrong due to any one of a number of causes. I was also aware that I wanted to keep the audience “on my side”, that the participant was expressing what he believed to be true, and that I wanted to keep the presentation moving forward.

I thanked the participant for informing me of information that was new to me, and moved on.

A Follow-up Action

As a presenter, it is my duty to ensure that statements that I make are accurate. So I needed to check the participant’s statement, which I did the following day. As it turns out, my initial statement was correct (which was a personal relief for me), and it raises the point that the participant may have been referring to a very similar technology which is only one number away in its representation, and has all the features that he spoke of. Also, being human, the participant may have simply made a mistake.

Other Ways of Handling the Situation

There are other ways of dealing with this sort of situation. For example:

• Ask: cite your source, and ask the participant for further details
• Polity disagree: “I don’t think so”, and cite your source
• Disagree impolitely: “Sorry, you’re wrong”, and cite your source

The first course can put undue pressure on the participant (in my view), and can break the flow that exists between the presenter and the other participants. The other two courses of action can escalate into a row, sometimes very quickly, and is even more distracting to the other participants.

None of these courses of action appeal to me.

Conclusion

Every presenter will have their own way of reacting to and dealing with this sort of situation. For me, for the moment, I think I handled it acceptably.

Digital Literacy – Some Random Thoughts

With Thanks To …

My thanks go to Shelly S Terrell for prompting this post. You can see her blog at http://teacherbootcamp.edublogs.org/.
(And just in case you were wondering Shelly, yes I did write this whole post in HTML and inline CSS.)

What IS Digital Literacy

The phrase “digital literacy” seems to be being used these days in a sense that “either you have it, or you don’t”, in much the same way that you either do or do not hold a driver’s licence. However, for me digital literacy (by the way, I hate that phrase, but until a better phrase comes along, I’ll have to stick with) is just as much a skill as “ordinary” literacy (now perhaps you see why I have an issue with the “digital literacy” phrase) and numeracy.

It is a skill which can be measured on a continuous scale from zero (a new-born baby would have this level) to any world-renown technical expert in the area. By way of an analogy, successful journalists and statisticians are well above the mid-point for language and numeracy.

When Is Digital Literacy Important?

The answer to the question “When is digital literacy important?” must be “almost always”, but this rather ignores the question of “To what level?”. To that end, I am going to ditch the term “digital literacy” in favour of the term “digital competence” for the rest of this post.

This change of terminology then allows us to start asking all sorts of relevant questions, such as:

1. What level of digital competence is required to perform in this job?
2. What competences in the area of digital technology must this potential employee have?
3. What are the gaps in this employees competences? (I.e. Training Needs Analysis)

Some Potential Issues in Achieving Digital Competence

I make no claim to being an expert in describing the issues that surround achieving digital competence. All I can do here is to share some thoughts gleaned from observing people and listening to their words.

I DON’T NEED DIGITAL COMPETENCE is an assertion which may be slightly wide of the mark, in that the speaker may be using such things as automated teller machines (ATM) to perform financial transactions and not realising that such an act is a digital competence, or it could be true; I have heard people complain that they have difficulty in using ATMs.

I HATE THIS TECHNOLOGY is another way of saying that they find it difficult to use, as in the case of ATMs above. The fact that they have demonstrated competence in that technology means that they are digitally competent for that task. (Sorry if that sounds tautological, but I am trying to make the point of competence for any specific task.) Practice, as we all know (do we?) makes things easier for the person practicing. One of the issues with people who have difficulty with ATMs (for example) is insufficient practice. Would you REALLY want to go withdrawing cash eight times a day?

I HAVEN’T GOT THE TIME TO LEARN could mean that the speaker has other priorities (well, it’s their life!) or they are engaging in avoidance behaviour, preferring to perform other tasks which lie more within their comfort zone. I have seen people who are perfectly competent in a wide variety of digital skills exhibit this sort of response. I think that the answer here lies in the steepness of the learning curve: the effort of learning is perceived as being greater than the benefit that will flow from achieving the relevant digital competence. The only way that I have found of overcoming this hurdle is when, by whatever means, the speaker realizes that the benefit outweighs the effort. One could imagine a tyrannical boss saying “Learn to do it, or your fired!”

These are the resources that Jo Hart johart1.edublogs.org
and I used in the Open Source HTML Editors Elluminate session on 8 May 2009.

These are the resources that Jo Hart johart1.edublogs.org
and I used in the graphic manipulation Elluminate session on 24 April 2009.

In case you want it, here is the “source code” used for creating the white button in POVRAY: